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ContinuityNewTimes
Dec 30, 2010

Я выдуман напрочь

kyojin posted:

fun to think about how 80 years ago the state managed the feed the country despite there being a war on but now the free market can't do anything but poo poo itself

The government actually needed everyone fed but nowadays the market has decided that's not necessary or desirable

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endlessmonotony
Nov 4, 2009

by Fritz the Horse

OwlFancier posted:

If someone says that people should be punished harshly for a crime, to the point that many people would consider it "cruel", would it be wrong to call it that if they disagreed and said it was actually justice?

Like, I just don't see why the person making the claim gets to override everyone else and have their identity as a nice person respected? Cos that's basically what it is, right? In practice?

We call people racist when they do racist things, even if they do not identify as racist, I do not see why we would not do the same thing with cruelty? Especially as I think that is a very emotive point for us to latch onto. I don't see the point of looking at children being made to go hungry and say "actually this is just inefficiency in the governing ideological process" rather than just calling it monstrous and validating people's anger about it?

Certainly decent a point.

Combine this with the hardwired human drive to enforce social hierarchies and you've got this mess pretty well explained.

What does it mean in practice? You can't convince these people to stop being cruel by appealing to their inner humanity (well, for the ones that have one) because they view it as just to hurt people on lower rungs of the ladder - otherwise people wouldn't adequately prepare for this hell of a world where the only person you can trust is yourself.

Of course, this is made more complex by the problem that it feels good to feel powerful, and nothing makes you feel powerful like forcing someone else to endure an unpleasant situation.

The only way out of this mess, as far as I know anyway, is to force everyone to realize that consequences apply to everyone and right now that isn't exactly true.

They may view cruelty as just. This doesn't mean cruelty isn't the point.

OwlFancier
Aug 22, 2013

Following on from that, I would further suggest that the only way consequences do apply to everyone is if other people make them apply. And anger is good for that.

I think it is easier for people to pick faults in others than to pick at their own, therefore public condemnation and anger is a necessary check on a society that otherwise depends on the capacity for introspection of its rulers. And people in power are emninently acceptable targets for public anger.

Oh dear me
Aug 14, 2012

I have burned numerous saucepans, sometimes right through the metal

Jakabite posted:

Cruelty can’t be the point if it isn’t intentional. It’s more a by-product.

This assumes people have perfect knowledge of their own motivations, when in fact everyone constantly fools themselves.

endlessmonotony
Nov 4, 2009

by Fritz the Horse
Thinking about your own motivations is much like cleaning the shower drain.

Jakabite
Jul 31, 2010

OwlFancier posted:

If someone says that people should be punished harshly for a crime, to the point that many people would consider it "cruel", would it be wrong to call it that if they disagreed and said it was actually justice?

Like, I just don't see why the person making the claim gets to override everyone else and have their identity as a nice person respected? Cos that's basically what it is, right? In practice?

We call people racist when they do racist things, even if they do not identify as racist, I do not see why we would not do the same thing with cruelty? Especially as I think that is a very emotive point for us to latch onto. I don't see the point of looking at children being made to go hungry and say "actually this is just inefficiency in the governing ideological process" rather than just calling it monstrous and validating people's anger about it?

No, it’s not to respect them as nice people. They’re terrible people and I say that because I agree with you that when judging if someone is good or bad, intent can only matter up to a point. Which I think these people pass. My point wasn’t about them being good or bad people - it was about discerning the point of the action. If cruelty was the point then that’s equivalent to the primary intent of the action being cruelty, right? What I’m saying is that cruelty isn’t the primary intent - in most cases I’d say it’s a mixture of laziness and greed. To be honest, it’s something worth interrogating further - the world is a complicated place and a lot of factors go into these decisions (not necessarily consciously). Now I’m not saying they aren’t terrible people, or the action isn’t cruel - I’m saying that cruelty isn’t the primary intent.

endlessmonotony, you really do live up to your username. I agree, man bad because bad man bad, now go watch Elsa loving Spiderman or whatever it is babies do for fun in 2021.

OwlFancier
Aug 22, 2013

If the action is cruel, and the action is the intent, then whether or not the person intending the action recognizes it as cruel, by the transitive property, cruelty is what is intended.

If cruelty requires that the person doing it believes themselves to be actually evil then the word is next to useless. But we have all kinds of euphemisms in english to articulate that we intend cruelty without having to internalize the moral problems of saying that. "cruel to be kind" "tough love" etc. We understand what we are doing, we just don't like to wholly admit it. I don't see that paper thin cognitive veneer as a thing worth respecting.

Especially when the more significant point of the phrase is that it is the system working as intended. This is the outcome it is designed to produce. If you don't like the outcome then the system needs to be changed, because it isn't a malfunction, this is what happens, this is what will always happen.

OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 22:26 on Jan 12, 2021

TACD
Oct 27, 2000

Does the intent matter? Does knowing the intent help prevent the action? Specifically within politics where there don't seem to be any realistic actions or arguments that will actually change the mindset of those directing the actions.

Jakabite
Jul 31, 2010

OwlFancier posted:

If the action is cruel, and the action is the intent, then whether or not the person intending the action recognizes it as cruel, by the transitive property, cruelty is what is intended.

I guess this is where we disagree, but that’s okay. I’m curious though. What about say, if a family pet is ill and the family cannot afford a vet. The family do not realise that the illness is actually not life threatening, and put the animal down. They’ve just killed an animal that would otherwise recover - objectively a cruel act. And they intended to kill it. They don’t recognise it as cruel though, and believe it to be a mercy. Is cruelty the point here? Or is the family absolved by their ignorance? What if they could have afforded a trip to the vet, but would have had to sacrifice significant quality of life for a while?

E: knowing the intent helps to dismantle the systems that make people do lovely things and prevents us from replicating the same systems and motivations in any new system.

OwlFancier
Aug 22, 2013

All life is suffering so actually euthanasia is moral in all circumstances :v:

Or if you want a less shitpost response then, like, yeah if there is a systemic thing causing people to kill animals because they can't receive proper vetinary care, then yes, cruelty is the point of the system. You could yell at the family but it is largely out of their control, they can't magic up money out of nowhere. But if there was, say, some government minister saying we can't ensure animals have proper vetinary care because we instead want to spend money on stopping people claiming vetinary support allowance, then cruelty is certainly the point of their action.

If someone is just shooting their pets because they don't want to pay vet bills they can easily afford then you would reasonably say they probably shouldn't be allowed to have pets because they are engaging in animal cruelty.

endlessmonotony
Nov 4, 2009

by Fritz the Horse

TACD posted:

Does the intent matter? Does knowing the intent help prevent the action? Specifically within politics where there don't seem to be any realistic actions or arguments that will actually change the mindset of those directing the actions.

Oh this rabbit hole is the deepest of them all.

Because the intent does not matter (that's the easy one), but there's also the question whether people are honest with themselves about their intent... or if they have examined it enough to figure out what their intent is, and what, exactly, is their motivation, emotionally speaking.

Seeing people disregard the societal rules you've built your identity around is distressing, and making that distress stop is a potent motivation. Trying to insist the world is just because you can't deal with a world that isn't is everpresent. A lot of decisions are made based on what you've witnessed your peer groups doing; a lot more are made to double down to prove you were right in the first place. Expecting consistency from human decision making is a tall ask, because there's nothing enforcing people act in a way consistent with their inner values, or what they perceive to be their inner values. There's a lot of "this is a problem now; this takes away the problem fastest so I can get back to problems with a bigger priority". People intend to do all sorts of things, and if they could fully examine and realize those intentions, it's been conclusively proven that the entire universe would vanish.

Intent genuinely doesn't matter. If you're cruel, an rear end in a top hat, a bad poster is up to others to decide, and people rarely change their ways without an external event forcing them to reconsider their preconceptions.

I claim I intend to be a good poster at all times. What's that intent worth, and why should I listen to you when you tell me how I should change?

Ash Crimson
Apr 4, 2010
Look I just want to be a good person

Jakabite
Jul 31, 2010

OwlFancier posted:

All life is suffering so actually euthanasia is moral in all circumstances :v:

Or if you want a less shitpost response then, like, yeah if there is a systemic thing causing people to kill animals because they can't receive proper vetinary care, then yes, cruelty is the point of the system. You could yell at the family but it is largely out of their control, they can't magic up money out of nowhere. But if there was, say, some government minister saying we can't ensure animals have proper vetinary care because we instead want to spend money on stopping people claiming vetinary support allowance, then cruelty is certainly the point of their action.

If someone is just shooting their pets because they don't want to pay vet bills they can easily afford then you would reasonably say they probably shouldn't be allowed to have pets because they are engaging in animal cruelty.

I think we just disagree on the nature of intent, and I'm a little too tired to continue! If the primary purpose is profit, I still maintain that the cruelty isn't the point - the profit is. But yeah, we obviously just don't see this the same way and that's alright.

endlessmonotony: I consider reading your posts to be an act of cruelty I inflict on myself, but I don't think you post with the primary intent of being cruel.

endlessmonotony
Nov 4, 2009

by Fritz the Horse

Ash Crimson posted:

Look I just want to be a good person

Good, liked, responsible, able to trust your first instincts or free of doubt, Ash?

Guavanaut
Nov 27, 2009

Looking At Them Tittys
1969 - 1998



Toilet Rascal
Lacking a window into men's souls, we might never be able to verify whether it is cruelty or profit that motivates them, but
we might be able to falsify it.

So, for example, if we could construct a case where it was more profitable not to be cruel, or vice versa, that might set up a falsifiable set of criteria.

For the company splitting pasta up into coin bags based on a contract from the state, is there a more profitable way? Perhaps not.

For the state itself? Yes. Actually feeding kids pays back £1.80 for every £1 invested in it up to several billion at least. On top of the economic multiplier, it reduces stress on local health, social care, police, courts, etc. compared to the counterexample of loving about and not feeding kids.

There may be individual personal greater profits for given MPs in acting like cunts, but for the state as a whole there is some crucial mechanism that has failed which has led to cruelty over gain.

CoolCab
Apr 17, 2005

glem
I think that's an important lesson in intent - just intending to be a good poster evidently doesn't help. People really need to post well to be good posters - intent is entirely irrelevant.

Ash Crimson posted:

Look I just want to be a good person

you know, it's a day by day thing. you turn up, you do your best to make things better, you extend to others certain privileges- the privilege to be upset, the privilege to disagree, etc, and you hope other people extend you the same courtesy. there's no single thing to do, it's a process, like most things.

Lt. Danger
Dec 22, 2006

jolly good chaps we sure showed the hun

I think the flip side of "the cruelty is the point" would be the various focus groups I believe ronya has discussed previously, in which innumerate voters don't know how much is spent on welfare/how long prison sentences are/how much voter fraud there is etc. but are certain it's too much/not long enough/everywhere etc. and vote accordingly to correct that. like those psych experiments where people give up their money to ensure a cheater doesn't get money either, even in a non-zero sum game

in other words, voters don't know what's happening but are sure someone somewhere is getting away with something, and prefer policies that (appear to) make sure those people are punished. hence obsessions with means-testing everything even when it's more trouble than its worth. individuals losing out getting caught in the gears isn't a bug, it's a sign the system is working properly; the cruelty is the point

TACD
Oct 27, 2000

endlessmonotony posted:

I claim I intend to be a good poster at all times. What's that intent worth, and why should I listen to you when you tell me how I should change?
i was talking about politicians

endlessmonotony
Nov 4, 2009

by Fritz the Horse

TACD posted:

i was talking about politicians

Oh politicians aren't any better posters than I am and for them the way they're perceived is literally the most important thing in their careers.

CoolCab
Apr 17, 2005

glem
it has been my observation that there are two kinds of cruelty in discussion here and that causes some confusion. there is active cruelty - when you are doing something deliberately to do harm and with ill intent, perhaps a touch of sadism, etc. this cruelty is probably the most common observed, as it is extremely blatant - do you remember a few years back there was that woman who kept pushing cats into bins. got caught on camera, big scandal, animal cruelty, etc.

with that said that kind of cruelty can also be kind - there are times when you need to do something unethical to prevent future harm. i got quite upset at my family when they wanted to go celebrate a birthday in october at a restaurant, and i said some very cruel things. i regret some of them, but i know my intent going in and as such even though i know i was being cruel i did it anyway - the possibility that i could prevent a very dangerous behaviour was worth more. there is value in this kind of cruelty, on rare occasion.

there is a second kind of cruelty, the kind we are discussing, where it's an entirely passive cruelty - you are being cruel not because you want to but because you don't even consider it cruelty - the party harmed is so far below your perspective that they might as well be invisible. i think this latter is much more harmful and is also what we are talking about, because this kind of cruelty doesn't require any active antipathy whatsoever - in fact it might get in the way.

CoolCab
Apr 17, 2005

glem
every person who constructed these food hampers - from the owners all the way down to the unpaid volunteers - will put on their CVs that they worked with an implicitly charitable foundation to ensure children are fed during the covid pandemic, and it will be accepted uncritically. our society will define this as charity. it is, as they say, what it is.

Ash Crimson
Apr 4, 2010

endlessmonotony posted:

Good, liked, responsible, able to trust your first instincts or free of doubt, Ash?

A combination of those I guess

OwlFancier
Aug 22, 2013

CoolCab posted:

with that said that kind of cruelty can also be kind - there are times when you need to do something unethical to prevent future harm. i got quite upset at my family when they wanted to go celebrate a birthday in october at a restaurant, and i said some very cruel things. i regret some of them, but i know my intent going in and as such even though i know i was being cruel i did it anyway - the possibility that i could prevent a very dangerous behaviour was worth more. there is value in this kind of cruelty, on rare occasion.

Alternatively, and critically, it is possible to convince yourself that cruelty is the only way to achieve the desired "good" result, but in fact it could be achieved without it, or even more effectively by another means, and in fact the reason you are engaging in the cruelty is because it feels viscerally satisfying and because you may have an internalized belief that a punitive element is the best way to correct aberrant behaviour.

Jakabite
Jul 31, 2010

OwlFancier posted:

Alternatively, and critically, it is possible to convince yourself that cruelty is the only way to achieve the desired "good" result, but in fact it could be achieved without it, or even more effectively by another means, and in fact the reason you are engaging in the cruelty is because it feels viscerally satisfying and because you may have an internalized belief that a punitive element is the best way to correct aberrant behaviour.

I think this is a possibility and probably is the case amongst some. I don't think we can say that with any certainty though, since there's nothing except what we might each consider the human condition to be which specifically rewards cruelty in itself. Whereas we do live in a system that explicitly rewards greed and disregard for others in a lot of cases. I'd like to see if there're any studies on this actually - surely someone's looked into it in a more rigorous way than we have.

endlessmonotony
Nov 4, 2009

by Fritz the Horse

Ash Crimson posted:

A combination of those I guess

It was a trick question.

The cards have been dealt. I could read them for you. I don't think it'd do much good.

Accept others as they are, and accept yourself as you are, I guess?

Jakabite posted:

I think this is a possibility and probably is the case amongst some. I don't think we can say that with any certainty though, since there's nothing except what we might each consider the human condition to be which specifically rewards cruelty in itself. Whereas we do live in a system that explicitly rewards greed and disregard for others in a lot of cases. I'd like to see if there're any studies on this actually - surely someone's looked into it in a more rigorous way than we have.

People have.

You wouldn't like the answers.

2020 should be a hint though.

Jaeluni Asjil
Apr 18, 2018

Sorry I thought you were a landlord when I gave you your old avatar!


Do people still say pwned? If so, is Kieth pwned here?

Osborne looks like he wet his nappy.

Jaeluni Asjil fucked around with this message at 23:48 on Jan 12, 2021

Microplastics
Jul 6, 2007

:discourse:
It's what's for dinner.

Jaeluni Asjil posted:


Do people still say pwned?

Lol

Jakabite
Jul 31, 2010

endlessmonotony posted:

It was a trick question.

The cards have been dealt. I could read them for you. I don't think it'd do much good.

Accept others as they are, and accept yourself as you are, I guess?


People have.

You wouldn't like the answers.

2020 should be a hint though.

Care to provide some sources, oh wise one? I'd be genuinely interested to read them. Unlike you I don't find having to update my thoughts on things all that distressing.

Endjinneer
Aug 17, 2005
Fallen Rib

OwlFancier posted:

...you may have an internalized belief that a punitive element is the best way to correct aberrant behaviour.
This is a common cognitive bias. The classic example is instructors believing that bollocking trainee pilots for bad landings was more effective than praising them for good landings, not realising that performance tends towards a mean. A poor landing and a bollocking is more likely to be followed by a better performance, whereas a good landing and praise is more likely to be followed by a poorer performance.

If you get a group of people to roll two dice and bollock anyone who scores less than a 6, most of the "poor performers" will score more highly the next round. Without being primed to spot it, most people would take that as vindication of the method.

Ms Adequate
Oct 30, 2011

Baby even when I'm dead and gone
You will always be my only one, my only one
When the night is calling
No matter who I become
You will always be my only one, my only one, my only one
When the night is calling



Endjinneer posted:

This is a common cognitive bias. The classic example is instructors believing that bollocking trainee pilots for bad landings was more effective than praising them for good landings, not realising that performance tends towards a mean. A poor landing and a bollocking is more likely to be followed by a better performance, whereas a good landing and praise is more likely to be followed by a poorer performance.

If you get a group of people to roll two dice and bollock anyone who scores less than a 6, most of the "poor performers" will score more highly the next round. Without being primed to spot it, most people would take that as vindication of the method.

idk I've given my dice enough bollockings over the years to believe they just grow more spiteful and get my PCs killed

OwlFancier
Aug 22, 2013

Jakabite posted:

I think this is a possibility and probably is the case amongst some. I don't think we can say that with any certainty though, since there's nothing except what we might each consider the human condition to be which specifically rewards cruelty in itself.

Think of it this way, people get angry at others, yeah? They often get cruel when they are angry, or at least, they do and say hurtful things.

Do you think, when they do that, that they are actually thinking "I need to do this or my corrective action will not have the desired effect" or do you think they are doing it because at the moment it feels, viscerally, good to do? Do you think the fact that people may experience regret afterwards suggests that one of those explanations is more likely than the other?

Expand that thinking, obviously people can and do engage in politics because they care about the material outcomes, but in the moment of doing things like protests, yelling at liberals on twitter, claiming all your enemies are nazis (whether they are or not doesn't actually matter for the purposes of this argument) do you think it is, again, dispassionate or do you think it is viscerally appealing to do that? Because you feel right and also a very basic form of gratification for doing it?

I think that is an important element and I think that is a very important component in why people perform cruelty. I don't suppose a large portion of the population is what you might call sadistic, but I do think that there are particular cultural... channels, I guess, sort of... grooves in our thinking and social performance, that it is easy for us to enter into and through them, for us to perform cruelty. It is, to a degree, acceptable to yell when we are angry, it was once quite a lot more acceptable than it is for men to hit people when they were angry, or to rely on intimidation as a response to difficulty, it is still a thing that we struggle with as a society.

People may or may not be, as isolated individuals, cruel or kind. But existing in society I don't think it is outlandish to say that people perform cruelty on a semi regular basis, in acceptable ways and against acceptable targets, and that they do it largely because performing it in that way satisfies a visceral need in them. It may be possible to create people who do not experience that need, to fulfil it in other ways, or at the very least to create people who do not feel the impulse to fall into those behavioural grooves, that is the entire basis of cultural attitude changes after all, but still at the moment, I think it is accurate to say that people perform cruelty, are cruel because they enjoy it. They may enjoy it because they are conditioned to enjoy it and only in particular ways, but they still do.

Also I definitely thought the word pwned the other day so I vote yes you can still say it.

CoolCab
Apr 17, 2005

glem

OwlFancier posted:

Alternatively, and critically, it is possible to convince yourself that cruelty is the only way to achieve the desired "good" result, but in fact it could be achieved without it, or even more effectively by another means, and in fact the reason you are engaging in the cruelty is because it feels viscerally satisfying and because you may have an internalized belief that a punitive element is the best way to correct aberrant behaviour.

in context i think i would disagree. there is always a perception that cruelty has to have that sadistic quality, or even that even when it does that is by necessity - let me take a different example.

in my personal role at a staging meeting once, we were coming up against a particularly unpleasant manager - a bully and extremely toxic person. we had literal binders of complaints about this person. fortunately they were also incompetent, and had given us quite a great deal to work with. in this particular scenario we went extremely hard against them - I more or less literally had to go line by line, page by page and pick apart their extremely poor work in front of regional management and human resources. i think this took, goodness, the better part of an hour and i was extremely and very deliberately cruel - polite, civil but unrelenting. i had to be - i was presenting evidence of things like "this person falsified this document" or "this person is attempting to blame their own mismanagment on our member's disability" - and many beyond, horrific, dangerous things. i was through, and i was vicious - by the end of the meeting the manager in question was on the verge of tears in front of their bosses, they would briefly come back to the role they were in at the time - eventually just stopped turning up to work - and was transferred as far away in our organization as was possible, i believe to a non-management role. i saw them several times later incidentally, hallways and such and on the first occasion when they saw me they visibly flinched. and if you are asking if i took a visceral satisfaction from that, you are goddamned right.

does it change the story if i say it was my own staging meeting? does that delegitimize it somehow - does the fact that their bullying behaviour was impacting me personally, quite severely as it so happens, and that i absolutely had a desire for their behaviour to be punitively addressed - make it bad? what alternative action could i have taken - again, i can assure you from a professional perspective that every possible attempt was made to address this behaviour until we had that meeting. should i have sat on my totally justified anger and sought a more decorous or kind solution? and, presumably, lose my job? i think, i am critical of that too.

sometimes we come into conflict, and sometimes in those conflicts we are unkind. you can analyse it further, but i generally stride to be a kind person and as such i do not often need worry about it, to be honest. it is unfortunate but it is also how it is on this beach of an earth. c'est la vie.

CGI Stardust
Nov 7, 2010


Brexit is but a door,
election time is but a window.

I'll be back

Jaeluni Asjil posted:



Do people still say pwned? If so, is Kieth pwned here?

Osborne looks like he wet his nappy.
i have a sneaking suspicion that Keith is levitating, not sure why

CoolCab
Apr 17, 2005

glem
oh, postscript to that story - in one of the documents they had sent they spelled my name wrong once, and you had better believe i used that extremely cuttingly, repeatedly. i had fun with it. it was a good time - it was a real bonding situation with my branch secretary actually, and after that we started working together on more things. my decision to be cruel directly lead me to the path i am on now, strangely.

OwlFancier
Aug 22, 2013

CoolCab posted:

in context i think i would disagree. there is always a perception that cruelty has to have that sadistic quality, or even that even when it does that is by necessity - let me take a different example.

in my personal role at a staging meeting once, we were coming up against a particularly unpleasant manager - a bully and extremely toxic person. we had literal binders of complaints about this person. fortunately they were also incompetent, and had given us quite a great deal to work with. in this particular scenario we went extremely hard against them - I more or less literally had to go line by line, page by page and pick apart their extremely poor work in front of regional management and human resources. i think this took, goodness, the better part of an hour and i was extremely and very deliberately cruel - polite, civil but unrelenting. i had to be - i was presenting evidence of things like "this person falsified this document" or "this person is attempting to blame their own mismanagment on our member's disability" - and many beyond, horrific, dangerous things. i was through, and i was vicious - by the end of the meeting the manager in question was on the verge of tears in front of their bosses, they would briefly come back to the role they were in at the time - eventually just stopped turning up to work - and was transferred as far away in our organization as was possible, i believe to a non-management role. i saw them several times later incidentally, hallways and such and on the first occasion when they saw me they visibly flinched. and if you are asking if i took a visceral satisfaction from that, you are goddamned right.

does it change the story if i say it was my own staging meeting? does that delegitimize it somehow - does the fact that their bullying behaviour was impacting me personally, quite severely as it so happens, and that i absolutely had a desire for their behaviour to be punitively addressed - make it bad? what alternative action could i have taken - again, i can assure you from a professional perspective that every possible attempt was made to address this behaviour until we had that meeting. should i have sat on my totally justified anger and sought a more decorous or kind solution? and, presumably, lose my job? i think, i am critical of that too.

sometimes we come into conflict, and sometimes in those conflicts we are unkind. you can analyse it further, but i generally stride to be a kind person and as such i do not often need worry about it, to be honest. it is unfortunate but it is also how it is on this beach of an earth. c'est la vie.

I would point out that it is possible to have that particular punitive bias, to enjoy indulging it, and to still achieve a better outcome some of the time, or possibly even all of the time if you are lucky and don't indulge it often. But I think that the existence of that bias and our capacity to enjoy indulging it leaves us more prone to interpreting situations as appropriate to indulge, or perhaps utilize it if you find indulge to be an ugly way of putting it.

And that this predisposition is how you get people who are unnecessarily cold and harsh to others, or who are outright abusive without realizing that they are. I don't think that enjoying putting horrible people in their place is a moral failing, to be clear. I just think that enjoying it makes people more prone to interpreting situations such that there is a horrible person who needs to be put in their place. It doesn't mean they will be wrong in that assessment, but it just exists as a quiet, subtle pressure in the back of the thinking process.

OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 00:00 on Jan 13, 2021

Jakabite
Jul 31, 2010

OwlFancier posted:

Think of it this way, people get angry at others, yeah? They often get cruel when they are angry, or at least, they do and say hurtful things.

Do you think, when they do that, that they are actually thinking "I need to do this or my corrective action will not have the desired effect" or do you think they are doing it because at the moment it feels, viscerally, good to do? Do you think the fact that people may experience regret afterwards suggests that one of those explanations is more likely than the other?

Expand that thinking, obviously people can and do engage in politics because they care about the material outcomes, but in the moment of doing things like protests, yelling at liberals on twitter, claiming all your enemies are nazis (whether they are or not doesn't actually matter for the purposes of this argument) do you think it is, again, dispassionate or do you think it is viscerally appealing to do that? Because you feel right and also a very basic form of gratification for doing it?

I think that is an important element and I think that is a very important component in why people perform cruelty. I don't suppose a large portion of the population is what you might call sadistic, but I do think that there are particular cultural... channels, I guess, sort of... grooves in our thinking and social performance, that it is easy for us to enter into and through them, for us to perform cruelty. It is, to a degree, acceptable to yell when we are angry, it was once quite a lot more acceptable than it is for men to hit people when they were angry, or to rely on intimidation as a response to difficulty, it is still a thing that we struggle with as a society.

People may or may not be, as isolated individuals, cruel or kind. But existing in society I don't think it is outlandish to say that people perform cruelty on a semi regular basis, in acceptable ways and against acceptable targets, and that they do it largely because performing it in that way satisfies a visceral need in them. It may be possible to create people who do not experience that need, to fulfil it in other ways, or at the very least to create people who do not feel the impulse to fall into those behavioural grooves, that is the entire basis of cultural attitude changes after all, but still at the moment, I think it is accurate to say that people perform cruelty, are cruel because they enjoy it. They may enjoy it because they are conditioned to enjoy it and only in particular ways, but they still do.

Also I definitely thought the word pwned the other day so I vote yes you can still say it.

This is interesting because I actually agree here. I think that your every day (right wing) person actually gets a lot more visceral pleasure from seeing the cruelty of Tory policies, for example, than your average Tory MP does. I think that in the public psyche, loving over the other side/the undeserving/the immigrants/whoever actually does play a huge part. This emotion is stoked and manipulated by the people with the actual power - but I don't think those people with that power are manipulating that emotion because they feel it too, to any huge degree. It's just useful for them to maintain their power and increase their wealth. But yes, I do think that cruelty is the point to some people - just not the powerful people who actually run things.

Niric
Jul 23, 2008

CGI Stardust posted:

i have a sneaking suspicion that Keith is levitating, not sure why

He isn't, but now you've said it I'm pretty sure he's surrounded by 4 short people who are

CoolCab
Apr 17, 2005

glem

OwlFancier posted:

I would point out that it is possible to have that particular punitive bias, to enjoy indulging it, and to still achieve a better outcome some of the time, or possibly even all of the time if you are lucky and don't indulge it often. But I think that the existence of that bias and our capacity to enjoy indulging it leaves us more prone to interpreting situations as appropriate to indulge, or perhaps utilize it if you find indulge to be an ugly way of putting it.

And that this predisposition is how you get people who are unnecessarily cold and harsh to others, or who are outright abusive without realizing that they are.

we must be extremely selective with our cruelty, there you and i absolutely agree. and i can even see some element of myself in it - i was very unkind to people for a very long time, both consciously and unconsciously, i think most goons can say that without hesitation. i think over time most people start to realize that as they get older their actions have more broad consequences and try to be better and more self actualized people.

but sometimes you need to kick some rear end, sorry bud, it's kinda that simple. i would go into meetings wanting to keep my members in their jobs, their managers want them gone. that is inherently an adversarial relationship even when we paper it over as best we can with formality and niceities. fortunately i didn't often need to apply that particular pressure, but the handful of times i did i would do again, in a heartbeat.

OwlFancier
Aug 22, 2013

I didn't say it wasn't necessary, I'm writing all this as someone who is very aware of their own predisposition towards cruelty and even with that in mind I agree that it is hard to imagine any sucessful effort to change things for the better from our current society that does not find a way to channel performance of anger and desire for reprisal into useful action. Again I stress that enjoying effective corrective action that is also punitive is not wrong. Either morally or practically, I think. But that can be true at the same time as saying that the same enjoyment can and does lead to some very unpleasant behaviours. Humans are not perfect creatures, it is possible for things we do to be both good and dangerous.

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endlessmonotony
Nov 4, 2009

by Fritz the Horse

Jakabite posted:

This is interesting because I actually agree here. I think that your every day (right wing) person actually gets a lot more visceral pleasure from seeing the cruelty of Tory policies, for example, than your average Tory MP does. I think that in the public psyche, loving over the other side/the undeserving/the immigrants/whoever actually does play a huge part. This emotion is stoked and manipulated by the people with the actual power - but I don't think those people with that power are manipulating that emotion because they feel it too, to any huge degree. It's just useful for them to maintain their power and increase their wealth. But yes, I do think that cruelty is the point to some people - just not the powerful people who actually run things.

And now you need to realize those leading the culture are subject to all the same cultural pressures, and you've got a pretty good idea where this thinking went wrong.

The inmates are not only in charge of the asylum - they built the asylum and locked up everyone inside to protect everyone from the inmates.

Also this old witch has learned a thing or two over the years, and keeping my sources close isn't a thing I do. I'd start with studies on priming, human social coordination (or primate, for contrast), disabilities causing specific patterns of behavior... and the split brain experiments, for some extra strength questioning of who's in charge in your head.

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