The Obama Faction

[Brian Shanahan]

But I'd love to know how "I acknowledge that the other side want the best for the country, but I disagree with how they want to do it" became "I disagree with the other side because they are evil"...

Maybe because the first quote was nothing more than a polite fiction, and the people (on both sides, in case anyone's wondering I'm a deep shade of pink {in the European sense}) who have changed their tune did so because now the gloves are off.

The alternative explanation is that both sides are so close policy wise that you couldn't slip a Rizla paper through their differences. Battles between ideological bedmates tend to be the most nasty.

[Viqsi]

The alternative explanation is that both sides are so close policy wise that you couldn't slip a Rizla paper through their differences. Battles between ideological bedmates tend to be the most nasty.

"The only people we hate more than the Romans are the ****ing Judean People's Front!"

[BRickAstley]

But I'd love to know how "I acknowledge that the other side want the best for the country, but I disagree with how they want to do it" became "I disagree with the other side because they are evil"...

http://lesswrong.com/lw/i0/are_your_enem...tely_evil/

Just saw this & want to also state that I like that article.

[Yell0w]

Ahh elections... what did you vote? Did you lose too?

What if I don't want a leader? Where does that vote go? I do good on my own. I don't want to be led.

[darrelljs]

That is a good article, thanks. Its a very nice, if useless, perspective. Evil is and will always be in the eye of the beholder(s). I don't really care if Mohamad Atta thought he was a hero or performing a heroic act. Its meaningless (and rather obvious) that a different environment could have given him a value system in line with mine. He committed an atrocity, ergo he's evil. There's no need to stipulate he's "evil from my perspective", its implicit. Society codifies the relative concept of evil with the absolute concept of law. Acts become illegal when sufficient societal mass exists to consider it evil, or at the least immoral. When people say the terrorists were evil, or that they hate freedom, they are neither ignorant nor stupid. They are simply applying their frame of reference, shaped by the society they are part of, to interpret the event. Entirely appropriate .

Darrell

[novice]

That is a good article, thanks. Its a very nice, if useless, perspective. Evil is and will always be in the eye of the beholder(s). I don't really care if Mohamad Atta thought he was a hero or performing a heroic act. Its meaningless (and rather obvious) that a different environment could have given him a value system in line with mine. He committed an atrocity, ergo he's evil. There's no need to stipulate he's "evil from my perspective", its implicit. Society codifies the relative concept of evil with the absolute concept of law. Acts become illegal when sufficient societal mass exists to consider it evil, or at the least immoral. When people say the terrorists were evil, or that they hate freedom, they are neither ignorant nor stupid. They are simply applying their frame of reference, shaped by the society they are part of, to interpret the event. Entirely appropriate .

Darrell

The problem with labelling something as inherently evil is that you obfuscate the mechanisms behind it. It's an unhelpful abstraction. You can't fight terrorism by assuming that terrorists are driven by evilness. Faulty assumptions about how the world works leads to faulty actions, cf. trying to cure illness by bloodletting.

[Ichabod]

The funny thing is that we see this "Correspondence Bias" happening a lot in the Spoiler Threads of our civ games here.

[darrelljs]

I didn't say they were driven by evilness, I said they were evil...that's an important distinction . If we consider terrorists evil, then we must ask ourselves a) can we redeem the already evil, and b) can we prevent the genesis of new evil? My own opinion is that the answer to a) is "no", and we are therefore better off allocating our limited resources to finding and catching the terrorists before they can commit another atrocity. I find b) a more interesting question. The whole "winning hearts and minds" strategy is noble, but apparently ineffective (or at least insufficient). Its worthwhile to examine our actions in the region in search of a permanent solution. Based on my limited understanding of what it would take to placate the terrorists, I have little hope .

Darrell

[KingOfPain]

You can't fight terrorism by assuming that terrorists are driven by evilness.

We can start by stop calling them "terrorists", try using whatever term they call themselves to begin with. Then we can begin to understand who they are and what "the problem" is.

[darrelljs]

We can start by stop calling them "terrorists", try using whatever term they call themselves to begin with. Then we can begin to understand who they are and what "the problem" is.

And if rapists want to be called "liberators of unfertilized eggs"?

Darrell