A man who studies everyday evil

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150130-the-man-who-studies-evil

by d_a_robson • 11 years ago

89 27 11 years ago

bbc.com

kelukelugames• 11 years ago

"The man who..." is beginning to sound like catchy clickbait titles.

monksy• 11 years ago

The BBC has a lot of documentaries that fix that title.

savanaly• 11 years ago

Seems accurate in this case, no? The title sets you up to expect to read a profile of an individual doing some interesting research, and that's pretty much exactly what we got.

praptak• 11 years ago

"even Mother Theresa apparently had a steely side"

Even? http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_wor...

ytturbed3• 11 years ago

Yeah. Another questionable assumption:

If you had the opportunity to feed harmless bugs into a coffee grinder, would you enjoy the experience? Even if the bugs had names, and you could hear their shells painfully crunching?

No doubt their nervous systems transmit pain signals but whether bugs experience suffering seems like an open question to me.

girvo• 11 years ago

I rationally know that, but I can't bring myself to wilfully destroy life, even that of an insect, with the sole exception of if something is dangerous. So I can totally understand the reactions of those who don't have a high "everyday sadism" score.

eli_gottlieb• 11 years ago

Ummm... irrespective of whether they experience suffering in any phenomenological sense, what's the actual point supposed to be in feeding bugs through a coffee grinder? It seems as if you could only really enjoy the act if you enjoyed the prospect of making something else suffer.

dmm• 11 years ago

No doubt their nervous systems transmit pain signals

Why are you so certain? There seems to be plenty of debate on the issue: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pain_in_invertebrates .

Mz3• 11 years ago

It's too bad the article did not put more emphasis on this perspective:

All of which underlines the false dichotomy of good and evil that Paulhus has been keen to probe.

For example, surgeons tend to lack empathy. People who are too empathetic would have a hard time cutting into someone. They would be too squeamish.

Soldiers are also a necessary and important role in the world where the work isn't "nice" in nature.

trhway• 11 years ago

For example, surgeons tend to lack empathy. People who are too empathetic would have a hard time cutting into someone. They would be too squeamish.

lacking and having control over are 2 different things. Former makes a psychopath, latter - a good surgeon.

Mz3• 11 years ago

My understanding is that doctors tend to lack empathy, not control it. A quick google brings up this article which agrees with that understanding: http://news.legalexaminer.com/study-finds-doctors-lack-empat...

Your suggestion simply does not fit with anything I have ever seen or heard. I would be happy to see data suggesting that your idea is true instead. Care to cite a source?

kleer001• 11 years ago

Apparently you haven't read "The Wisdom of Psychopaths" s'good book

Retra• 11 years ago

There's nothing inherently wrong with being a psychopath. The problem is that they tend to be extremely manipulative and selfish. Of course, if someone identifies "self" with some larger social project or humanistic goal, then manipulating people into achieving this goal can be an incredibly valuable skill.

Perceval• 11 years ago

Isaiah Berlin, "A Special Supplement: The Question of Machiavelli" (1971) http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1971/nov/04/a-speci...

If you object to the political methods recommended because they seem to you morally detestable, if you refuse to embark upon them because they are, to use Ritter’s word, erschreckend, too frightening, Machiavelli has no answer, no argument. In that case you are perfectly entitled to lead a morally good life, be a private citizen (or a monk), seek some corner of your own. But, in that event, you must not make yourself responsible for the lives of others or expect good fortune; in a material sense you must expect to be ignored or destroyed.
In other words you can opt out of the public world, but in that case he has nothing to say to you, for it is to the public world and to the men in it that he addresses himself.
Once you embark on a plan for the transformation of a society you must carry it through no matter at what cost: to fumble, to retreat, to be overcome by scruples is to betray your chosen cause. To be a physician is to be a professional, ready to burn, to cauterize, to amputate; if that is what the disease requires, then to stop halfway because of personal qualms, or some rule unrelated to your art and its technique, is a sign of muddle and weakness, and will always give you the worst of both worlds. And there are at least two worlds: each of them has much, indeed everything, to be said for it; but they are two and not one. One must learn to choose between them and, having chosen, not look back.
There is more than one world, and more than one set of virtues: confusion between them is disastrous. One of the chief illusions caused by ignoring this is the Platonic-Hebraic-Christian view that virtuous rulers create virtuous men. This, according to Machiavelli, is not true. Generosity is a virtue, but not in princes. A generous prince will ruin the citizens by taxing them too heavily, a mean prince (and Machiavelli does not say that meanness is a good quality in private men) will save the purses of the citizens and so add to public welfare. A kind ruler—and kindness is a virtue—may let intriguers and stronger characters dominate him, and so cause chaos and corruption.

tjradcliffe2• 11 years ago

The American psychologist Roy Baumeister has a very good book on evil: http://www.amazon.com/Evil-Inside-Human-Violence-Cruelty/dp/...

My review of it can be found here: http://www.tjradcliffe.com/?p=1605

Short version: Baumesiter focuses on data, not imaginary scenarios, which he correctly identifies as profoundly misleading (which should be no surprise to anyone paying attention to the past 300 years of scientific history, which has basically been a monotonous repetition of "Your imagination is a terrible tool for knowing reality"). He defines and rejects the imaginary "myth of pure evil" and investigates empirically what causes evil and how it works in the real--not the imaginary--world.

The causes he identifies are fragile egotism, material gain, utopian idealism, and sadism (the last is the least, accounting for perhaps 5% of evil acts.) He backs his claims with data, not imagination, and anyone arguing against him must bring far more than "it just makes sense to me" as a counter.

I can't recommend this book enough. Is it the last word on the subject? Of course not: it is science, and therefore open-ended. But it is so much better than almost anything else you will read on evil that complaining about its shortcomings looks silly. It is certainly vastly better than the purely imaginary accounts of evil found in the Bible or the Quran or "A Treatise on Human Nature", to the extent that they are incidently but convincingly shown to be completely irrelevant as practical guides to human behaviour.

joelthelion• 11 years ago

This is very important research. Consistently ignoring our dark side is bringing us nowhere.

harkyns_castle• 11 years ago

What a waste of peoples LCD's. Such a load of crap I haven't read in a while.

A man who studies everyday evil

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