The philosophy thread general discussion

@jawal

Agreed. I mean in general terms people act with incomplete information all the time, meaning that sometimes people can do immoral things without necessarily having malice.

No one can be perfectly educated on everything, and well-educated people can receive bad information. While I believe there is a point at which context is less important, for example if you're dealing with a sadistic serial killer, I think it is generally reasonable for context to be taken into account.

Edited by editerguy on Jun 26th 2023 at 2:21:12 AM

That is not what Banality of Evil means though.

Edited by M84 on Jun 26th 2023 at 12:33:39 AM

This topic has just been people using whatever definition of banality of evil they think is the real one.

This is why the topic tends to go in circles and the actual definition of banality of evil has not been disproven.

I was responding to a specific comment rather than debating the topic of 'the banality of evil'.

I believe the conversation branched out towards a broader discussion of evil.

On that topic, yeah I do agree that people who are otherwise good can be convinced to support and do evil actions. That's one of the dangers of the information age.

Fake News is one of the worst problems to happen to democracy, it's this shit that gets decent people worshiping Qanon.

If you are trying to argue that people may do bad shit because they do not know any better…well, yeah.

The telling thing is how they react after being informed of it. A lot of people double down rather than admit they did bad shit. At that point they can’t use ignorance as an excuse anymore. They are acting in bad faith because they do not want to challenge their self image of being a good person.

But again, not banality of evil. That is just an argument that people who know they are doing bad shit can somehow still not be doing it out of evil intentions.

Edit:

There's also an argument to be made that misinformation only works as well as it does because it tells people what they already want to hear. "Poison goes where poison's welcome." Like I said before, a lot of people just need an excuse.

Edited by M84 on Jun 26th 2023 at 1:20:15 AM

I think that @ editerguy was quite clear in their post, that they are not talking about the banality of evil.

They are responding to a post of mine that started with:

I just want to make it very clear that banality of evil and the idea that people can do bad shit out of ignorance are completely different.

I actually agree with the idea that people can do bad shit out of ignorance (at first anyway). What is really informative is how they react after being educated. Do they acknowledge it and try to do better, or do they double down to avoid admitting fault?

Misinformation is dangerous because it enables the latter reaction. A lot of it takes the form of giving people something else to blame for their problems instead of their own shortcomings or shit totally beyond anyone's control.

Edited by M84 on Jun 26th 2023 at 1:33:24 AM

Yeah this is why I steer clear of this topic, because the tropers here just can’t agree on what it means and some have tunnel vision in regards to their specific version of it and keep bringing it up when the other people aren’t interested.

Edited by RedHunter543 on Jun 26th 2023 at 1:35:30 AM

By your definition, Banality of Evil cannot exist even if an example was provided, because if someone does something evil while knowing what they're doing, they must be evil, which kind of is not engaging with the argument presented at all rather than actually posing questions to the model to see if it holds up.

That seems a little too much of just putting out a thought-terminating cliche for my tastes.

(Also it's debatable whether or not "evil" is a useful concept in general but that's not really relevant to my point.)

Edited by Florien on Jun 25th 2023 at 10:38:13 AM

Well, yeah. One of Arendt's colleagues, novelist Mary Mc Carthy, pointed out that Arendt's interpretation of Eichmann could be considered evil in its own right.

"Perhaps I'm dull-witted, but it seems to me that what you are saying is that Eichmann lacks an inherent human quality: the capacity for thought, consciousness—conscience. But then isn't he a monster simply? If you allow him a wicked heart, then you leave him some freedom, which permits our condemnation."

You keep saying that, but... like, who are those people you are talking about? Who tried to "educate them"? How was the "education" done? And how do you know if these people were convinced of the validity of this "education" but continued in their course just For the Evulz?

I am reminded of some extreme religious rhetoric I used to hear when I was a child.

"All the people know in their heart of hearts that our religion is right. Those infidels who denied it, do that out of pride, and so they deserve eternal hell."

And I am like:  "But how can you know what is in their heart of hearts?"

It doesn't have to be anything that extreme. It can be something as minor as someone telling someone else that what they said was racist or something. Some people go "oh shit" and apologize, then stop saying that. Other people double down.

I’m reminded of how people use fictional examples of people acting in certain ways to justify rhetoric, and using those buzzwords like heart of hearts to rile people up into supporting causes.

I would say the notion that people will do evil things in the long term merely because an authority figure told them to is probably incorrect.

There is the Milhouse Experiment, I think it's called. If I understand the experiment correctly, I think it has a problem with its methodology in that the person preforming the experiment isn't necessarily asked to stick around. I'd say it mostly says that a person in a stressful situation will follow orders. I could be wrong about that.

In the case of Nazism, I'd say there's several things that made it possible to go as far as it did. The big thing is that they really didn't want to admit they lost WWI legitimately. This makes crazy conspiracy theories sound a lot more appealing, and so the nation went way down that rabbit hole and went completely insane.

As I said, a lot of people just need an excuse, not orders.

And what can be said about goodness then?

I would argue most people are inclined to goodness.

We even have a trope for that.

If people were inclined towards evil, then institutionalized evils like slavery would not have been abolished.

Edited by RedHunter543 on Jun 26th 2023 at 2:27:53 AM

Rousseau Was Right?

Yeah that’s the one.

As an example, Zendervai pointed out that a lot of people in Germany didn't just give in and cooperate with the Nazis. They didn't roll over and sell out their neighbors to death camps.

Which means the ones who did had no real excuse.

Edited by M84 on Jun 26th 2023 at 2:32:53 AM

I'd say it's a matter of Anthropic Principle and natural selection. The Nazi ideology, for example, drove them to start a war they were completely unequipped to win, leaving behind civilizations that hated their ideology.

Humanity has significant capacity for goodness. Even in WWII, there are plenty moments of soldiers taught to hate each other showing chivalry.

Plus there was the WW 1 Christmas truce.

While i agree that people are inclined towards good (as they would define it), is that a particularly good example, given how long said institution has been, and how said institution had to abolished either through war or replacing it with just as horribly exploitative and abusive systems (quietly replacing slavery with the Indian indentured servitude system that went on for a century or so)

Weren't most Germans quite complicit through either indifference or active support? I heard only a minority were against it and really resisted.

Edited by xyzt on Jun 26th 2023 at 12:19:49 AM

<sigh>

I said a lot of people, not a majority.