Coincidentally, I started re-reading Worm about a month ago, and am almost done. I’d forgotten how LONG it is, but I’m pleasantly surprised that it holds up well to a re-read.
I don’t understand the point of this post, though. You seem to be making a claim that some people cause pain to others, intentionally and for no obvious gain. That claim seems so amazingly obvious and uncontroversial that I suspect I’m missing the point. What work is “innately” and “evil” doing in your analysis, and what difference does it make whether someone’s pointlessly cruel or pointedly cruel because they see a benefit in it?
What should I do once I classify an act or person as “evil”? Apparently “wait it out” isn’t something you recommend, but you don’t offer alternatives. Is it even something you have to address, or can you just wait it out on a longer timescale? They probably won’t stop just because you’re stoic, but they’ll stop regardless of anything you do in less than a hundred years, because they and you will be dead.
I think the context is that many people say that there is no such thing as evil and advocate for some actions and against other actions based on that. Just pointing out that they are recommending harmful things is valuable.
Ruling out certain classes of responses is useful even if there is still more than one possibility remaining and it’s still hard to pick the right one.
If someone told you not to use homeopathy to cure disease, would you respond that they haven’t explained how you should cure disease?
People say plenty of crazy bullshit. Simple debunking isn’t all that useful, unless it’s targeted well to the audience in a way that helps them do better. More importantly, you haven’t pointed out any harmful recommendations, only shown that there are ineffective recommendations (and even then, only that it’s ineffective in a narrow sense).
What class of response have you ruled out? “Avoid and ignore” probably is the best plan for a lot of situations, even if it doesn’t actually solve everything.
In point of fact, I don’t worry about whether homeopathy cures diseases that I don’t have alternatives for. If someone tells me it doesn’t cure a disease, and can offer no other options, I’d probably ignore them. For all problems, homeopathy is a better treatment than, say, injecting bleach. For untreatable cancer, it’s exactly as good as anything else. For many diseases, there are better treatments, but if you don’t know that and don’t know how to find it out, it’s not useful to diss the homeopath.
Coincidentally, I started re-reading Worm about a month ago, and am almost done. I’d forgotten how LONG it is, but I’m pleasantly surprised that it holds up well to a re-read.
I don’t understand the point of this post, though. You seem to be making a claim that some people cause pain to others, intentionally and for no obvious gain. That claim seems so amazingly obvious and uncontroversial that I suspect I’m missing the point. What work is “innately” and “evil” doing in your analysis, and what difference does it make whether someone’s pointlessly cruel or pointedly cruel because they see a benefit in it?
What should I do once I classify an act or person as “evil”? Apparently “wait it out” isn’t something you recommend, but you don’t offer alternatives. Is it even something you have to address, or can you just wait it out on a longer timescale? They probably won’t stop just because you’re stoic, but they’ll stop regardless of anything you do in less than a hundred years, because they and you will be dead.
I think the context is that many people say that there is no such thing as evil and advocate for some actions and against other actions based on that. Just pointing out that they are recommending harmful things is valuable.
Ruling out certain classes of responses is useful even if there is still more than one possibility remaining and it’s still hard to pick the right one.
If someone told you not to use homeopathy to cure disease, would you respond that they haven’t explained how you should cure disease?
People say plenty of crazy bullshit. Simple debunking isn’t all that useful, unless it’s targeted well to the audience in a way that helps them do better. More importantly, you haven’t pointed out any harmful recommendations, only shown that there are ineffective recommendations (and even then, only that it’s ineffective in a narrow sense).
What class of response have you ruled out? “Avoid and ignore” probably is the best plan for a lot of situations, even if it doesn’t actually solve everything.
In point of fact, I don’t worry about whether homeopathy cures diseases that I don’t have alternatives for. If someone tells me it doesn’t cure a disease, and can offer no other options, I’d probably ignore them. For all problems, homeopathy is a better treatment than, say, injecting bleach. For untreatable cancer, it’s exactly as good as anything else. For many diseases, there are better treatments, but if you don’t know that and don’t know how to find it out, it’s not useful to diss the homeopath.