The set of comments to this post are what I consider another example of the relative social(?) weaknesses the typical population of Less Wrong has compared to the general population.
If this question was asked of a college humanities class, a subset of the answers would be much better than these and the class as a whole would be better at identifying the answers that are more correct.
There are some answers below that are fine, but they’re not said with enough confidence, and the ‘ev psych’ answers are not reliable. Not because ev psych can’t hit upon an answer that might be correct, but because it seems that those that rely on them are not able to compare the hypothesis with a lifetime of experience for general plausibility. [On second thought, I retract this last comment to the extent people were explaining petty malice, which was indeed the first and main question of the initial post, rather than abuse of dependents. The difference being the extent to which there is absent verses perverted empathy.] I still think the answers would be better if we quizzed a random population of college students—the academic setting just to avoid answers like ‘people are evil’.
I don’t respond to this question because formulating any kind of reductionist answer frames my perspective in a way that is unsettling. However, I’d be happy to identify a more correct answer when I see it. Psychology, generally, is the aspect of science where we’ve made the least progress with respect to reductionist explanations.
Does anyone have a college humanities class that we can ask? I’m betting we would get some replies to the effect that “people are evil”, but I’d be interested in whether the average is generally better.
The set of comments to this post are what I consider another example of the relative social(?) weaknesses the typical population of Less Wrong has compared to the general population.
If this question was asked of a college humanities class, a subset of the answers would be much better than these and the class as a whole would be better at identifying the answers that are more correct.
There are some answers below that are fine, but they’re not said with enough confidence, and the ‘ev psych’ answers are not reliable. Not because ev psych can’t hit upon an answer that might be correct, but because it seems that those that rely on them are not able to compare the hypothesis with a lifetime of experience for general plausibility. [On second thought, I retract this last comment to the extent people were explaining petty malice, which was indeed the first and main question of the initial post, rather than abuse of dependents. The difference being the extent to which there is absent verses perverted empathy.] I still think the answers would be better if we quizzed a random population of college students—the academic setting just to avoid answers like ‘people are evil’.
I don’t respond to this question because formulating any kind of reductionist answer frames my perspective in a way that is unsettling. However, I’d be happy to identify a more correct answer when I see it. Psychology, generally, is the aspect of science where we’ve made the least progress with respect to reductionist explanations.
Does anyone have a college humanities class that we can ask? I’m betting we would get some replies to the effect that “people are evil”, but I’d be interested in whether the average is generally better.