"Suppose, for example, that a major celebrity is extremely emotionally abusive to all his subordinates. He screams at them all the time. He calls them the cruelest names he can devise. He habitually makes impossible demands. He threatens to fire them out of sheer sadistic pleasure. But the abuse is never sexual (or ethnic); the celebrity limits himself to attacking subordinates’ intelligence, character, pride, and hope for the future. I daresay the average employee would far prefer to work for a boss who occasionally pressured them for a date. But if the tabloids ran a negative profile on the Asexual Boss from Hell, the public wouldn’t get very mad and Hollywood almost certainly wouldn’t ostracize the offender."
This aged well.
See: Ellen DeGeneres and Julie Payette, for example.
I think genocides committed against other ethnic groups are generally deplored to the same degree. What is odd is that mass murders that are not ethnically motivated are generally subject to less deploring. This is probably an artifact of how, after WWII, they wanted to condemn Hitler but not Stalin.
I think that your ranking of the seriousness of various offenses is correct in terms if actual harm inflicted. For some reason, people deplore sex crimes more than other crimes. Note that there are special registries for sex offenders but not other crimes. I regard this as a hangup of modern western cultures. One finds totally different standards in other cultures and times.
Sorry, John Johnson, I think that threaded with your comment, so looks like it's addressed to you. It isn't. It's addressed to Caplan, but my phone won't let me cut or edit it.
"While I suspect they could markedly improve their outlook if they wanted to, they don’t want to. Pride, I guess."
I think you it would be good for you to read something in psychology besides one 60+ year old work if you want to make claims about human psychology.
You're in the position of a psychologist who reads just one dated book in economics - say Galbraith's The Affluent Soviet - and presumes to comment on economics.
I would imagine the second reason dominates the first, unless it's a materially relevant personal offense.
I would go further to say it is probably useful on a species scale that we can use these natural Schelling points to coordinate and gauge group consensus, though this instinct becomes severely maladaptive, as Hanson talks about, in the context of modern technology.
"Suppose, for example, that a major celebrity is extremely emotionally abusive to all his subordinates. He screams at them all the time. He calls them the cruelest names he can devise. He habitually makes impossible demands. He threatens to fire them out of sheer sadistic pleasure. But the abuse is never sexual (or ethnic); the celebrity limits himself to attacking subordinates’ intelligence, character, pride, and hope for the future. I daresay the average employee would far prefer to work for a boss who occasionally pressured them for a date. But if the tabloids ran a negative profile on the Asexual Boss from Hell, the public wouldn’t get very mad and Hollywood almost certainly wouldn’t ostracize the offender."
This aged well.
See: Ellen DeGeneres and Julie Payette, for example.
Genociding Jews - JEWS! - by poisoning them in gas chambers. In concentration camps!
MILLIONS of them (pick a number)!
During WHAT war?
I think genocides committed against other ethnic groups are generally deplored to the same degree. What is odd is that mass murders that are not ethnically motivated are generally subject to less deploring. This is probably an artifact of how, after WWII, they wanted to condemn Hitler but not Stalin.
I think that your ranking of the seriousness of various offenses is correct in terms if actual harm inflicted. For some reason, people deplore sex crimes more than other crimes. Note that there are special registries for sex offenders but not other crimes. I regard this as a hangup of modern western cultures. One finds totally different standards in other cultures and times.
Sorry, John Johnson, I think that threaded with your comment, so looks like it's addressed to you. It isn't. It's addressed to Caplan, but my phone won't let me cut or edit it.
No worry, James.
"While I suspect they could markedly improve their outlook if they wanted to, they don’t want to. Pride, I guess."
I think you it would be good for you to read something in psychology besides one 60+ year old work if you want to make claims about human psychology.
You're in the position of a psychologist who reads just one dated book in economics - say Galbraith's The Affluent Soviet - and presumes to comment on economics.
I would imagine the second reason dominates the first, unless it's a materially relevant personal offense.
I would go further to say it is probably useful on a species scale that we can use these natural Schelling points to coordinate and gauge group consensus, though this instinct becomes severely maladaptive, as Hanson talks about, in the context of modern technology.