Is a sociopathic intelligent individual deliberately doing humanity harm a greater risk than a reasonable and sincere intelligent individual making a terrible mistake, or an organisation of reasonable and sincere intelligent individuals making a terrible mistake? The population of the last two groups is much larger than of the first group.
Don’t forget the power of sincerity combined with stupidity. Hitler was ridiculously incompetent—e.g., setting his organisations at each other’s throats in wartime? - and World War II only went as well as it did for him because he had excellent generals. Mao was a successful revolutionary, an inspiring leader and relentlessly terrible at actually running a country—his successors carefully backed out of most of his ideas even while maintaining his personality cult. Stalin was, I suggest, less existentially dangerous because he cared about maintaining power more than about perpetuating an ideology per se.
The danger Tim describes is one of stupid politicians with reasonable power bases doing dangerous things with great sincerity—not a wish to burn everything down.
Evil individuals are rare, but are sometimes highly destructive—e.g. Hitler, Stalin, Mao.
This suggests a kind of Black Swan effect: truly evil people are rare, but their impact is disproportionately large.
This can cause a subtle form of bias. Most people never meet an evil person (or don’t realize it if they do) so it is hard for them to truly understand or visualize what evil is. They might believe in evil in some abstract sense, but it remains a theoretical concept detached from any personal experience, like black holes or the ozone layer.
Is a sociopathic intelligent individual deliberately doing humanity harm a greater risk than a reasonable and sincere intelligent individual making a terrible mistake, or an organisation of reasonable and sincere intelligent individuals making a terrible mistake? The population of the last two groups is much larger than of the first group.
Mistakes are small but numerous—e.g. car accidents.
Evil individuals are rare, but are sometimes highly destructive—e.g. Hitler, Stalin, Mao.
Humanity as a whole probably has more to fear from the latter category.
Hitler, Stalin, and Mao aren’t just evil individuals. Somehow they are connected to a strucutre, a society, that enabled the evil.
Don’t forget the power of sincerity combined with stupidity. Hitler was ridiculously incompetent—e.g., setting his organisations at each other’s throats in wartime? - and World War II only went as well as it did for him because he had excellent generals. Mao was a successful revolutionary, an inspiring leader and relentlessly terrible at actually running a country—his successors carefully backed out of most of his ideas even while maintaining his personality cult. Stalin was, I suggest, less existentially dangerous because he cared about maintaining power more than about perpetuating an ideology per se.
The danger Tim describes is one of stupid politicians with reasonable power bases doing dangerous things with great sincerity—not a wish to burn everything down.
This suggests a kind of Black Swan effect: truly evil people are rare, but their impact is disproportionately large.
This can cause a subtle form of bias. Most people never meet an evil person (or don’t realize it if they do) so it is hard for them to truly understand or visualize what evil is. They might believe in evil in some abstract sense, but it remains a theoretical concept detached from any personal experience, like black holes or the ozone layer.