To be the devil’s advocate (and also try to clarify my own confusions about this argument, even though I agree with it)...
Rather, it’s because I think the empirical consequences of deception, violence, criminal activity, and other norm violations are often (not always) quite bad, and people aren’t smart or wise enough to tell the exceptions apart from the general case, especially when they’re ideologically and emotionally compromised, as is often the case.
Why expect that the anti-social activity you’re hearing about is a representative sample of the anti-social activity that occurs? In particular, if you are committing an anti-social act which everybody knows about, then of course it will turn out badly for you & your goals, since people will punish you. Moreover, if we are hearing about some anti-social action, we know that something has gone wrong in the evil-doer’s plans, and therefore we ought to expect that many other things have also gone wrong, so the two observations (noting the anti-social action and noting the results did not go according to plan) are not independent.
I’m also pretty suspicious that a lot of the history we have, especially narrative history, has been spun or filtered as a way to argue for virtues and vices chosen largely independently of that history. That is, lots of history seems to be morality tales, especially history which is very memetically fit & salient.
It also seems relevant to note that if we look at the people (and organizations) currently with a lot of power, or who otherwise seem to be accomplishing many of their goals, they do not seem like they got that power by always telling the truth, never disobeying any laws, and always following strict Kantian deontology.
I find the above argument unconvincing, however I don’t think I could convincingly argue against it to someone who did find it convincing.
Thanks, this is a helpful point! The second one has been on my mind re: assassinations, and is implicitly part of my model for uncertainty about assassination effectiveness (I still think my original belief is largely correct, but I can’t rule out psy ops)
To be the devil’s advocate (and also try to clarify my own confusions about this argument, even though I agree with it)...
Why expect that the anti-social activity you’re hearing about is a representative sample of the anti-social activity that occurs? In particular, if you are committing an anti-social act which everybody knows about, then of course it will turn out badly for you & your goals, since people will punish you. Moreover, if we are hearing about some anti-social action, we know that something has gone wrong in the evil-doer’s plans, and therefore we ought to expect that many other things have also gone wrong, so the two observations (noting the anti-social action and noting the results did not go according to plan) are not independent.
I’m also pretty suspicious that a lot of the history we have, especially narrative history, has been spun or filtered as a way to argue for virtues and vices chosen largely independently of that history. That is, lots of history seems to be morality tales, especially history which is very memetically fit & salient.
It also seems relevant to note that if we look at the people (and organizations) currently with a lot of power, or who otherwise seem to be accomplishing many of their goals, they do not seem like they got that power by always telling the truth, never disobeying any laws, and always following strict Kantian deontology.
I find the above argument unconvincing, however I don’t think I could convincingly argue against it to someone who did find it convincing.
Thanks, this is a helpful point! The second one has been on my mind re: assassinations, and is implicitly part of my model for uncertainty about assassination effectiveness (I still think my original belief is largely correct, but I can’t rule out psy ops)