
The psychology of hate: How we deny human beings their humanity - yiedyie
http://www.salon.com/2014/03/02/the_psychology_of_hate_how_we_deny_human_beings_their_humanity/
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kingmanaz
While hate can be examined, analysis should also be made of the over-
humanizing of certain peoples while blatantly ignoring others. While the
proverbial fiddle plays during any Shoah reference, hardly anyone notices that
Königsberg is not found on maps anymore and that its people have been
scattered to the winds.

Many people suffer but scant few receive condolences. Rather than being
blinded by preoccupation with historical "recognition" of hate, focus might
instead be placed on justice in one's everyday life.

~~~
Alex3917
Agreed. If anything the rise of megacorporations and ever-more-powerful nation
states necessitates denying the humanity of others on a regular basis.

The classical justification for why lying is unethical is that it deprives
others of their humanity by denying them the chance to make their own
decisions. That raises the question, is it unethical to lie to a machine? If
machines aren't human to begin with, then the traditional ethical prohibitions
against lying don't really hold up. Of course this applies to literal
machines, like when a website asks you if you're 18. But what about machines
that are made up of people? E.g. if the Nazis come to ask you if you have any
jews in your attic, are you ethically obligated to tell the truth if it's
reasonable to assume that what happens from there is determined entirely
programmatically, even if those programs are executed by people? These
questions are especially important given the massive power imbalances between
ordinary people and machines, be they technological, corporate, or political.

I think the lesson for the modern world may be that perhaps we need to teach
our kids both to recognize the humanity of others more, but paradoxically also
to deny the humanity of other more.

~~~
tensor
> That raises the question, is it unethical to lie to a machine?

This is a fascinating question. I suppose many people would say that it is ok
to lie to a machine because it is not sentient. Putting aside the possibility
of sentient machines, someone still programmed the machine to ask the
question. So by lying to the machine are you not lying to the person who
programmed it?

~~~
Alex3917
> So by lying to the machine are you not lying to the person who programmed
> it?

Sure. And this is a problem that has many layers of depth to it, each with
many interesting ethical questions waiting to be explored. It would probably
make a really good book for someone who wants to make a name for themselves in
philosophy.

At the most basic (simplistic?) level though, the reason software exists is to
create a mapping such that every valid set of unique inputs always produces
the same output. The question is, does the programmer sacrifice their humanity
in doing so?

The way a human makes decisions is by looking at all the relevant facts, and
then making the best decision in each case based on the information available.
Software differs from this in that:

\- You make a single decision, in advance, rather than a new decision for each
case.

\- This decision is only based on what you thought would be important at the
time the decision was made, without taking into account the unique situational
factors 'at run time'.

\- You know in advance that there are going to be both false positives and
false negatives, and determine the acceptable rate of each based on the
economics of making hundreds or millions of these decisions in aggregate. Of
course you also make mistakes when making one off decisions also, so the error
rate of software can either be higher or lower than with human decision
making. But even if the error rate is lower, the sorts of mistakes that are
made aren't necessarily the same.

\- The assumptions made by any given algorithm may become increasingly
outdated over time, and often stick around long after any given individual
would have stopped making the same decisions.

There are more differences obviously. And of course there are different types
of software; lying to someone over a phone on the basis that there is some
software converting the conversation from analog to digital and back again is
probably different than telling some porn site you're 18. But overall I do
believe that this may be one of the most important ethical issues of our time
in the coming century.

------
rgrieselhuber
This reminds of a TED talk about the expansion of empathy throughout history
and how the reduction in mass cruelty over the centuries correlates directly
with our ability as humans to include others (other villages, cities, states,
nations, ethnicities, religions) in the same sphere as themselves and are thus
able to empathize.

~~~
Natsu
I wonder about that. If anything, it seems more like we've been quite
destructive this past 100 years, from Hitler to the Stalinist purges. I'd love
to claim there's some modern age of enlightenment, but the fact that there are
significant conflicts every few years makes me question that.

~~~
wikiburner
Here's the talk referenced by WalterSear - The Surprising Decline in Violence:

[http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_on_the_myth_of_violen...](http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_on_the_myth_of_violence.html)

Seems pretty persuasive.

~~~
Natsu
Seems like a problem of measurement. Do we care about how many suffer or what
percentage of the world population they represent?

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christkv
If you are interested in history you might be interested in

[http://www.dancarlin.com/disp.php/hh](http://www.dancarlin.com/disp.php/hh)

He's got some very good audio episodes on ww1, ww2, the mongols. He gives a
very good telling of the horrors of the conflicts and the passions that drove
the wave of murders.

~~~
dominotw
Just keep in mind that he gets away with lots of egregious mistakes about
history in his podcasts by saying that he is not a historian but just an
entertainer.

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stcredzero
_This lesser minds effect has many manifestations, including what appears to
be a universal tendency to assume that others’ minds are less sophisticated
and more superficial than one’s own._

A lot of the stuff in this article runs rampant in various forums on the
Internet and especially in interactions between programmers.

~~~
Dewie
I think a simpler theory is that a lot of people in Internet societies like
forums want to appear to be right above all else, even though they might
intellectually realize that their "opponents" arguments are more solid.

But maybe that's just my own projection.

------
altero
Why go so far? 1% of Americans are in prison or some form of detention. But
yeah, they do no count.

