Some people just want to see the world burn. This is true and scary and while we play our little game-theory scenarios some bots seems to be intent on just creating chaos.
Just because something is stupid to us, doesn't mean it's not motivated by some reason and/or evilness.
This is an amazing community and the back-and-forth between devs and users is what could save us all and make this great. Please @dantheman, never close down the dialogue.
That's how they'd win.
"Some people just want to see the world burn" and the likely cause of this type of desire, I believe is a deeply ingrained form of malicious self-hate. You can't do stupid and abusive shit to others and entire communities of people if you like yourself. It's just not possible.
@stellabelle I think that's an incorrect insight, but still insightful. There have been many, many experiments that prove that people conform to expectations. Stanford prison experiment and also several involving what could be lethal electric shocks.
It has to my mind, more to do with not feeling any connection to those being harmed. You're not connected, you don't feel their pain therefore your normal self censure is not enough to hold back the impulse to do as you will.
Furthermore psychopaths and sociopaths are literally off the charts in terms of self love and intelligence. Empathy is what they lack
The better question then might be, if you think this place is filling up with those sorts of people, why are they being attracted to this place and how can we incentivize the "right kind" of folks to come here.
It's surely a way to look at it but even so, we can't teach everyone self-love....
@razvanelulmarin The problem could also be a bit too much self love. There is a real sense of entitlement in the world in general right now. Some schools were trying to dumb down STEM topics so that everyone could feel self esteem about being smart in these topics.
School ended up with one of the lowest graduation rates in the country.
sure I failed, but I feel great and love myself and accept myself just as I am
Nah man, real love for ones self needs to come from taking pride in the accomplishments you've made and learning from your failures.
Empathy though, that means you need to care about others, and that's a hard thing to teach. You have to get people to care and to stand by their convictions but to also see and understand the other persons viewpoint, by trying to understand their life. Walk a mile in their shoes and all that Jazz. It's not a hard lesson, but I hear it's something they don't teach in school anymore either.
I understand your point of view but if you don't mind it too much, I think you are wrong on forcing an "=" between self-love and accomplishment.
I say this from my own experience and the experience of others, self love must be given without conditions. Because if you put conditions like...acomplishment right? It's really difficult to be perfectly objective
"i'll love myself when I'll be a doctor." I'm a doctor but..." I'll love myself when i'll help 1000 patients" I did that but...
It's what we call a "mving goalpost" and one can allow this kind of fallacy to be in the way of self love.
Confidence and self esteem should be highly connected with accomplishments, yes.
But even that. It's so weird.
I have this friend..he looks amazing, right? yet , he think he looks average or worse and couldn't talk with a girl if his hair was on fire and she had a bucket of water.
He is also very accomplished in his field, but his self-esteem is as low as anything.
It's very very hard to have the final say on this.
Entitlement thought is not self-love in my opinion. It's an expression of insecurity doubled by a lack of self-awareness.
We can talk forever about this...it's a fascinating topic.
But thanks for being opened. The more reasonable and intelligent voices we can bring here, the more we'll push the level of discourse.
I love that
@razvanelulmarin Tell you what, this is turning into something WAY off topic for this particular topic. Why don't you make a blog post on the topic then come back click my name, find my latest blog and come send me and invite (following doesn't work yet).
I'll come to your blog and we can debate this stuff. I have a ton of things to say, but Dan's blog isn't the place to have that talk. Also we've hit the comment depth limit here.
Also you're very welcome for the civil discourse. I enjoy this too, alot...
Here's a pic of my enjoying my favorite past time...
credit www.xkcd.com/386