> The answer I came up with is that I judge someone as a human being according to how he treats his ingroup. Treating his outgroup, his enemies, decently is more than one can reasonably expect.
> The answer I came up with is that I judge someone as a human being according to how he treats his ingroup. Treating his outgroup, his enemies, decently is more than one can reasonably expect.
Several household servants of Adolf Hitler reported that he was a good, kind, and respectful employer, and had treated them well, while having bad things to say about Himmler and one of the Gs (I forget which). Hitler doesn't seem to have been an asshole to his immediate associates, but "merely" (!) to have been objectively extremely evil. In contrast to, say, the fictional character Xykon from the "Order of the Stick" webcomic, who is both extremely evil, and also a nigh-complete asshole to everyone around him.
I personally wouldn't describe this distinction as "judg[ing] someone as a human being", but it seems like a distinction worth making, albeit perhaps by another name? I think it's an important failing of modern American culture that we conflate the two, because it makes it harder for us to notice when people are being evil, if they have a few redeeming characteristics. After all, Mao was a good poet...
My guess is that being a decent human being, in my sense, makes you more dangerous if you are evil, since it means that the people around you like and trust you. C.S.Lewis makes a related point with regard to the Devil — that if he had no virtues he wouldn't be able to accomplish anything, including anything evil.
I think David hits on the correct distinction, it's about psychological distance. Most people are nice to those who are close to them, but don't care at all about those who are far away. (https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/05/17/newtonian-ethics/) Some people reverse this and are altruistic towards distant others but rude to their personal acquaintances. Others are various combinations of both or neither.
i’d say we have to consider “the German people” his “ingroup”. How did he treat the German people? I seem to recall him asking Speer to burn the whole country to the ground and let everyone die because they failed them, while pussied out and out a bullet in his head when he had run out of child soldiers to help him have one more day of getting high in his bunker.
I think a better example of this phenomenon might be a ghengis Kahn, who did seem to do right by the mongols.
> The answer I came up with is that I judge someone as a human being according to how he treats his ingroup. Treating his outgroup, his enemies, decently is more than one can reasonably expect.
By this definition, Hitler was a decent person.
Several household servants of Adolf Hitler reported that he was a good, kind, and respectful employer, and had treated them well, while having bad things to say about Himmler and one of the Gs (I forget which). Hitler doesn't seem to have been an asshole to his immediate associates, but "merely" (!) to have been objectively extremely evil. In contrast to, say, the fictional character Xykon from the "Order of the Stick" webcomic, who is both extremely evil, and also a nigh-complete asshole to everyone around him.
I personally wouldn't describe this distinction as "judg[ing] someone as a human being", but it seems like a distinction worth making, albeit perhaps by another name? I think it's an important failing of modern American culture that we conflate the two, because it makes it harder for us to notice when people are being evil, if they have a few redeeming characteristics. After all, Mao was a good poet...
My guess is that being a decent human being, in my sense, makes you more dangerous if you are evil, since it means that the people around you like and trust you. C.S.Lewis makes a related point with regard to the Devil — that if he had no virtues he wouldn't be able to accomplish anything, including anything evil.
I think David hits on the correct distinction, it's about psychological distance. Most people are nice to those who are close to them, but don't care at all about those who are far away. (https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/05/17/newtonian-ethics/) Some people reverse this and are altruistic towards distant others but rude to their personal acquaintances. Others are various combinations of both or neither.
False.
i’d say we have to consider “the German people” his “ingroup”. How did he treat the German people? I seem to recall him asking Speer to burn the whole country to the ground and let everyone die because they failed them, while pussied out and out a bullet in his head when he had run out of child soldiers to help him have one more day of getting high in his bunker.
I think a better example of this phenomenon might be a ghengis Kahn, who did seem to do right by the mongols.