Most violence in the world is motivated by moral sentiments - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/566579/most-violence-in-the-world-is-motivated-by-personal-morality <comment><USER3> One of the most perennially popular courses at my alma mater was entitled "Murder". It was an exploration of the moral justification behind state- sponsored violence, from capital punishment to war to genocide.

The realization that most violence is morally motivated comes with interesting quandaries when you consider what the response to such violence should be. Say that society successfully develops the norm that violence is never acceptable. What do you do with people who do not agree with this norm? Are you justified in using force against them? Does the state ever have a right to put people to death for what they believe, even if what they believe is that large classes of people deserve to die? What if it's just the _threat_ that someone may wish to do another harm? Are police officers justified in shooting a suspect if it _appears_ that he _might_ have a gun and is reaching for it?

There are also interesting questions about whether you should respect moral norms that are part of your moral code but not part of anothers'. For example, many Native American tribes did not believe in property rights, instead believing that the land and everything grown from it was communal property for the benefit of all; European settlers took this to mean that it was all theirs for the taking. Several of Ayn Rand's books extoll the virtue of selfishness, holding that the only bounds to your conduct should be freely agreed-upon contracts with others: knowing that other people do _not_ hold to this moral code, is it moral to behave selfishly to them until they explicitly defend their rights, or do you have an obligation to consider what's commonly held to be moral amongst people unlike yourself when dealing with them?

There are plenty of implications for startups too, many of whom would not exist without a different conception of social norms than mainstream society.

<comment><USER4> > What do you do with people who do not agree with this norm? Are you > justified in using force against them?

Annoyingly enough, the Quakers -- despite being doctrinaire pacifists in all other areas -- answered this question with a resounding "yes". Flogging, stocks, and various other brutalities (I don't remember if they used capital punishment, but I think they did) were routine in colonial Pennsylvania...

<comment><USER5> Quaker here. I can't speak for Pennsylvanian quakers two centuries ago, but I'm very surprised to hear about stocks and flogging in a Quaker context. To be clear, Quakers renounce all violence, including against those who perpetrate it.

The central tenet of our faith is that there is that of god in every person, so it follows directly that violence against any person is violence against god, and therefore unacceptable. Quakers have put their money and actions where their mouth is - they have always rejected capital punishment, and have been very active in prison reform since the 1800s. They set up the Friend's Ambulance Unit so they could serve during the Second World War. Quakers also recognise that there are many forms of violence, and sponsor the Alternatives to Violence Program (AVP) training for schoolkids.

To get back to the original question about dealing with violent people, of course you need to use force against them, to prevent them doing more violence. But that force should be as non-violent as possible, to make it clear that society's norms are intact. Norway's treatment of Anders Breivik is inspirational - it is clear that his incarceration is in no way violent - there is no element of revenge, much to many people's fury. But imagine a Breivik sympathiser - seeing a civilised society treating him in a civilised way leaves very little to spur them on to similar acts.

And what about Daesh? They have successfully used resentment against the violence done to muslims to build a society where violence is the norm. This is not sustainable - it won't be long before the flood of recruits reverses, as they discover what arbitrary violence means to them and their loved ones.

<comment><USER4> I'd certainly agree that the use of violence should be minimal, and should contain no element of vengefulness; but I'd say that preaching full nonviolence almost necessarily ends in either hypocrisy or persecution.

My reference for colonial Pennsylvania is _Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America_, by David Hackett Fisher. Pennsylvania was a remarkable place, with a lot of very impressive accomplishments. Fisher is full of praise for their Old World-quality infrastructure, much of which is still in use today; he also points out their peaceful coexistence with the American Indians, their roughly equal rights for women, and their rehabilitative prisons, concern for animal welfare, and interest in vegetarianism. But there's also how they refused to bear arms and expected the British military to protect them -- and how they enforced sumptuary laws and the like with corporal punishments, and drove off the Scotch-Irish as being just this side of subhuman.

Admittedly, one could make a very strong case that the Scotch-Irish really were just this side of subhuman. They were lawless, xenophobic, and economically improvident, as well as scornful of the laws and customs of war; they committed savage atrocities in just about every war they engaged in, and were more or less responsible for the Indian Wars, the Mexican War, and the lawlessness of the Wild West. Andrew Jackson, who ethnically cleansed the Cherokees and the other Five Civilized Tribes, is still regarded as a hero in Appalachia today, and his atrocities are either brushed off or openly celebrated.

A large and politically powerful Scotch-Irish population would have poisoned Pennsylvania; the Quakers had the choice between self-destruction and rejection of their principles. They chose to reject their principles -- and then they kept preaching them, completely unmodified, as if they'd never rejected them at all.

I'm Catholic, so it's not surprising that I'd say this, but I'd say that Catholic social doctrine -- with its strict criteria for just wars, and various prescriptions for government and suppression of crime -- is a better choice than denying the necessity of violence and then having to improvise a solution when violence turns out necessary anyways.

<comment><USER6> I think that you (or your source) are reading too much into the actions of Quakers in Pennsylvania. Quakers like all people are fallible, and Quakerism especially embraces the idea of continuing revelation and moving beyond previous barbarisms. There were early Quakers who did own slaves for example. While there were actions that us modern Quakers would not condone, I don't know of any interpretations of history (other than perhaps the book you cite, which I admittedly have not read) that indicate that the Quakers of Pennsylvania engaged in some kind of barbaric war with the Scotch-Irish. While they still wielded considerable power they were never the only residents of the colony and it by-and-large still followed the norms of the day. Quakers were proponents of (what were thought to be at the time) humane punishments such as solitary confinement. I'm not going to condemn the idea of pacifism due to the fact that we were unable to obtain complete purity of fact two hundred years ago in an entirely different society.

<comment><USER4> Again, I would just say, read _Albion's Seed_ -- with a close eye on its sources, of course.

I certainly do condemn pacifism, because it doesn't work; but at the same time, I'm pretty thoroughly impressed with most of the Quakers' accomplishments, and I certainly accept the importance of using minimal force and humane policies.

I should also add that I was too hard on the Scotch-Irish in my previous post. _Albion's Seed_ discusses the conditions that shaped them: for 500 years, from the foundation of Scotland to Prince Charlie's rising, every king of England except three invaded Scotland, was invaded by the Scots, or both; and in every one of these invasions, the Scotch-Irish bore the brunt of it.

<comment><USER4> _And_ I was too hard on the Scotch-Irish in my retraction. I like them, at least in Appalachia as it was not too long ago; Appalachia is the only Old World society in the United States, with the possible exception of the Mormons. (What do I mean by Old World? It would take a long while to explain...)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I find that the most anti-intellectualism, cheap-shot emotional abuse, and stereotyping on the Internet is motivated by moral sentiments through online pseudo "activists" who are really working out their anger and self-esteem issues under the supposed imprimatur of one cause or another. This goes for select subsets of both ends of the political spectrum, and select subgroups on both sides of any hot-button issue.

Attention is the currency of the Internet, and outrage is the easiest way to get it. Underlying most forms of injustice, especially systemic injustice, is the psychology of "othering." Any group that says it is furthering a cause of justice, but which does not go to careful lengths to check the natural tendency of groups to out-group outsiders, is a corrupt doppleganger, buying online social currency with the coin of outrage. Such groups do not heal society, but harm it, regardless of the ideology or cause they espouse.

There is no major cause which is free of such intellectually malformed pseudo- activisism. Neither are there any significant causes that are entirely formed of such. Calling out such _hateivism_ should not be seen as taking or opposing a particular side. Activism worthy of the name should fight such _hateivism_ done in its name. Those who would knowingly exploit such tendencies for more social currency and expanded membership are not worthy of the name activism.

<comment><USER8> > This goes for select subsets of both ends of the political spectrum, and > select subgroups on both sides of any hot-button issue.

This is fucking garbage. It's garbage because the status quo isn't neutral, the status quo isn't necessarily just, and actually, the status quo is upheld with lots and lots of violence that isn't considered controversial.

For example, France is clamping down really hard on civil liberties and the UK just authorized bombing Syria because it thinks its righteous violence will cleanse the Earth of Daesh and the status quo moral framework of the West exculpates them of every civilian murder they commit. The moral framework of the West allows the most powerful nations on Earth to escalate to untold levels of violence over sporadic attacks that quite unfortunately kill dozens of people; then they retaliate destabilizing entire countries, uprooting the lives of millions, and causing thousands and thousands of direct casualties from their ordnance.

The point is that it's a massive, massive joke for anyone to distinguish themself from this group of people who engage in 'intellectually malformed pseudo-activism' because there are no apolitical stances and being complicit members of societies that shape the world through incredible violence is no different a hypocritical perversion of morality as anyone who rustles your jimmies on the fucking Internet.

<comment><USER9> The principle of relativity is for velocities not morality.

<comment><USER10> So, do you have an objective source of morality for us to refer to?

<comment><USER7> Most human beings and human societies agree on the same general points of morality.

        - Killing -- Try really, really hard not to do this!
        - Lying -- Please try really, really hard not to do this!

Or there's George Carlin's formulation: "Really try hard to not be a jerk!" I think everyone has a pretty good idea of what this means, and most people agree on the broad outlines. The devil is in the details, of course. Then there's "Love thy neighbor as thyself." A pretty good general principle that most would agree on in the broad outlines. Again: Devil is in the details.

But the points I am making in these comments aren't really about details. In the broad outlines of morality, when someone starts proclaiming loudly that they are justified in being a jerk -- it's time to start getting very skeptical! This applies just as well to people, governments, and "activist" groups.

And by all means, please take some time to be a bit skeptical about yourself! Again, this applies just as well to people, governments, and "activist" groups.

<comment><USER11> I'd go bit further.

Let's assume everybody agreed with the "Really try hard to not be a jerk!" and everybody would have 100% similar general picture of what is moral.

Two people still interpret a situation from two points of view. Both making the judgement that the other guy is out of bounds. Which justifies some apprehension. But they both experience wrongful apprehension, which justifies pretty big apprehension. Which could result in full riot.

My point is that you cannot talk about ethics from individual point of view and expect to solve problems. You have to take into account societies as whole. Then consider with how it's done in practice. Ethical society cannot exist without good laws and good guardians for those laws. (And with 99% of population behaving good 99% of the time.)

Skeptical is not enough. Society has to be a instant jerk towards individuals who try to jerk around. Clear cut boundaries are needed, so you know to stay inside them.

I'd say there is no place for moral relativism inside a country. But between countries it's even necessary.

<comment><USER12> My favorite example:

1) Randomly divide people into two groups.

2) Ask everyone in the first group this question: "If someone sues you and loses, is it fair that they should pay your legal costs?" Most people will say yes.

3) Ask everyone in the second group this question: "If you sue someone and lose, is it fair that you should pay their legal costs?" Most people will say no. _Even though it 's the same fucking question._

That's why we need shared enforced norms :-)

<comment><USER13> I like this example and might steal it.

But I'd offer you a [bayesian] counter-argument: Say an HIV test is 99% accurate and responds positive on a randomly selected person. What's the chance they actually have HIV? About 5%! [0]. However, if you have prior reasons to believe you may have HIV, the chances are a lot higher than 5% given a positive test.

To tie that back to lawsuits, your participants in the study have their priors set so that they don't expect to engage in frivolous lawsuits towards anyone. However they will likely recognize that they could fall victim to a frivolous lawsuit, and if they're normal, then the only type of lawsuits they could imagine being forced on them is a frivolous suit.

Another way to say that is: probably 90% of the ridiculous lawsuits originate from 1% of the population. Then 99% of your participants will mentally model themselves as a sincere plaintiff (thus they shouldn't have to pay even if they lose), while a 1% frivolous rate is certainly high enough to make plausible the threat of being the defendant, and thus worthy of protection through legal fee reimbursement.

[0]: [http://cs.wellesley.edu/~cs199/lectures/34-bayes- rule.html](http://cs.wellesley.edu/~cs199/lectures/34-bayes-rule.html)

<comment><USER12> Yes, fair enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> What is the opposing hypothesis here? That violence happens in a morally neutral setting? How would you define morally neutral? Could you make a claim, for example, that a bank robber is motivated by morality (the bank robber believes that robbing the bank is the morally correct thing to do - <USER2> redistribute wealth to himself?) Under what circumstances would that NOT be the case? Would the bank robber have to say, "well I know this is wrong, but..." (and how would we characterize that "but..." as not just another dimension of morality)?

<comment><USER15> I'm also not sure what sort of violence the author would classify as not motivated by morality. From the article:

> ISIL members believe they are morally justified and obligated to commit acts > of terror, while US soldiers accept some loss of civilian lives to achieve > the deaths of those terrorists. In all of these scenarios, the violent act > is perceived by the perpetrator as virtuous.

In the case of ISIS, the author is correct. They really do believe their actions are an unqualified good. But I seriously doubt that drone pilots in US military feel the same way. They may know where a terrorist leader is, but not be able to isolate him from innocents. In other words, if they had more accurate weaponry and better information, they would harm fewer innocent people. Sadly, current bombs and armies are crude tools. In contrast, lack of ability is the only thing stopping ISIS from killing _more_ innocent people.

I think the author is confused because the term "morality" covers everything from self-defense to religious fanaticism. There's practically nothing it _can 't_ explain.

<comment><USER16> Well, pure self-interest would probably fall outside of morality, but one could make an argument that many conscriped ISIS fighters, US soldiers, and perhaps US leaders are acting out of self-interest.

<comment><USER8> Self-interest is not a well defined concept. The notion of self is not somehow objective or immutable. Describing someone's self-interest is just another framework for describing the same underlying system that morality and all that is trying to describe. There is a bit of circularity when one tries to make self-interest an essential feature of brains:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_egoism#Circulari...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_egoism#Circularity)

In cases like extreme nationalism, the zealot has essentialized the nation- state into their identity and is thus acting in their 'self-interest'. If one defines self-interest as interest in the health and reproduction of the body, then humans are emphatically not drive solely by self-interest.

<comment><USER17> Why was this down-voted? The parent makes an excellent point that self- interest relies on a moral judgement about who the "self" is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> A pastor of mine once talked about this in context of Martin Luther and Zwingli ( in context of the Kappel Wars ), and talked about how violence is often the moral outgrowth of those who have grown so assured of their righteousness (in a Christian context) that they felt they could not sin by committing violence. He pointed to Matthew 5:21-26 and 5:38-47 (The Sermon on the Mount) to bolster his argument against violence by Christians, and I feel that it is generally a correct one. (Further strengthened by Romans 12:9-21) Thus, the case laid out in this article is one that I agree with, generally. It's a case long laid out by a succession of Christian Theologians, albeit using different language.

<comment><USER19> > violence is often the moral outgrowth of those who have grown so assured of > their righteousness

I like that.

This idea is also present in Buddhism, though they take it a step further and say that all suffering (everything from external violence to internal dissatisfaction with life) is caused by some form of judgment. They say the same thing that you mentioned above: violence is caused by the judgment, "I am right, you are wrong".

<comment><USER18> I'm not sure that I expressed myself the best above based on your response, but partly that's because of the difficulty in discussing topics like this across religious traditions.

I would disagree that violence is caused by the judgement, 'you are right, I am wrong'. I think that violence is ultimately caused by sin, vis a vis Augustinian total depravity. But the justification for violence, often among Christians, is self-righteousness (or put another way, pride).

But again, this is a difficult issue to discuss between religions because the basic assumptions are different and terminology has slightly different meanings.

<comment><USER20> Where "sin" means essentially not being Christian enough, I am skeptical that the correct diagnosis for violence is "sin" when people who identify as Christian do not seem especially less likely to commit violence than people who identify as adhering to some other worldview with moral entailments. Frankly, if you want everyone else to believe that Christians are less violent than people of other religions, you have to bring data rather than just saying that "sin" (non-Christianness) is the cause.

<comment><USER21> > Where "sin" means essentially not being Christian enough...

"sin" in Christian theology is disobedience (and therefore rebellion) against God. Defining it as "not being Christian enough" is problematic for at least two reasons:

1\. If people self-identify as Christian, how do we identify the liars and the self-deluded?

2\. If we can't trust people to identify themselves properly, how do we identify each other as Christians? What is the standard?

The Bible actually says that we can know Christians by how well they follow the commandments of Christ (a). Among the commandments of Christ is the commandment to be at peace with each other; we are supposed to reconcile with each other even before we perform (therefore insincere) religious rituals (b).

...the Bible doesn't say that "sin" is the cause of violence since violence (and hate generally) is itself sin. Instead, Paul teaches that sin, including murder, is a result of rejecting God for other things (c).

So given all that, it's tautological from Biblical principles that violent people are _not_ followers of Christ. In fact, the Bible is full of warnings about people who claim to be Christian and are actually false teachers. It's actually where the "wolf in sheep's clothing" metaphor comes from.

(a) [https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+John+2%3A4-5&...](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+John+2%3A4-5&version=ESV)

(b) [https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+5%3A21-...](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+5%3A21-24&version=ESV)

(c) [https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans+1%3A28-3...](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans+1%3A28-31&version=ESV)

<comment><USER22> This entire post is an amazing textbook example of "No true Scotsman" fallacy.

<comment><USER23> This is my least favorite logical fallacy, because it's misapplied as an argumentative shortcut in almost every case, including this one.

In particular, with No True Scotsman being flung about as carelessly as it is these days, there's no way for any group to exclude certain positions or ideas as outside their own.

As an example, the US Army has certain eligibility requirements regarding age, citizenship, and physical fitness. Imagine an ISIL member dresses in fatigues, goes into a shopping mall, and blows himself up. The news headlines might read "Suicide bomber was Army Soldier".

Under most applications of No True Scotsman I see today, any attempt by the Army to differentiate themselves from the terrorist would be met with howls of "No True Scotsman!".

Indeed, even if the terrorist was active duty Army, I believe the Army should have able to claim, "This action and these beliefs are demonstrably inconsistent with ours as a group." but that too would be met with "No True Scotsman!".

It seems to me that the logical conclusion of this line of reasoning leaves mankind with no ability to organize itself in groups around certain ideas without also allowing anyone to define the group as they see fit.

<comment><USER22> On the contrary, this fallacy is very important and applicable. Without it you cannot criticise any group G on the basis of X when a member of this group happens to declare that "I'm not X and anyone who is X is not a member of G". This is seemingly a perfect defense as long as there's a single member who is not X.

It's important to call out this fallacy, because the membership in a group can't be defined on the basis of a person's conduct, since there's no way to monitor that every member of the group adheres to this conduct. Therefore you can't know if anyone is a member or not unless you watch this person 24/7\. There must be a different way to assign membership. A membership of most religions is decided on the basis of self-declaration. A membership in US Army is decided on the basis of application and being approved by the powers in charge. For example if US Army has a tendency to employ rapists, it's valid to criticise US Army for this fact even if they have a rule that forbids such behavior. If self-declared Christians tend to persecute and kill people in the name of religion, it's valid to criticise Christianity for this behavior.

<comment><USER23>
        > On the contrary, this fallacy is very important and applicable.

I don't claim that it's an unimportant fallacy to understand and recognize and apply. Instead I said it was my "least favorite", because of it's so rarely applied correctly. By the rest of your comment, I get the impression you didn't catch my meaning.

        > For example if US Army has a tendency to employ
        > rapists, it's valid to criticise US Army for this fact
        > even if they have a rule that forbids such behavior.

Here, the critical point is not that the US Army employed _a rapist_ or even _several rapists_. Instead you're saying they have a _tendency to employ racists_. No True Scotsman would only apply if someone from the Army made a statement in complete denial of that fact, hand waving it away by pointing out the rule and saying something to the effect of "The Army has a rule against rape, so anyone who does that isn't a real soldier". It's a valid No True Scotsman because the behavior is clearly evident in a non-fringe component of the group.

If someone did make that statement in sincerity, sure, send in the No True Scotsman patrol and take 'em out. But that's not how it usually happens. Typically, there's a singular incident. That's often followed by a careless article which paints with an overly broad brush: "Does the Army have a rape problem?".

And _that_ is the point where I start looking for the misapplied No True Scotsmans to crop up. There's no way for anyone to defend the Army by pointing out that it's against the rules, or that the number of rape incidents in the army is lower than the general population, or really any other facts.

        > It's important to call out this fallacy, because the
        > membership in a group can't be defined on the basis of a
        > person's conduct, since there's no way to monitor that
        > every member of the group adheres to this conduct.

I believe this idea right here is the source of all these misapplications. And it's just false. _Of course_ membership in a group can be defined by a person's conduct. Try comparing Hacker News to Reddit in 3 or 4 comments and see how quickly you get shadowbanned. In fact, I'd say defining group membership based on conduct is the rule, not the exception.

No True Scotsman is intended to point out the fallacy of someone inside a group avoiding criticism by constantly shrinking or changing the group rules in order to draw a distinction from some negative person or incident. If the goalposts aren't moving, then its likely the person really _isn 't_ a True Scotsman, and you should maybe try to understand why not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> When I was a theatre student a thousand years ago my teachers used to say every character you play feels like they have the gods on their side. Bad guys (with the possible exception of Iago) generally don't go around thinking "today I'm going to be particularly evil". They think what they are doing is right and will make the world better in some way. That is the challenge with moral relativism, people are very good at rationalizing their violence.

<comment><USER25> Since you referenced one of Shakespeare's plays, I think this is one of the great lessons to be taken from _Hamlet_. Hamlet finds himself caught up in a moral drama — Did his uncle murder his father? Did his mother knowingly condone the act or is just wrong to marry her husband's brother? Is his love interest betraying him by reporting on his behaviour? etc, etc. Hamlet eventually determines he will endeavour to step outside it, but unfortunately doesn't succeed and gets drawn back in, resulting in more violence and his own death.

The best answer to moral drama is often to try to rise above it, not by ignoring it but by addressing it from a higher moral level. But that higher level has to be real and not faked and there's the great challenge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is where the article goes wrong for me:

> The commonality was that the primary motivations were moral. This means that > the perpetrators of violence felt like what they are doing was morally > right.

The first sentence is about motivation. The second is about justification.

As an example, I think back to when I was a little kid and fought with my younger brother. My motivations for hitting him would be things like feelings of anger, shame, or urge to establish dominance. My justification would be something like "he hit me first" or "he deserved it" or "he can't talk to me like that".

The motivation was primary, and something I didn't choose. (I did choose to indulge it, of course.) The justification was secondary and situational, constructed to avoid accountability (both internal and parental). Sometimes it was true and sometimes it wasn't, but it was always secondary. As an adult, the justification (and critical examination of it) is part of my gatekeeping of what motivations I indulge, but it's not the motivator.

I think this matters because fixing the claimed justification won't always change the behavior. This quote from a Jon Ronson article gets at why:

"I once interviewed a prison psychiatrist, James Gilligan, who told me that every murderer he treated was harbouring a central secret – which was that they felt humiliated. 'I have yet to see a serious act of violence that was not provoked by the experience of feeling shamed or humiliated, disrespected and ridiculed,' he said. His conclusion: 'All violence is an attempt to replace shame with self-esteem.'"

</comment><comment><USER27> Some personal philosophy (as if the Internet needs more):

I always watch out for the dogmatic idealogues, the ones without moderation. You can identify them when they say that the welfare of others, often including their lives, should be sacrificed to the idealogue's cause - and of course the others should have no say in it.

Pragmatism and humility are the wisest forms of morality. There should always be something higher than your ideals and goals, either the ideal of other people's lives and welfare, or their self-determination (whether or not you agree with their opinions), or your humility: Unless you are God, you should hesitate to sacrifice others based on your judgement. For me, that's also the philosophical foundation of democracy.

<comment><USER28> That doesn't make any sense. "There should always be something higher than your ideals and goals" is a contradiction; if there were something higher, it'd become your ideal or goal.

It seems especially incongruous to suggest that I should be putting _other people 's_ ideals over my own. Just how would you propose anybody accomplish such a thing? How is anybody supposed to make the best possible decisions when they are to assume that only someone else could make better decisions? That's idiotic.

And why would you ask anyone to place self-determination above their own ideals? Despite the fact that this is a contradiction as I mentioned above, it isn't a thing worthy of intrinsic praise. Self determination isn't good unless you're determined to do good, and determined enough to actually do _what it takes_ to achieve your ideals. So it can't be above your ideals.

>Unless you are God, you should hesitate to sacrifice others based on your judgement.

Most of those that do will hesitate. But they'll end up sacrificing them anyway, and you'll still be lambasting them for their short-sightedness, because you can't understand the scope of that hesitation from atop your pedestal. Of course, you can see just fine in hind-sight. That's not really a talent.

All in all, you're just saying "People are morally corrupt unless they do what _I_ think is right," which is exactly the same thing they'd say about you. What you offer isn't a solution, it's a complete failure to understand the conflict.

<comment><USER29> _" There should always be something higher than your ideals and goals" is a contradiction; if there were something higher, it'd become your ideal or goal._

It's only a contradiction if you're aware of what that higher something is. Part of humility is realizing there are things you don't know. Your ideals and goals are imperfect, and will change over your lifetime. Why didn't you choose the "highest" ideals to begin with?

<comment><USER28> You can't make decisions based on information you don't have.

An unknown ideal is not "higher" \-- it's unknown -- as in, you don't actually know that it's "higher," and you couldn't do anything about it even if it were. You certainly can't _believe_ in the unknown.

"Pursuit of the unknown" is not itself an unknown ideal. You _should_ look for new information. That's not a mystery, that's an ideal you can have right now. If you think there's a better ideal than that, then I don't know what to tell you.

<comment><USER30> > You can't make decisions based on information you don't have.

You can't. But you can make decisions based on the information that your information is incomplete. A sort of 'bias towards inaction' in those cases in which the action would be irreversible.

Consider the death penalty. You may think that's morally right to apply the death penalty to, say, mass murderers. You may also, without contradiction, decide that this should never be done in practice. The reasoning being that it would require infallibility on the part of the persons deciding to apply such punishment.

So you don't even say "the highest moral imperative is that thou shall not kill". There might very well be cases where the best moral decision would be to kill someone under some 'higher' ideal you know nothing of. But you can still simply say "I do not trust my moral judgement to the point were I'd take another's life because of such judgement, no matter how righteous my judgement feels to me".

Of course, you are also unlike to trust any other person to make such determinations, either. How to try and dissuade others from taking actions that you don't consider acceptable, without resorting to actions for which you know you are not qualified to make the moral call, is a whole other matter.

<comment><USER28> Inaction is just another kind of action, and an ideal that demands it it just as much an ideal as any other. You can't say "the best moral decision is to wait for more information" and "there is no best moral decision" at the same time. That's nonsense.

You can be aware that you don't know the best course of action, but if you can't take the _best_ course of action, that matters very little.

I get what you're trying to say, but I don't approve of the mechanism you are using to say it. You are essentially asking me to agree with you as a matter of social ritual; we should all go bow our heads and whip ourselves every time we think we know something! Here's the thing, though: you can't preach humility without being a hypocrite. You've taken "don't stick to a moral stance!" as a moral stance and you're sticking right to it.

I get that there is no roadmap to perfection. You can't sort the points on a plane. But we live our lives sequentially, and you _will_ order those points, because you cannot do anything unless you do. So you get busy trying to find _an_ order that will maximize your goals, and you make sure that "you" is broad enough to include everybody else as well. You don't sit around beating on yourself because you can't handle the fact that the plane has no intrinsic total order.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I believe the author's hypothesis is probably correct. It seems the only way to avoid the "well my case is different; violence is justified in this situation because..."-bias is to instill or promote a common moral that "violence is not okay – ever". It's the only way you can be sure that you're not falling into the same biases that our "enemies" have fallen into.

The more I learn about cognitive biases, the more I think they're probably the cause of almost all interpersonal conflict in modern society (unfortunately, awareness of this fact doesn't make you immune to the phenomenon).

<comment><USER32> > promote a common moral that "violence is not okay – ever"

I guess that's generally was is tried in the Western world. Especially (marginally more) in Europe, where even being in the army is not as regarded as in the US, and there is nowhere the same support for the troops even when deployed.

But then all of that is drown in a sea of entertainment, the majority of which not only promote virtuous violent reaction, but also show that non-violence generally lead to ridicule or painful death.

<comment><USER33> It's easy to believe that violence is not the answer if you can outsource the application of it (to police, other governments, etc.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I liked this article, it went straight to the heart of the issue.

Many take a cheap shot at religion (in most cases Muslims) when they talk about this sort of stuff. But this article talks about morality as the factor.

While moral codes are often a huge part of religions they are also a huge part of other groups of society, such as animal rights groups, labour unions and even criminal organisations.

To me this seems to fly in the face of "the world would be so much better if this group didn't exist" thinking. By not focusing on a particular group, but isolating the mechanism through which this violence happens, I believe this paves the way for a far more constructive dialogue.

<comment><USER35> > While moral codes are often a huge part of religions they are also a huge > part of other groups of society, such as animal rights groups, labour unions > and even criminal organisations.

Very true indeed, but I think that religion still deserves particular attention because it's the most prominent institution that promotes believing claims without evidence as a virtue, in particular in the area of morality, which paves the way for others promoting their equally insupportable claims. Religion is the major obstacle that prevents people from understanding that what is moral is a scientific question that has just as much an objectively correct answer as the question whether jumping from a tall building will increase your well-being or not.

<comment><USER36> > claims without evidence

I think there is plenty of evidence. I don't feel like I'd change your mind in an Internet comment by laying out particulars, but I just wanted to note that plenty of people of faith don't ascribe to the idea of _blind_ faith.

> what is moral is a scientific question

What evidence do you have to support this statement? I can see how you could start with that assumption and find ways to justify it, but I don't see how you can conclusively prove the initial premise. My point is that it seems like you have a moral code that states that all things can be proven within the bounds of science and what is observable by humans, no?

<comment><USER35> > I think there is plenty of evidence.

I am speaking of observation, not revelation.

> I just wanted to note that plenty of people of faith don't ascribe to the > idea of blind faith.

People don't say "it's faith" when they can find any other reason why they consider something to be true, "it's faith" is the fallback when they don't have any other reason. Whether they then find some reason for why "it's faith" is a good reason is secondary to that simple observation. You just don't hear "it's raining outside!" \- "how do you know?" \- "it's faith!", but you do hear "god exists!" \- "how do you know?" \- "it's faith!" or "homosexuality is sin!" \- "how do you know?" \- "it's faith!".

> What evidence do you have to support this statement?

Well, what evidence do you have that the question whether falling from a tall building increases your well-being is a scientific one (I assume you think that it is?)?

That question is hard to answer because it's difficult to tell what it is that you actually want to know, but the answers to those two questions should be similar.

> I can see how you could start with that assumption and find ways to justify > it, but I don't see how you can conclusively prove the initial premise.

I think the more interesting question is: Do you disagree and if so, why?

Whether I can prove that premise depends on which assumptions/axioms you accept. With some assumptions, I can prove it, with others, I can't. But if you chose axioms under which I can't prove it, I can instead disprove lots of things you consider to be true, which might make you rethink your axioms.

> My point is that it seems like you have a moral code that states that all > things can be proven within the bounds of science and what is observable by > humans, no?

Nope, I don't.

However, in that statement I do recognize a common misunderstanding of methodological naturalism (which is basically the defining philosophy of science), so let me try and explain:

Science is the idea of developing a model of the world that mirrors reality as best as currently possible by constantly testing the model against reality and throwing out/changing anything where tests give a different result than the model would suggest, and gradually accepting parts of the model as tentatively reliable the more tries to produce contradictions in tests have failed (that is to say: the more tries to produce a different result than the model suggests do result in what the model suggests nonetheless). What it in particular is not is a set of facts (any science "fact" is open to demonstration that it's actually not so and will be thrown out if that happens, though that doesn't normally happen for well-tested parts of the model), and it's also not a dogma: There is nothing that science disallows from being tested, and no method that is disallowed to perform the testing, as long as it can be shown that it can be expected to fail if the hypothesis to be tested is wrong in some aspect. It's a perfectly fine scientific hypothesis that prayer improves health outcomes after operations, and it's perfectly reasonable to then test this hypothesis in an experiment that involves praying for people and then checking whether any effect on health outcomes can be observed. Actually, that particular hypothesis has been suggested, and has been tested--and the test didn't show anything that would support the hypothesis, which is why it's not part of the scientific model of the world, but the point is that there is no dogma in science that would have prevented this hypothesis from becoming a well-regarded scientific theory, had it been demonstrated to work, in which case prayer now presumably would be a standard part of medical procedures.

So, in that sense, science doesn't actually subscribe to a distinction between the "natural" and the "supernatural": If there is any claimed observable effect, science is willing to take a look at whether the claimed observable effect can indeed be observed, and if it can, you have a scientific theory, whether it's masses moving in gravitational fields, germs causing diseases, or prayer healing the ill.

However, it is important to note that science does not proclaim that if you can't observe something, it therefore isn't. Claiming that something does not exist is just as much a scientific claim as claiming that it does, and so, if you claim non-existence, you have to perform tests to show that that claim is true just as when you wanted to show existence. As long as you haven't demonstrated some claim to either be true or to be false, you simply don't know whether it is true, and thus don't get to claim either way. Note that this is not to be confused with a claim that something won't ever be known (which again would be a claim that needs to be demonstrated)--what is unknown might well become known at a later point, but as long as it's unknown, it is unknown, and thus has to be treated just as every other claim of which the truth is unknown.

So, no, I don't claim that everything can be proven within the bounds of science and observation, but that if (and as long as) scientific methodology (which would ultimately mean some form of observation) does not provide any evidence, it is unreasonable to believe a claim. There might well be claims that are true that cannot (yet) be demonstrated to be either true or false. But as long as there is no evidence either way, I can't distinguish the ones that are true from the ones that are false, so I withhold belief on all of them.

All of that has little to do with morals. Morals, however, can be figured out using that same methodology. Sensible morals are all about consequences that one person's actions have on other people, and those consequences can be observed.

<comment><USER36> Thanks for taking the time to reply and speaking civilly! I've really come to enjoy discussions on Hacker News more than anywhere else.

> I am speaking of observation, not revelation.

Me too. There were lot of observations about people and events in first- century Palestine that were then recorded and preserved over time.

I was just in a meeting today. Let's say I write a blog post about it and that post is read 2000 years later. While it can't be the sole basis for answering the question of whether or not that meeting happened, I think it should be given a lot of respect and precedence when considering the question.

But don't discount revelation outright! If I want someone to understand me better, I'd rather tell them myself rather than having them resort to observations and experiments, and I'd probably give them more information in an hour of talking than they ever could figure out on their own.

> "it's faith" is the fallback when they don't have any other reason

If you can explain it completely, it's not faith. So that makes sense.

The concept of a triune God is one that kinda ends up this way. I can pontificate all I want about how I'm a father, a son, and a brother all while being a single entity, but at the end of the day it's like explaining depth to Flatlanders - it's tough to truly understand something that doesn't exist on your level. So, what goes beyond my comprehension requires faith. Can it be used as a cop-out or an intellectually lazy answer? Sure! The Bible even suggests that faith is hard - a man once said to Jesus "I believe; help my unbelief!" But that doesn't mean it's not a valid state of mind.

I like the chair metaphor for this sort of talk. Sitting in a chair requires a measure of faith that it'll hold my weight. If I'm sitting in the chair, the question is already answered so no more faith is required (unless I wanted to question the idea that the chair would continue to hold my weight!). If I couldn't sit in the chair because it's behind a glass wall in a museum, then I can choose to believe it will/won't hold me or I can choose to not make a decision because, who cares? And for a chair that's okay, because it's not being prescriptive or dealing with anything existential.

But ultimately, the chair can either hold you or it can't. One of those outcomes is true. Just because you can't sit on the chair doesn't mean that there isn't an absolute answer. I think you understand that after parsing your response a bit more, just wanted to call the point out specifically.

> However, it is important to note that science does not proclaim that if you > can't observe something, it therefore isn't.

Yes! I understand this. But I do think that because science is so great at explaining so many things, people will tend to mentally fall into assumptions like 'science is the only way to prove something' or 'if science cannot prove something, I won't believe it'. This could be strawmanning though.

If I understand you correctly you're saying that, from a purely scientific standpoint, a belief in the Abrahamic God is no different than believing that we're a little simulation run by the Q Continuum. And that's a fair point. But I would contend again that science is not the only way to prove something. Historical record, internal logic and narrative, testimony of others, personal experience, revelation...these can be less easy to parse and trust than a clear-cut scientific method, but that doesn't invalidate them as methods of persuasion.

And perhaps that is our greatest difference. You (if I am understanding correctly; feel free to correct me) believe that belief should be withheld on things that cannot be quantified with scientific methodology. I do not ascribe to this, and this divergence puts us in pretty different places.

>>> what is moral is a scientific question >> I can see how you could start with that assumption and find ways to justify it, but I don't see how you can conclusively prove the initial premise. > I think the more interesting question is: Do you disagree and if so, why?

If I understand the intent of this exchange, then I think I do disagree. Take something like eugenics; if we observed two societies doing it and one refraining, we might find benefits in both society. An individualistic society might be glad they refrained because they see the intrinsic value of each human life, regardless of their shortcomings, while a collectivistic, Spartan- like society might be glad they kept their stock strong and didn't have to do stuff like buy glasses or spend money on sick/disabled people. Point being, observation and the conclusions that are drawn from it could end up being inconclusive or relativistic depending on the underlying values of the society.

One of the things I believe about God is that he knows everything about us, and as such would be the most qualified to prescribe the best courses of action for my life and for society. Or, since we're on HN, the guy who programmed the app knows the codebase better than anyone, and if he wants others to understand it he writes documentation for others to follow, or maybe goes to a conference to talk about it. And who knows, maybe God has reasoning that would fit within the realm of scientific methodology. I don't know, but..."it's faith!"

<comment><USER35> [... pt3 ...]

> One of the things I believe about God is that he knows everything about us,

How do you know that?

> and as such would be the most qualified to prescribe the best courses of > action for my life and for society.

Even under that assumption, I would disagree.

> Or, since we're on HN, the guy who programmed the app knows the codebase > better than anyone,

How do you know who that guy is?

> and if he wants others to understand it he writes documentation for others > to follow,

How do you identify the author of that documentation?

> or maybe goes to a conference to talk about it.

How do you identify the speaker?

> And who knows, maybe God has reasoning that would fit within the realm of > scientific methodology.

Sure, or maybe god likes pizza. May be. Or may not be. Speculation is easy. What's your evidence one way or the other?

> I don't know, but..."it's faith!"

Is there any claim that you couldn't justify that way?

"God wants me to only eat noodles! It's faith!"

"The core of jupiter consists of cheese! It's faith!"

"God wants me to love everyone! It's faith!"

"God wants me to kill all <x>! It's faith!"

How do you distinguish where "It's faith!" is sufficient justification and where it is not?

Now, this has become somewhat (ahem) lengthy, and most of these arguments aren't really new--if you are interested in understanding the skeptical/scientific/atheistic view on those things, you might enjoy this playlist:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOkwq0YkXJA&list=PL8U_Qmq9oN...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOkwq0YkXJA&list=PL8U_Qmq9oNY4I2RAT94zWGS3yo7Ma3QKI)

In particular, there are quite a few videos in there that deal with common theistic arguments, including "Appeals to Faith", "Morality", "Supernatural Causation", "Appeals to Personal Experience", which would probably roughly cover this post.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> > because most gun violence is not committed by people with mental health > problems. Rather, it is committed by people who feel they are morally right > in committing that act.

Is there a reason that delusions of morality don't count as a mental health issue? I don't see these things being mutually exclusive.

<comment><USER38> Let's say you grow up in a poor community where murders happen often but are not often solved. You don't trust the police to serve justice to those who have wronged you. You notice that many of your neighbors solve their problems themselves - by fighting, threatening, killing. People often heckle you because you try to not fight back when people pick on you - there's a culture of toughness and honor all around you.

Now someone wrongs you - let's say they hurt your significant other. Are you mentally ill for wanting to serve what you think is justice?

<comment><USER39> Doesn't that classify as self-defense?

<comment><USER3> IIUC self-defense does not extend to the defense of others, and it applies only when there's an _imminent_ threat to your person. If somebody hurts you and then next week you go over to their house and shoot them dead, it's 1st- degree premeditated murder.

Beyond the legal issues, you can get into all sorts of moral issues once you consider uncertainty, culture, and history. Say your sister is in an abusive relationship, and has been beaten severely enough on multiple occasions that you fear for her life. She refuses to go to the police, as many domestic violence victims do. Are you justified in going over to their house and shooting her husband dead? What if you happen to be visiting, but arrive to find him with her hands on her throat, choking her to death? Both scenarios are highly illegal and will get you charged with murder, but morally, many people would have a lot of sympathy for someone in that situation.

<comment><USER40> Defense-of-others, strictly speaking, is not the same as self-defense, but they're discussed in the same breath and generally legislated together, and usable in the same circumstances. Thus references to one are generally read as encompassing both.

You would indeed be justified in shooting the husband if you stumbled upon him choking her to death (in most jurisdictions), but not if you just expected it to happen eventually.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> One of the main problems with violence inspired by morality is that many moral systems accept the use of force and thus violence as main course of action to improve the status of the world.

This makes moral systems that propagate principles of non violence, like Ahimsa, worth spreading.

<comment><USER42> Indeed.

"We fight for peace" is the best newspeak that could ever exist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Maybe for high profile terrorism, but what about the more common petty street crime like muggings? I don't buy that is motivated by some high minded morality. Rather it seems like a rational and greedy calculation made by those with not much to lose.

</comment><comment><USER44> I have to wonder whether morality is the motivation for violence, or just the rationalization of an act that was actually motivated by something else. This would probably be really hard to distinguish, since all we have to go on is why people said they did things, which could just as easily be their true motivation or their post-hoc rationalization.

If two people are stranded on a desert island with only enough food for one person, one of them is going to die one way or another, and they're probably not going to wait and see who starves first. But when the lone survivor is finally rescued, there's a pretty good chance they'll have convinced themselves that the other one deserved what they got. That doesn't make it an act of morally justified violence. (Yes, this is an obviously idealized and unrealistic scenario, but you get the point.)

</comment><comment><USER45> Marshall McLuhan suggests an alternative theory as to the primary motivation of violence. He claims that violence is a quest for identity:

>"All forms of violence are a quest for identity. When you live out on the frontier you have no identity, you're a nobody. Therefore you get very tough. You have to prove that you are somebody. And so you become very violent. And so identity is always accompanied by violence. Ordinary people find the need for violence as they lose their identities. And so it is only the threat to peoples identities that makes them violent. Terrorists, hijackers, these are people minus identity. They are determined to make it somehow. To get coverage, to get noticed."

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvATW2nfYZg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvATW2nfYZg)

McLuhan defines violence very broadly, in the sense that violence means to violate boundaries. Thus he describes giving birth as violence in which the original identity is given to the individual.

Whether it is a political party, nation-state, or terrorist who uses violence, in some way or another they are seeking to establish or defend their identity. The electric media being a catalyst in all of this:

>"Any loss of identity prompts people to seek reassurance and rediscovery of themselves by testing, and even by violence. Today, the electric revolution, the wired planet, and the information environment involve everybody in everybody to the point of individual extinction."

-Letter to Clare Westcott, November 26 1975.

So, the nation-state that has a nostalgia for the "old days" and "standing for freedom" (implying a lack thereof) seeks identity through violence by invading countries "for freedom" and commits other acts of violence to "make country x great again".

Likewise the terrorist who feels their identity threatened, be it religious or sociopolitical, may seek to reestablish their identity through violence. McLuhan also notes the major role mass media outlets play in awarding terrorists and mass murders the identity they so desperately seek via 24/7 coverage and rumination.

>"Terrorism is an invention in which any two-armed people can take over an entire industry, namely television, with the eager cooperation of its owners. Moral indignation is a standard strategy for endowing the idiot with dignity."

-Marshall McLuhan, as quoted by Tom Wolfe

</comment><comment><USER46> > The commonality was that the primary motivations were moral.

I'm not so sure about this. Humans tend to act first and then construct a reason why they do it. This is used to rationalize the actions through some seemingly higher cause when the behaviour was done because of very mundane things.

Humans certainly always act in a way that they think is best for an extended version of themselves (good for me, good for my family, good for my clique, good for my country, good for humankind, good for the world). But I doubt that this judgement of what is best to do is so often moral. Most of the time it's actually just satisfying urges by our bodies.

</comment><comment><USER47> So many things are arbitrarily framed in a moral context that it seems hard to agree or disagree with this thesis.

For instance, we typically think of gang shootings as violence caused by greed or desire for power. But it's also common to frame it as a moral issue, such as "they shouldn't have been operating in my territory without paying" or "they were going to double-cross me".

Why do we take the moral explanation at face value? Just because the ostensible reason is morality doesn't mean that's the real reason. They may have already decided what they were going to do, and rationalized it with morality later.

</comment><comment><USER48> I always held the belief that almost no one (except maybe for some persons with mental health problems) could cope with consistently acting "evil" according to his/her own internal moral compass.

There's always an excuse or twisted moral justification, which boils down to: Someone acts against my interest so I am right in doing X.

Doesn't matter if that someone is a person, the society, the state, culture or the economic system, there's always something you could come up with to direct your hatred against when life didn't work out the way you wanted it.

</comment><comment><USER49> That's an extremely broad title.

If an individual soldier is motivated by their moral sentiment that they are fighting for democracy in Afghanistan and so that Afghan girls can get an education that is meaningless, the motivation of the leaders who took that decision is the primary cause of the violence.

My belief is that Western nations fight wars for economic reasons, but uses a moral argument to assuage the population and provide exculpation to the troops.

We simply do not put boots on the ground or bombs in the air for moral reasons, no matter how it's cloaked.

</comment><comment><USER50> This is going to be an especially hard problem to tackle, because you have liberals that want to say morality is just a social construct, and you can't say anything is good or bad, while you have conservatives that want their morality channeled through a doctrine that's hundreds of years old.

We need to pick ourselves up from our bootstraps and say morality is tied to the well-being of any conscious system and there's a landscape where you can navigate more 'right' or 'wrong'.

</comment><comment><USER51> Is there a peer reviewed paper showing their findings? The author is an academic who says he has studied this, but there is no link to such a paper.

I would also note that police usually investigate people who knew the victim, rather than people who were morally opposed to them. But I don't have a peer reviewed study either.

<comment><USER52> Tage Rai, the author of the article has written a book 'Virtuous Violence' [0] published in December 2014. I'm guessing the article is taken from that.

[0]: [http://www.amazon.com/Virtuous-Violence-Hurting-Killing- Rela...](http://www.amazon.com/Virtuous-Violence-Hurting-Killing- Relationships/dp/1107458919)

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> An important clarification: Most violence _among humans_ is motivated by morality. Sounds plausible.

<comment><USER35> Much violence among (other) animals is also motivated by morality, it's a pretty common trait in social species.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> It could also be possible that most of the time violence is avoided, it is also due to moral sentiments.

<comment><USER55> Thats my thought. What if you are morally opposed to violence? ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> >> [mental health checks] will not significantly decrease gun violence because most gun violence is not committed by people with mental health problems. Rather, it is committed by people who feel they are morally right in committing that act.

That strikes me as a non-sequitur. Aren't morality and mental health orthogonal?

For example, if someone believed that his refrigerator is God and it speaks to him via the expiration dates on the milk, that would be barking mad. If he based a system of morality on those messages and it told him that bald people are evil and need to die, then he's got moral justification and motivation in his own mind. But he's still barking mad, and a mental health check would show that, right?

</comment><comment><USER57> A more fundamental question is why morality - especially the kind that allows for violence against non-followers - exists at all.

I hypothesize that morality was initially invented to subdue the masses into servitude - obey the alpha male, and slay those who do not. The logical next step would be to consider outsiders as disobedient to the alpha male until they accept his rule.

Religions are essentially this principle, with supernatural being(s) as the ultimate alphas, and prophets as their messengers.

Ideologies do away with supernatural beings, maybe replacing anthropomorphic gods with "forces of history", e.g. Dialectical Materialism or Manifest Destiny, and replace prophets with destined / enlightened rulers.

<comment><USER35> > I hypothesize that morality was initially invented to subdue the masses into > servitude [...]

I would suggest that nothing was invented, it just happened. It's something between a necessity for and a side effect of the evolution of social structures in a species. In order to reap the benefits of social cooperation in a species, evolution has to find a solution to the free rider problem as cooperation isn't stable otherwise, and morality is that solution, which also can be found in species other than humans.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Propaganda is used to create the moral outrage needed to rationalize the violence needed to acquire the resources.

[https://www.mtholyoke.edu/~paul20i/classweb/AFP2008/oilandwa...](https://www.mtholyoke.edu/~paul20i/classweb/AFP2008/oilandwar.html)

[https://www.mtholyoke.edu/~paul20i/classweb/AFP2008/nativeam...](https://www.mtholyoke.edu/~paul20i/classweb/AFP2008/nativeamerican.html)

</comment><comment><USER59> This article is flawed while the original paper might not, if it does exist. In this article, the author didn't mention the core methodology of how he managed to find out the reason behind each violence, by interview, court record, or newspaper? How he interpreted the description of motivation from his sources? How he distinguished motivation and excuse (or self justification)? I think it's meaningless just to state his hypothesis.

<comment><USER60> If he put all of that in the article, then the article would just BE their paper.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> This reads like the abstract of a paper. Is there a more detailed paper behind it? This author may be on to something, but there's not enough there to tell.

</comment><comment><USER62> _Most peacefullness in the world is motivated by moral sentiments._

Isn't this valid also?

Moral (of majorities) -> Law -> Peacefullness (status quo)

</comment><comment><USER63> "Cross-culturally, I looked at why it is incomprehensible to Westerners to kill women for sexual infidelity, yet other parts of the world encourage this practice."

Could the author be more "Westerners"-centric? It is incomprehensible for all the human beings except the fundamentalists from those religious sects.

</comment><comment><USER64> I wonder how much of the percentage comes from dicators motivated by said 'moral sentiments' and the wars they seem to like getting into.

Those are some of the worst examples of ideologues wanting to force their views on others and sacrifice others based on their 'judgement'.

</comment><comment><USER65> The points in the article are all reasonable and better than dismissive attitudes that "[something] is evil" but - _where is his actual data and research_? He should point to it!

</comment><comment><USER66> Moral Sentiments are used to justify violence by the perpetrators. That does now mean their morality is really the driving force of their actions.

</comment><comment><USER67> It would be sad that if most of the violence is because someone is stronger and someone else is weaker.

Such as: someone has a weapon, the other side does not.

</comment><comment><USER68> Nah, it's just justified by moral sentiments.

</comment><comment><USER69> They say we are all the heroes of our own stories... maybe that should be more strongly considered in the context of these shootings.

</comment><comment><USER70> This is what I ask myself whenever I feel upset, "Am I over reacting? Am I being overly sensitive?"

This is what I ask when someone else is upset at me, "What did I do wrong?"

Hopefully, these questions prevent me from being too self-righteous. The downsides are that it takes me a while to understand my mistakes, and I don't get to be smug and self-satisfied.

</comment><comment><USER71> Yeah, well... easy to blame morals when you have none and wouldn't know moral if it hit you in the face. ISIS jihadists have no morals, for example. The article is ridiculous

<comment><USER35> They very much have. Actually, that is pretty much the only thing that drives them. It's not your kind of morals, I assume. But they do what they do because they consider it the morally right thing to do, and that is what this article is trying to tell you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> broadcast access is as cheap as the outrage it feeds.

</comment><comment><USER73> Duh.</comment>


Where are people's smiles? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/simone-brunozzi/where-are-people-smiles-161be50f494e#.5cfjx0ypr <comment><USER2> This is also a central question in Sigmund Freud's "Society and its discontents": why are we not happy despite all the technological progress? His answer, if I remember, is that because of this progress, we had to repress our primitive instincts. Worth a read anyway: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization_and_Its_Discont...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization_and_Its_Discontents)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Surely worth a reading.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I always applaud Americans for free smile and usually not-so-grumpy-face. To me, Americans appear very calm and not stressed. I am Indian by ethnicity and I see thar 9 out 10 Indians carrying grumpy or scorned face (aka bitch face).

I want to know from fellow Americans, what makes you so calm? How can you be so relaxed all the time?

Ironically, so called diversity favouring states such as California are carry most homogeneous groupism in communities. Try making friends in liberal states and see how hard it is.

<comment><USER4> women are TAUGHT to smile whether they're feeling it or not. men will actually yell at me on the street if i'm not smiling when they think i should be. it's not something to be applauded, it's oppressive.</comment></comment>


The shark that makes you swim faster - <AUTHOR> http://www.timmyho.me/2013/06/guest-post-timmy-shark.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I love this story from two friends at Zappos. This is the good kind of fear. What motivates you?</comment>


Jeff Immelt Pulls Out of Running for Uber CEO - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-27/ge-s-immelt-pulls-self-out-of-running-to-become-ceo-of-uber <comment><USER2> > Another finalist is Meg Whitman, the chief executive of Hewlett Packard > Enterprise. While Whitman has previously said in the media she has no > interest in the job and plans to stay at HPE, sources say she is very much > still in the running.

I worked for Ms. Whitman at eBay. She is exceptionally smart and very good at being a leader. I met her a few times, and after the first time, she remembered who I was and what I did at the company every time after, even though I was inconsequential to her.

This skill however was also her downfall. I was at eBay when it grew from 3,000 to 13,000 employees. As it got bigger, she could no longer know what was happening everywhere.

Her leadership success comes from knowing everything that is happening and being able to make sure the right people are doing the right things and talking to the right people. But it breaks down when she can no longer have total knowledge of all happenings.

I think she'll make a good leader at Uber, but given that they are already at 12K+ employees, I wonder if she's learned to delegate better since I last worked for her. I hope she has, because it was really her only weakness.

<comment><USER3> Isn't that the opposite of great leadership? Leadership is a nebulous term that roughly -you need an essay to define it even roughly- means getting people on board with your mission.

If you can only micromanage a bunch of people, and you grow beyond where you can do that, and the mission fails because people no longer know what you want, then surely you've not provided leadership?

<comment><USER4> > _Isn 't that the opposite of great leadership?_

What is great leadership? An ability to excel in well-parametrised circumstances? Or doing well enough in a broad set of situations?

Steve Jobs was a great leader. He only worked well in specific circumstances, circumstances he sought to produce and maintain. The failure in the Whitman anecdote above is not in the scaling limit to her leadership. It is that she failed to detect it before she passed it. Presumably, she has learned her lesson.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Dodged a bullet there. I just cannot see how Immelt, whose claim to fame is putting billions into GE Digital (search for previous HN conversations of GE's software efforts for if you want to laugh/cry) would have been any use to a young company fighting in a hyper-competitive space, where the outcomes range from "world domination" and "collapse into nothingness". Immelt's track record is working within a large, established bureaucracy, and maybe keeping things from completely falling apart.

<comment><USER6> A question that has been raised elsewhere and I think worth revisiting is: Does Uber need a CEO from a certain industry, or does industry not matter? Transportation industry vs software, etc.

<comment><USER7> I think the real question should be why do companies feel the need to hire a "Professional CEO"? Is there some intangible skillset which only previous CEOs posess which is required to lead a company?

Plenty of startups have been lead to success by founders with zero business accumen. Why not look internally for someone who knows the product inside and out, and actually still _cares_ about the company rather than showing up for a payday?

<comment><USER3> > I think the real question should be why do companies feel the need to hire a > "Professional CEO"?

I think it's Tyler Cowen or someone from his blog who has the answer to this. It's the star system. It's relevant for sports, entertainment, CEOs, and anything else where the premium for an established player is significant.

Hire a new guy to do a star job, and you take a risk. Hire a guy someone else already hired, and you're just doing what's normal. New guy may be cheaper, but once he's elevated to stardom, his pricetag will as well. So no great win there. New guy may fail though, and they you will look stupid. Why'd you hire an untested guy? Maybe you should be replaced, too!

Established guy may fail, but many things can cause failure. You just got unlucky. OTOH if he does well, he's worth every penny.

New guy may do well, in which case you're fortunate for seeing what anyone would have seen.

If you've ever thought it was somewhat hard to explain why some people seem to be elevated while others with seemingly similar skill are left on the shelf, this is one mechanism. Add in actual skill difference and it starts to get interesting.

Wrt to Uber, there probably are a bunch of execs who've been there a while and know the place. They could probably do an ok job of it, but because the board are in a position where Uber really needs to be turned around properly, the people who could that best won't get the chance.

<comment><USER8> Ben Horowitz described this particularly well. See his social credit matrix for decisions:

[https://fortunedotcom.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/screen- sho...](https://fortunedotcom.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/screen- shot-2011-08-05-at-9-25-46-am1.png)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think the perfect CEO for Uber is Vishal Sikka. PhD in AI (cars!) from Stanford - Startup founder - Revitalized SAP with in-memory HANA database - Managed Infosys with 200k employees.

Vishal Sikka has both exceptional techincal skills and management experience. And he is available for a new job!

Like Travis, Sikka is very bullish and calls himself a "kshatriya warrior". I think that Sikka and Travis would be quite compatible with each other.

<comment><USER2> > I think that Sikka and Travis would be quite compatible with each other.

I think that's what they board is trying to avoid. They shoved Travis out because they didn't like his style. I don't think they want someone else with his style.

<comment><USER9> Yes, but given that Travis & his supporters have board seats + many full-time employees are fans of Travis, a new CEO who is in sync with Travis for aggressive business decisions while at the same is grounded, displays "CEO- style" behavior in public, would be a perfect fit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It is worth noting that "Benchmark, meanwhile, is reportedly still pushing for Whitman to get the job."

source - [http://money.cnn.com/2017/08/27/technology/jeff-immelt- uber/...](http://money.cnn.com/2017/08/27/technology/jeff-immelt- uber/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER11> Darkhorse: Padmasree Warrior. They really need a seasoned executive who understands autonomous cars. My best idea to get her is for Uber to acquire NIO.

</comment><comment><USER12> Meg Whitman has told the Wall Street Journal for a second time that she doesn't want the Uber CEO job. So who does that leave?

[https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/meg-whitman-stands-by- state...](https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/meg-whitman-stands-by-statement- she-wont-be-uber-ceo-1503524245)

<comment><USER13> I bet Marisa Mayer is on the list

<comment><USER14> She is the one list of CEOs to take the company to ground.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is Carol Bartz available?

<comment><USER15> I'm a Bartz fan based on Autodesk; she's the operational definition of adult supervision. But at 68, I think Uber wouldn't be the right choice for them or her. And after Yahoo, she wouldn't touch Uber with the board situation it has.

<comment><USER16> Maybe you could explain what it is specifically about running Uber that would preclude a 68-year-old from doing it?

Edit: Just to be clear, if it's not already: Part of why I ask is because I think Carol Bartz would be a fine candidate to give Uber the reality check it seems to need. She's a bullshit-eliminator. But there's a question as to whether Uber is merely a place _where there is a lot of bullshit_ (this I think most people agree on) or whether it's a place _constructed of bullshit_. If the latter then there's not really much hope for a Bartz type figure to succeed.

<comment><USER15> Uber is world scale and frankly, it's a mess with a drama laden founder still on the board. I just don't think she'd have the stamina to deal with that; I'm not sure who would. Happy to be surprised and as I've said, I'm a Bartz fan.

I don't think Uber is constructed of bullshit but do they ever need a Bartz. Unfortunately, Kalanick has constructed an _après moi, le déluge_ situation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There's a discussion already on this here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15111937](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15111937)

<comment><USER17> Thanks. Since the current submission was earlier, points to a marginally more informative article, and isn't paywalled, we've merged the comments into this one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Had to pass this one along about the two candidates for Uber CEO still in the running ;<).

[https://twitter.com/sokane1/status/901841886306021377](https://twitter.com/sokane1/status/901841886306021377)

</comment><comment><USER18> getting to the point where you really wonder who is next at this point lol

"Donald Trump no longer pursuing Uber CEO job"</comment>


German Twitter co-creator's new startup: "Amen" - <AUTHOR> http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&sl=de&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.faz.net%2Fartikel%2FC31158%2Fflorian-weber-twitter-pionier-will-etwas-machen-das-alles-veraendert-30388128.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Submitted this because I think it's kind of funny: A website for strong opinions called Amen.

Could this be this bubble's pets.com?</comment>