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Comment by waqf | Hacker News Reader

I think it's very useful in such a case to investigate, as scientifically and dispassionately as possible, exactly how such a moment came to be. And I think that would involve "getting into the heads" of the supporters of the cause. Do you not think so?

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That's true, but that shouldn't stop you from being able to pass judgement.

Just in case you're wondering, that is NOT a hypothetical example for me.

Well, if you see that to be in dichotomy with being principled or judging, then it is less noble then you seem to imply.

If by "being principled or judging" you mean labelling people as evil and dismissing them then I don't accept that that's axiomatically noble.

If by "being principled or judging" you mean having any ethical values at all, then I don't see that it is inconsistent with striving to understand others' minds; I was asking because it appeared that the poster I was responding to thought so.

It is not noble to intentionally bias yourself toward "proudly dream of genocide" which is exactly what you propose is doing. You do propose to spend a lot of effort to get into the heads of perpetrators ... but there is no equivalent feeling of pressure to get into the head and reality of victims who need help, support and defense right now. There is also difference between explaining and rationalizing and what is proposed here sounds to me closer to "rationalizing" - because you start with assumption that analysis should not end in negative judgement.

The "how it came to be" in real world history tend to be fairly long complicated story. It gets to be explained and revised literally for years after the fact, as important document start surfacing or people who were afraid to talk starts to talk. Typically it starts 20 years ago, when some journalists ended up beaten and arrested and someone's business interests something.

You can in fact study history of holocaust with principled opinion and judgement that Holocaust was bad.

I am not "biasing myself toward" a point of view; you are putting words in my mouth. If you can't consider someone's point of view without agreeing with it, then I do see the miscommunication. I can, and I also think it's necessary and important.

I am interested in solving the long-term problem of preventing the next genocide.

You are interested in solving the short-term problem of alleviating the current one.

They are both important work. Likely they are good fits for our respective skillsets. I don't mean to stop you from solving your problem and I'm not mad at you. I don't know why you want to insult me and stop me from solving mine.

> You can in fact study history of holocaust with principled opinion and judgement that Holocaust was bad.

Yes. That's exactly what I am proposing to do.

The thread starts with question: "Have you experienced a moment when most of your nation supports an unjust invasion, and many openly and proudly dream of genocide?" As a response to "judgement is inherently immature". That latter also seem to think that "principled is same as judgement".

Both of these refer to ongoing situation.

> I am interested in solving the long-term problem of preventing the next genocide.

How so? You feel we don't have huge amount of data about past genocides and desperately need new data from this one, before we can make judgements and decisions in an ongoing situation?

Why the limit of "must end up without judgement else you are immature"?

Well we obviously haven't yet solved the problem of preventing genocides, because we didn't prevent the current one. But we don't necessarily need new data, maybe we just need new interpretations to the data or new policies based on the interpretations, in fact I don't know how you got to that suggestion at all.

Other than that, I don't wish to defend what another poster (hans1729) said upthread as interpreted by you. My claim is simply that you should not stop trying to understand people just because you see their actions as "evil", because understanding them and how they got that way is a step on the path to having fewer people like that in future.

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