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I always preferred "The Platinum Rule": Treat others as _they_ would like to be treated.

That rule breaks down if it isn't qualified. What if the way they want to be treated isn't good for them? Especially in the case of immature people (and especially immature children). A simple example: always giving a kid a ton of candy whenever they want is hardly treating them well.

How we should treat others is rarely an easy-to-discern topic. Lot of room for error there. We could say, "oh, but it's assuming they know what they're doing; or, oh, it's assuming they're a normal functioning person; etc". But the fact is, in life, a lot of people don't know what they're doing. They struggle with their relationships, their finances, and their very purpose of life. Whether it's a high school sophomore desperate for friends or a successful, rich guy with a mid-life crisis, we all have moments of weakness where we make irrational decisions and have irrational desires.

Building on that point, further complicating matters is that people often don't know what they want, often including how they want to be treated. Oh, we know it usually means that people want respect, love, money, happiness, whatever. But what does it mean at a tactical level that actually gives us the insight for how to treat them well? Was my mom really jealous of me getting a box of cookies for a friend instead of her (long story), or did she just wish we could hang out more together before I left again for my new home? Well, turns out that although she was jealous of the cookies, she didn't care about the cookies at all. She wanted to spend time with me. Now, how is a normal person who sucks at conflict resolution supposed to pick up on that? It took me 30 minutes of talking with her.

I really think that this rule is useless, unless one is some kind of prophet who can see into people's innermost hearts. It offers little real-world tactical advice. You might argue that the Golden Rule doesn't either, but I'd say it's much easier to implement, and much more difficult to screw up. And as the other guy notes, this Platinum Rule would derive from the Golden Rule anyway.

The Platinum Rule only sort of derives from the Golden Rule (at least the name does). Useless? Really? For example, I hate to be waited on. Is that how I should treat others? Does it take a rocket surgeon to figure out who likes to be waited on and who doesn't? Wow. Useless, really?

I'm sorry, did you just apply the Golden Rule to yourself? Confused by that, if you're pushing this Platinum Rule (which I actually had usually rather heard of described as the Silver Rule, but that's besides the point).

My point isn't about how simple things are simple. It's that human interactions and relationships can be complex things, and we shouldn't take them lightly. And there have been plenty of times where I screwed up in even the simple things. If you never have, I applaud you. But I see Platinum Rule being difficult to implement with a high success rate, especially in complex scenarios, given what I've already discussed above.

A better way to refute me is to explain how I overcomplicate things and why life is really as simple as you describe. But I don't think I am overcomplicating things at all.

> did you just apply the Golden Rule to yourself?

Yes, as an example of how it commonly fails.

Of course I screw up simple things (or are you just being rude?). Sure, the Platinum Rule is harder to implement but that doesn't mean it cannot be a good rule or preferred to the Golden Rule.

The Silver Rule is the negative form of the Golden Rule.

Your whole comment seems ill-conceived.

I'm just asking you to respond to my concerns about your Platinum Rule. You haven't done that yet. Where in your example you say that the Golden Rule fails, I don't think it does if you understand the heart of why we're saying the Platinum drives from the Golden. I think you're oversimplifying these rules, and that they have more overlap than you're implying. It's why I see the derivation to be so easy to digest.

Email me if you'd like to continue the conversation. I do find it interesting and also important. My mind is full of this topic having finally gotten around to reading Speaker of the Dead. I love Ender.

And I'm sorry if you thought I was rude.

The Platinum Rule, however, derives from the the Golden Rule. The reason to treat others as they would like to be treated is because (1) you want others to treat you as you want to be treated and (2) you should do unto others etc.

The golden rule has a serious problem of enabling sociopaths.

Only help people worth helping.

People like to argue against the golden rule, saying that if you are deranged, it gives you license to hurt others. First, this is an edge case. Second, it is out of context.

The golden rule was given by Jesus secondary to the command "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind."

If you follow both those commands, you'll only do good to your fellow man.

The greatest commandment was two parts: what you said + "love your neighbor as yourself". The golden rule is kind of redundant if you follow greatest commandment.

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+22&v...

This is the best chapter in the entire Bible IMO. It's funny how many Christian couples think they'll still be married in Heaven.

> People like to argue against the golden rule, saying that if you are deranged, it gives you license to hurt others.

You are shifting the argument. That has nothing to do with my comment. Straw man fallacy.

> The golden rule was given by Jesus secondary to the command "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind."

No, in the christian bible it says a man named Jesus gave a new commandment. The "Golden Rule" is a generalization made in more recent times to try to find a common ground across religions. And it's very vague as many religions are closer to what's named as the "Silver Rule".

> If you follow both those commands, you'll only do good to your fellow man.

That's not on the bible and even if it were, it's your dogma book. You provide me no proof it is that way. Not even a decent hypothesis.

Small problem:

alleco: The golden rule has a serious problem of enabling sociopaths.

lancefisher: People like to argue against the golden rule, saying that if you are deranged, it gives you license to hurt others.

alleco: You are shifting the argument. That has nothing to do with my comment. Straw man fallacy.

It isn't a straw man fallacy. It is a direct paraphrase of your statement. "enabling" and "giving license" are pretty much the same thing. As are forms of "sociopath" and "deranged (who will) hurt others" -- at least in common vernacular.

"The golden rule has a serious problem of enabling sociopaths" obviously means people following the golden rule helping indiscriminately are helping sociopaths. And sociopaths, by definition, do not follow the rule. Sociopaths thriving in society are very bad, obviously.

"People like to argue against the golden rule, saying that if you are deranged, it gives you license to hurt others", this vague accusation first generalices all criticism of the golden rule as the same. Second it states something that has nothing to do with my coments. I did not claim "if you are deranged, [the golden rule] gives you license to hurt others'. I wouldn't be surprised if that was made up on the spot by lancefisher.

Your points are hard-headed nonsense and a waste of time.

Edit: minor typos

"The golden rule has a serious problem of enabling sociopaths" obviously means people following the golden rule helping indiscriminately are helping sociopaths. And sociopaths, by definition, do not follow the rule. Sociopaths thriving in society are very bad, obviously.

Your claim of obviously is not true because you say so. You may have meant it the way you claim, but an equally valid interpretation of the term enabling is:

The golden rule allows sociopaths to justify behavior by claiming "I expect to be treated the way I am treating you". In a society that puts the golden rule at the top of social norms, this allows the sociopaths to do their thing while within the guidelines. Allowing something to be justified is in fact enabling it. This is why the term for codependent family who make excuses for their addict loved ones and who clean up the addict's messes is enabler.

It is important to note when there are multiple subtly different ways of defining words, it can lead to confusion when you think you are being clear.

Your comment is wrong in so many levels it isn't worth refuting. And you sound like a brainwashed individual who won't listen to reason, anyway.

you're making some pretty big assumptions that: 1) you can actually tell who is worth helping 2) even if the golden rule does enable sociopaths, that the overall benefits don't outweigh that downside

1) It's very easy to tell if you pay attention. Selfish people are trivial to spot. Also those who sweet talk others with compliments to use them and move on afterwards.

2) How do you know? Sociopaths break the trust of people and can easily break a working system. A classic real anecdote of mine:

We were about 100 people in a very large open space office. The vast majority of us were normal or nice. But two selfish idiots kept stealing/hoarding anything that was freely available. From coffee cups and plastic cutlery to toilet paper. This drove everyone to hoard all those resources, creating a bigger problem and masking the original culprits.

My point is a tiny fraction of the population can easily break a healthy system/society. Don't underestimate this.

A healthy system has a way of ejecting unhealthy influences. As in, "stop this crap or we're going to have to let you go."

You have to find them first. Most sociopaths take abuse as a full time job and usually are very good at hiding or excusing themselves. Sometimes they just say they're sorry, stop doing it for a while, but later resuming their original behaviour with some adaptation.

I don't see you responding very well to jwb's argument. You made a statement that the Golden Rule enables sociopaths. jwb made a counterstatement that your statement makes some assumptions that are not necessarily true. You address the first assumption with some logic and an anecdote of your own, but you by no means address the second, which seems to be the more important one.

Instead, you seem to (and if I'm misinterpreting you here, I'm sorry, but I see no other way to read it) say that the second assumption jwb pointed out is irrelevant because your anecdote demonstrates that the power of the horrible few can be larger by orders of magnitude. Not that I'm good at analogies, but it's like saying cats are absolutely horrible because 1 cat you used to have made 10 dogs go wild, while jwb is saying that whatever trouble cats may cause in our world, the world is still better off for having them.

And then ekanes responded to you with a statement that also reflects my own life experience. I can't think of a single time in my life when a small or large group of people have been unable to identify such similar culprits and then either reform or eject them. Aside from the fact that 1 anecdote does not a study make, I feel you're falling prey to anchoring bias, attentional bias, insensitivity to sample size, and belief bias all in one (the belief bias being the most ironic, given what appears to be your antagonism towards people of faith). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases

edit: better word arrangement

I provide real examples behind my opinions. I don't have to prove or disprove vague statements made by others.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot

"the philosophic burden of proof lies upon a person making scientifically unfalsifiable claims rather than shifting the burden of proof to others, specifically in the case of religion"

The statements jwb made about assumptions you appeared to be making were not vague. And they had nothing to do with religion either. The only one who started making statements that included anything related to religion was lancefisher, and on a completely different thread branch. I think my original statement stands. You're not responding very well to jwb's statements. In fact, you're letting your opinion of lancefisher's statements influence your decision to respond to jwb. Again, jwb made no religious statements. In fact, the whole thread branch following jwb's comments is 100% free of religious language. I don't know why you're allowing yourself to do this. It makes you look unnecessarily obstinate.

edit: Looking at the lancefisher thread, you're not being just obstinante, but also dismissive. I don't think it's fair to complain that others aren't using reason if you're not willing to respond with reason. Whether you think of it as a waste of time or not, I think you lose the right to complain about lack of reason if you're not willing to display it yourself in detail like the way I'm trying to do now and the way others are trying to. If you think it's a waste of time, then it's better to just exit the conversation.

Wait, it's very easy to identify sociopaths one post ago, but they're good at hiding/excusing now? You might want to pick a side...

It's easy to detect a sociopath on a personal level. It's not easy to detect their sociopathic actions when they hide in groups. "Is Alice a sociopath?" is a lot easier than "Who are the abusers out of these 100?"

At personal level the work of detecting them is distributed, so it scales. If addressed at group level by controllers (e.g. HR) it doesn't. If the group follows blindly the Golden Rule, HR is lost.

Also knee-jerk solutions making strict rules trying to enforce the Golden Rule tend to make things worse, in my experience.

Meh. Only something like 5% of the population is sociopathic. As long as you take reasonable precautions, it's okay to treat most people you meet as if they're one of the other 95%.

Sociopaths drive people into cynicism.

I've had to work with sociopaths, and being used and abused ain't fun.

But I hope you'll get over it. For sure, cynicism, won't bring you happiness.

I never proposed cynicism! I clearly say you should be mindful who you help. That's it.

It's always hard to get the tone of a forum message. I thought that the contact of sociopath brought you to cynicism. Obviously, I was wrong.

Neglecting abusers perpetuates abuse.

It's nice to get the appropriate response when it's needed.

I once had a flat on my bike, and tried for about 20 minutes to flag down cyclists (on a busy route) that I could see had a pump (I didn't have one, but I had a new tube). Eventually someone that passed turned back rather reluctantly - then stated they'd go home and fetch me a pump as they'd experienced a good deed the night before. They left and then returned to assist when others just tried their best to ignore me. Kindness has a habit of spreading.

Thank you for the tl;dr review.