Hacker News Reader

Comment by osrec | Hacker News Reader

[flagged]

this is ridiculous. I'm a socialist and I believe that people should have far more of life's necessities provided to them by the state; I think supermarkets should be nationalised; I think water and electricity should be free up to a limit. on the other hand, this "people disagree with me about something sensitive so they're unevolved and/or subhuman" lark is childish as fuck and completely hypocritical

people think things for a reason, and it's rarely because they're sociopaths or they're unevolved or they're stupid, and assuming that it is lazy and uncritical

No, there, at least in the USA, a large amount of very dumb people. They also tend to be quite sadistic as well, thinking 'those people' deserve the sadism and torment.

This percolates through our whole society, one case of which is this scholastic food 'debt'.

And also, during some of Biden's years, there was a few years of free school lunches. And was also summarily cancelled. Even democrats have this pervasive 'those people don't deserve X'.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/free-school-lunches-set...

you're proving my point. people think these things because, as you say, they're instilled in the American national mentality. it makes sense to think that's wrong, it makes sense to think people should think for themselves and try to engage their empathy circuits for people not in their immediate family, but it's taking it a million steps too far to say they're subhuman or unevolved, and it's not helping anything anyway. perhaps it was too far to say that it's rarely because they're stupid though

A less evolved sense of humility (as I originally put it) does not equate to stupid. They are far from stupid - they are ruthless consumers of every scrap of advantage they can get, including the best education, food, clothes to name but a few things. They believe they deserve that advantage.

In fact, they see the person who can't afford lunch as stupid - after all, an intelligent person should at least be able to get lunch - it's so easy! What they don't realise is how much each person is impacted by their own starting position in life (which, I believe to be random), and how that in turn impacts where they are now.

Many "privileged" people lack empathy, because they believe the tables can never turn. They don't even want to entertain the thought. They believe their privilege is a birthright. In some cases, they are probably correct; they will enjoy privilege for their entire lives. But in exceptional circumstances, they will be caught out, and their opinion will undoubtedly change.

So, it's not stupidity, it is willful ignorance. History is full of such examples, some more chilling and devastating than others.

I feel like you're not actually replying to the things I said. I added that they may be stupid as an afterthought given that I value challenging societal norms highly as a signal of intelligence. the main points were elsewhere

How so? You said my comment was ridiculous because I was implying stupidity or a lack of evolution in the general sense, but my comment concerned the evolution of their humility, not their evolution in general. My last comment simply clarified that.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com