| ▲ | _carbyau_ 6 hours ago |
| > A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses. This is a characteristic of spite. Maybe spitefulness is stupid. But true spitefulness is a whole other level to watch out for. |
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| ▲ | evilduck 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| Spite implies intent. As an outside observer spitefulness and stupidity may appear the same, but the stupid person may have had good intentions and no ill-will towards those they harm. |
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| ▲ | locknitpicker 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > This is a characteristic of spite. I don't think so. The motivation behind spiteful actions is to purposely cause losses to others, and the gain derived from this action is rejoicing on other people's losses. This implies having and displaying power over others, and exercising this power to establish themselves even with so little gain. Very different than deriving no gain. |
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| ▲ | Edman274 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Consider the Ultimatum game. Alice and Bob are part of a millionaire madman's experiment, and so Alice and Bob are told the following: they have won a sum of $10,000 and Alice will be given the authority to decide how to divide their winnings. If Bob accepts Alice's offer, then both of them get the money as decided in the offer. If Bob rejects Alice's offer, then both of them get nothing. In addition, they have no ability to communicate or negotiate the offer; it's a one and done thing. So let's say Alice offers 100 dollars to Bob, and she will keep 9900. Now, most people would say that Bob is acting out of spite if he rejects Alice's offer, because he's causing Alice losses and he gains nothing, and the benefit he receives is that Alice is made sad by this. Is that a fair interpretation, though? He believes that he's acting out of a moral obligation to screw over someone who themself is (in his mind) acting unjustly. He's valuing punishing someone that he feels is breaking a social contract greater than the 100 dollars that he would otherwise have. What do you call what he is doing in this situation if not spite? And if he is acting out of a principled objection to an unfair situation, does it become something other than spite? And if it's actually principled, why does the principle seem to melt away when the offer is $7000 to $3000? I feel like spite is a huge motivator behind a lot of cultural issues nowadays but it can only come from people who feel as if they are coming from a place of weakness or victimization. There is always a moral indignation. The gratification is in seeing their vision of justice meted out. It isn't always a psychopathic, sadistic behavior but it can be in those cases where a vision of justice is distorted and psychopathic. Consider this: isn't imprisoning people often a form, ultimately, of societal spite? In isolation it may be cheaper to just give petty criminals whatever they want rather than paying the cost for them being jailed. Amortized cost, it's probably a lot cheaper to pay a drunkard's taxi home from the bar every single time he goes drinking than to lock him in jail for 3 months for a second DUI. Is spite the reason that we don't just give him that? Again, the justice thing. |
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| ▲ | fuoqi an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I think the whole sentence is a bad take. The described behavior can be perfectly rational (and thus commonly considered not "stupid") in the case when cost function of the acting person has a negative weight assigned to the counterpart group/person. In other words, when someone considers the other an "enemy", it makes sense to hurt the other even such act results in some direct losses. Now, we can argue that playing negative-sum games is "stupid". And in most contexts of the modern human society such heuristic would be correct, but I would be really careful with a sweeping generalization, otherwise instead of a proper understanding of the underlying behavioral motivations you are likely to devolve into primitive explanations of someone being "stupid" or even "evil". |
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| ▲ | dr_dshiv 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| But the stupid usually have what they think are good intentions. |
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| ▲ | taneq 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from enemy action. | |
| ▲ | gsf_emergency_4 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Omnis enim ex infirmitate feritas est --Seneca The modern nuance on "infirm" makes that seem more relevant. aside from the unintentional cruelty.. | | |
| ▲ | pksebben 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | I saw that movie, and I don't recall seneca ever talking about infirm ferrets. I know for a fact that eminem wasn't in it. | | |
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| ▲ | nathias 31 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] |
| spite is just willed stupidity |
