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Comment by majewsky | Hacker News Reader

> Anyone can feel excitement at taking another's property.

My upbringing has had this "golden rule of ethics" (don't do to others what you don't want done upon yourself) ingrained in me pretty well, so I would never feel excitement about this.

(Hypothesis: This ridiculous objectivism has had people forget how much cooperation is ingrained into humans by nature.)

That said, I am aware that such thoughts exist in my subconsciousness, because the subc is always exploring all possible paths, but I have never experienced that as an even remotely acceptable (in terms of my own moral) path of action.

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> don't do to others what you don't want done upon yourself

This only works for people who sufficiently appreciate their own possessions. Others might develop a very relaxed "stuff comes, stuff goes, who cares it's just materialistic crap anyways" attitude and and that equips them to have surprisingly little remorse in regards to theft. This is probably exemplified best in the extremely high rate of theft affecting near-zero-value bikes in many Dutch cities. That kind of thief might even rationalize by inverting guilt, "if he feels bad about the loss it's his own fault that he is not as cool about shitty old piles of rust as I am"

Have you ever watched a heist film? If so, you can't claim not to understand how it could be exciting to break into someone's property, risk imprisonment or death, and take their stuff. Go watch one some time, the writers make sure to paint the victims as bad men and the thieves as anti-heroes so that you can enjoy the fantasy without guilt.

You've missed my point for the opportunity to moralize and posture. Consider this: You know cheating is wrong, you probably consider yourself to be someone that would never do it, yet you can still acknowledge that it would most likely be enjoyable for at least a very short while, right? That's all I'm saying, not (lmao) some kind of faux-objectivist philosophy on the right to take other people's property or whatever it is you seem to be imagining.

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