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Comment by scandox | Hacker News Reader

The point is that in his situation we don't know how many apparently "normal" people will start sending bone-saws out into the world.

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100% this. It’s also important not to dehumanise history’s bad guys, because that leads to a culture of complacency whereby people think “it could never happen here, because they were monsters and we are not”.

There might be two slightly different definitions of "humanize" at work here. Both of these are from the Cambridge dictionary [1]:

1) "to make something that is not human seem like a person"

2) "to make something less unpleasant and more suitable for people"

With dictators, I think we should try to do 1) but not 2).

[1] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/humanize

>It’s also important not to dehumanise history’s bad guys

Too late for one group. Go check how much Nazi vampire zombie media exists today.

The idea that morality is a function of situation more than character is called "situationism" in philosophy, I just looked it up, see [1][2]. Experimental psychology does find that character is fairly weak in most people and that under external pressure people will often behave inhumanely (Stanford prison experiment, Milgram obedience experiment, etc).

I still believe it is important to not be overly cynical. My mental model is that most people are neutral or good. It might be proved wrong say 5% of the time, when people are indeed put in MBS-like position. But the vast majority of the time it will be correct, and it will be much more useful than the cynical model where your normal friends are potential murderers that just lack opportunity. A more correct mental model is not always more useful.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situationism_(psychology) [2] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-character/#MorChaEm...

Another very common example throughout history: cannibalism. Nobody thinks they're capable of it yet somehow in a starvation situation it just happens to happen.

Or worth considering: https://twitter.com/mccormickprof/status/1278529694355292161

My mental model is that humans are pieces of shit, each and every last one. There is no such thing as a good human.

By insisting that MBS is some sort of specially evil person, I feel that you are devaluing the importance of genuine ethical consideration. I do not disagree with your specific points about his misbehaviour, but I want to emphasize that it is the throne and crown which empower him to do so much harm, and not any sort of blackened and hateful heart.

This is super important. A lot of people think that bad guys always behave like monsters and you can easily recognize them. In reality you would probably be positively impressed by a lot of them if you met them and didn’t know their background. Hitler was able to convince a lot of smart people to follow him and I have read he was very personable. Bernie Madoff could convince . Trump/Obama/Clinton haters would probably be surprised how nice these people are when meeting in person.

Normal people don't personally send bone-saws out into the world, but look at the rhetoric surrounding the recent protests in the US and Hong Kong. Plenty of normal people (many mainlanders, many persons of a particular political party affiliation) are cheer-leading the rabble to get dispersed with the maximum possible application of force - and most of them don't even have any stake in either the issue being protested, or the impact of the protests themselves!

And assuming the police are normal people too, they are all too happy to carry this out.

Normal people are quite happy to endorse or inflict violence against the enemy. Most of us just aren't in a position of power to do anything about it, though, other than post on Facebook, and write angry letters to the editor.

But give that normal person power over other people and freedom from consequences... And, well, you get something quite repulsive.

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