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Comment by mdp2021 | Hacker News Reader

mdp2021

> useful to society

On the contrary, the "respect" towards others is a condition to societies. Otherwise, all you'd had would be "accomplices". And also since Edward Bunker told us that actually, "dog eat dog",

> will actively hurt your own life

in a pool of free rogues you'll be at severe disadvantage as opposed to a society.

> One only lives once so you better make sure

you will achieve what you should. That includes¹ being something good, not just having some fleeting goods.

¹Edit: I wrote 'includes', but that's rhetoric - I meant "mostly is".

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Society already is full of rogues and guess who is winning in this game? The super rich already buying themselves out of society, punishment usually only hurts the ones who already barely own anything. Whats the benefit of a "society"?

> and guess who is winning

Again that is your perspective on "winning", which remains subjective (and normally faulty). Others call psychopathic achievers simply "contemptible".

> Whats the benefit of a "society"?

That would be the whole work of Thomas Hobbes, for example: avoiding the nightmare of perpetual conflict. It is very linear to see the benefit of being able to trust your neighbour.

Trusting your neighbor already is a mistake. Well people like me benefit from society as I can benefit from people being naive.

>Well people like me benefit from society as I can benefit from people being naive

Then, you acknowledge that you benefit from empathy. But only so long as people do not detect that you are not participating in mutual understanding and reciprocation. Once they notice your lack of genuine engagement, your previously gained benefits will disappear.

On the other hand, people who exhibit empathy towards others will continue to benefit.

Do you see that, by your own logic, empathy is beneficial to society?

> already is a mistake

No. Very clearly I meant "to be able to trust your neighbour is an asset; not being able to trust your neighbour is a liability", which is a plain analytic basic reply to your question. The statement you replied with has nothing to do with what I have written. If there was a misunderstanding, instead of just bad communication, it may reveal why you see things in a twisted way - but then know it is really a faulty perspective, not the state of things.

Of course you can be """benefiting""" from the lack of society, the "frontier anarchy" in which you implicitly declare are in: were it a society, you would have received since a very early age a credible absolute threat of violence, or shunning, which would have destroyed an advantage of profiting inappropriately.

> Well people like me benefit from society as I can benefit from people being naive.

So you’re a leech on society, got it.

I even contribute, by paying taxes. Weird leech

Because you want to or because you are too much of a coward not to?

Something tells me you’d be face down in a ditch somewhere if the world actually reflected your ideal instead of the comfy one we live in where you get to take advantage of the “naive”.

Taxes in my country get automatically paid before I even see the money, so I dont rlly have a choice

There are other societies than the American one and I recommend you look at them before you make such sweeping statements

I am not American, and the same thing is happening in every country.

Generally, high-trust societies work better than low-trust societies.

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