[msla]

> The Kitty Genovese story is a myth?

Worse than a myth: It's an example of something I half-jokingly call "Philosophically True" because it's something repeated and believed in order to bolster a philosophical position, such that it has a truth value even if it's factually wrong because some people are just that resistant to changing their minds. If you want to believe that people are basically shit and have no redeeming value and will watch a woman get killed in full view without doing anything, the usual story appeals to you, and people saying it's factually wrong won't really sway you.

Another example is how the tabula rasa idea shapes some kinds of moral philosophy: If you believe that external cultural indoctrination is absolutely required for people to develop a moral sense, you have to believe that people are blank slates at birth. This is not true, in that even toddlers have a sense of fairness [1], but if there's an innate morality, well, your favored mode of cultural indoctrination is less important and we can't have that, can we?

[1] https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/do-kids-ha...

[Gibbon1]

> "Philosophically True" because it's something repeated and believed in order to bolster a philosophical position, such that it has a truth value even if it's factually wrong because some people are just that resistant to changing their minds.

I like that a lot. Also explains why people get extremely testy when you try to point out it's not factual. Because then they feel you're attacking their moral center.

> If you believe that external cultural indoctrination is absolutely required for people to develop a moral sense, you have to believe that people are blank slates at birth. This is not true, in that even toddlers have a sense of fairness

Reminds me of this. Capuchin monkey fairness experiment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KSryJXDpZo

[msla]

> Capuchin monkey fairness experiment.

Right. Humans are social primates so we expect humans to have prosocial instincts, and we expect those instincts to be derived from earlier examples of social primates.

(Googles... )

Hey, Wikipeida has a whole article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inequity_aversion_in_animals

> In controlled experiments it has been observed, in varying degrees, in capuchin monkeys, chimpanzees, macaques, marmosets, dogs, wolves, rats, crows and ravens. No evidence of the effect was found in tests with orangutans, owl monkeys, squirrel monkeys, tamarins, kea, and cleaner fish. Due to inconclusive evidence it is assumed that some bonobos, baboons, gibbons, and gorillas may be inequity averse. Disadvantageous inequity aversion is most common, that is, the animal protests when it gets a lesser reward than another animal. But advantageous inequity aversion has been observed as well, in chimpanzees, baboons and capuchins: the animal protests when it gets a better reward. Scientists believe that sensitivity to inequity co-evolved with the ability to cooperate, as it helps to sustain benefitting from cooperation.

As I said, that's pretty much it for the strongest interpretations of tabula rasa: We have innate morality, our ancestors had it back to the dim and distant pre-human prehistory, and the fact it's possible to train kids out of it doesn't prove it wasn't there to begin with. The fact some people don't have it (cf antisocial personality disorder) is proof of a disease process, an acquired or congenital illness, not that those people are "purer" for having no built-in moral sense, or that without society indoctrinating a specific morality we'd all be utterly callous.