[Pryde]

Speaking solely to your first paragraph here, I've seen this sentiment expressed before, and it always strikes me as off in some way. I've not committed a lot of thought to the topic until recently, so apologies if my thoughts here are muddled or unclear.

I can pretty easily convince myself that a lot of what I'll call "smaller" bad deeds are primarily deterred by the threat of consequences: I never shoplifted a candy bar because it wasn't worth the perceived consequences. But I have a substantially harder time convincing myself that most people don't commit "grander" crimes largely because of a similar fear. Taking murder as the example and myself as a case study, I cannot fathom committing a murder because it feels wrong, there is a part of my mind that recoils at just the thought of it. Is that because the potential consequences of that act are ingrained into my psyche, or is there another reason? I'm inclined toward the latter, certainly. Not to mention that punishments geared toward deterrence often seem to not prevent murder from occurring.

I don't have any grand insights here, just sharing my observations on the topic, as it's come up surprisingly often recently in my experience on the internet.

[NoOneNew]

So I do understand your viewpoint because I absolutely shared it in the past and at no point do I want you to think that I'm about to speak down at you. A lot of people have never been in a real life scenario to experience the actual decision process of doing "bad deeds". Which is actually good. The world is technically a better place because more and more people never have to experience the thought process first hand. However, they sometimes pretend they have, but they really haven't. I was in that field for quite a while.

First time parents find an issue with this too. People who figure they themselves are perfect angels incapable of harm, now have to care for their new little angel. An angel doesn't protect a weak little angel from the horrors of the world. What happens when someone abuses or abducts their child? Remember that Olympic physician who was touching all those underage girls? One of the fathers begged the judge for 5 min in a locked room with the guy. When denied, he still charged at the bastard in the courtroom. I bet you 100% that father would have always said he would never do such a thing prior to this event happening. We all lie that we are incapable or evil deeds. No, we need the right circumstances to ignore the consequences. We are afraid of retaliation until we no longer fear it for "good reasons". If you live a life where you never test those waters, hey that's a pretty good easy life. But theres something else to be said about understanding and accepting ones shadow prior hand so you dont go ballistic accidentally. I think the thought that you are incapable of evil is more dangerous than knowing you are capable of it. Because you never question if what you are doing is right or wrong if you are already biased that you can only do good.

[Pryde]

Hey, thanks for engaging and no worries, nothing in your comment struck me as condescending.

I see your point here, and will grant that I've been fortunate to not have been in a situation in which I've had to consider anything approaching a "bad deed". Most of my thoughts on the subject are purely hypothetical, and informed by conversations with my dad, who has Seen Some Shit.

Looking back on the 2 times I can think of where I have considered striking someone to cause harm (both in middle and high school, a bully and a fight respectively), it seems to me that there is an element of considering consequences, but in neither circumstance were those consequences external. In both cases, it was very much a question of "am I going to feel bad about this later?", which prompted the question of justification rather than punishment. Perhaps at a certain level this is the same thing, but it seems at least qualitatively different to me, a kind of fear of my own judgment rather than that of another person. Would you generally consider this to be the same process, or not?

In either case, I can only wholeheartedly agree that perceiving oneself as incapable of evil is a Bad Idea. It seems dangerous to me for much the same reason you laid out, and I will occasionally attempt to engage in the kind of introspection necessary to grapple with what I might be capable of in a similar situation. I'm hesitant to say I'm incapable (psychologically) of doing something terrible in a similar situation, and my previous comment was from the reductionist point of view of a spherical murderer in a vacuum, as it were. Were I in that father's position, I know that I would feel _justified_ in taking that kind of action, which may prompt me to seek the opportunity, which is again where I see a slight difference from being prohibited solely by the fear of consequences, if that makes sense.

Again, thanks for taking the time to respond!

[Geminidog]

I'm similar to you but there are people who are very different. Psychopaths exist on the end of this spectrum but there are many people in between as it is a spectrum and can be measured physically and determined genetically. People not like us are much more common than you think.

I'd peg the number at 30-40% of people who are largely indifferent to murder and abide by the rules simply because of consequences society or habit. This is of course is just a anecdotal and hypothetical number.

The problem is when people judge humanity they instinctively reach for a mirror and believe that other people are a reflection. This is partly true but it causes people to miss many parts of the personality spectrum that are massively different.

Case in point:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-neuroscien...

The above is an example of a psychopath who probably would have lived his life as a normal person were it not for his occupation and a serendipitous brain scan.

You will note that he has confirmed psychopathy through genetic evaluation and physical evaluation of the structure of his brain.

Also just want to say that I lied. I'm not like you. I'm a bit lower on the spectrum. I won't murder someone but if a stranger dies in front of me, I won't care. I'll definitely try to help him, but I won't be having problems sleeping at night.