Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected].
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try [email protected] or [email protected]
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
It is completely true; the only reason to punish bad behavior is to disincentivise it.
We are not born with inherent understanding of good, bad, and what ends justify the means. It's all absorbed from our surroundings.
For example, you can be an openly corrupt authoritarian leader or CEO of massive evil corporation, and see yourself as good as you learned to put your family first and that randoms are all self-interested, so you might be as well in the name of something you hold dearer.
There are many ways to corrupt a person's thinking in a way that is hard to unfuck as it gets fundamental. Harder, even, if the base idea is shared by many.
In that regard, getting cruel is, on the practical side, only really an attempt to reinstate other values, or, more commonly, implant fear in others, so they might consider the danger too high and chicken out.