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34 | Paul Bloom on Empathy, Rationality, Morality, and Cruelty

Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas

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The Effects of Dehumanization on Human Traits

Torture, degradation and humiliation seem to involve the supposition that you're dealing with people. Sometimes when you view somebody as morally wrong, a morally bad individual, you in fact, you exaggerate their human traits. So if you're if you're hurting him as instrumental, you'll tend to dehumanize him because he doesn't matter. He's not much of a person anyway. If you want to get somebody to hurt somebody else in response to something that that person did, if you focus on their moral traits, you'll do better. This has political resonance. Think think how you would act if you want people to lash out an immigrants or just treat them as as dispensable

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