> I want to talk about hate from a purely scientific perspective.
> The reason hate exists is to encourage us to punish parasites who try to erode social trust by stealing from us instead of cooperating with us.
Um, I would point to that other post where you distinguish "science and scientism" (https://questioner.substack.com/p/trust-the-experts?s=r). It's all well and good to offer a hypothesis for why hate exists, but it seems not to be more than a hypothesis.
This hypothesis doesn't seem useful to your position, either. Hate isn't good because it's natural (that would be a naturalistic fallacy) or because it evolved for a reason.
And I don't agree that "If people lost the ability to hate others, society would most likely collapse within a generation, since nobody would get punished". No, we can decide to punish for reasons other than hate (and often, but not always, we can even get the results we want without punishment). For instance, we can support punishments as a deterrent to prevent things we dislike, such as punishing fraud because we don't like losing our stuff. It's not even necessary to "hate" losing my stuff; it could be that I'm sad about it, or stressed out, or worried about the consequences, or hungry because I can't afford food now.
There are people who insist "I don't hate the person who wronged me". These people would probably still take steps to avoid being wronged again.
Good points, but most people aren't intellectual enough to be able to say "I don't hate this person who wronged me, but I need to give them a deterrent to stop them from wronging me again, so I'm going to punish them robustly to make them think twice about taking such actions in the future." It's easier to just think "I hate this person, so I'm going to hurt them."
And at the end of the day, the outcome is the same, so who cares what emotions lie in their heart? If bad people are being punished, and the overall effect is to deter them from doing bad things, does it really matter whether I enjoy punishing them or not?
In a world without hate, those who don't find a way to make deterrents happen are less likely to reproduce. Intellect works just as well as hate for this purpose.
In a world with hate, punishing the person who wronged you "robustly" might just mean that you too will go to prison. Hate - and anger (as I have observed as someone who has had anger management problems) - are almost purely hazardous emotions in the modern world. I would be better off without my anger, and I think the same is true for hate.
I think that as long as you can use your intellect to control your hate (rather than allowing your hate to control your intellect), then it's a beneficial and useful emotion. For example, I hate Antifa members because in the past, some Antifa members thought they could threaten me. If I acted on that hate in an unintelligent manner by going out and killing Antifa members, that would obviously be a bad thing. But if I intelligently insulted Antifa members until they attacked me and THEN I killed them, that would be a good thing, because there would be fewer evil anarchists out there attempting to suppress other people's 1st Amendment rights through intimidation and violence, and that leads to a better society for all of us.
You say that intellect without hate is better, but I *like* my hate,and I don't see any good reason to let it go. Satiating the emotion of anger through the process of revenge is very gratifying to me - as well as to countless other people, to judge by the way social media algorithms work. Why try to extinguish a natural emotion, when it's far healthier to sublimate that emotion towards creating deterrents for bad behavior - a more useful purpose which is also beneficial to society at large?
> I want to talk about hate from a purely scientific perspective.
> The reason hate exists is to encourage us to punish parasites who try to erode social trust by stealing from us instead of cooperating with us.
Um, I would point to that other post where you distinguish "science and scientism" (https://questioner.substack.com/p/trust-the-experts?s=r). It's all well and good to offer a hypothesis for why hate exists, but it seems not to be more than a hypothesis.
This hypothesis doesn't seem useful to your position, either. Hate isn't good because it's natural (that would be a naturalistic fallacy) or because it evolved for a reason.
And I don't agree that "If people lost the ability to hate others, society would most likely collapse within a generation, since nobody would get punished". No, we can decide to punish for reasons other than hate (and often, but not always, we can even get the results we want without punishment). For instance, we can support punishments as a deterrent to prevent things we dislike, such as punishing fraud because we don't like losing our stuff. It's not even necessary to "hate" losing my stuff; it could be that I'm sad about it, or stressed out, or worried about the consequences, or hungry because I can't afford food now.
There are people who insist "I don't hate the person who wronged me". These people would probably still take steps to avoid being wronged again.
Good points, but most people aren't intellectual enough to be able to say "I don't hate this person who wronged me, but I need to give them a deterrent to stop them from wronging me again, so I'm going to punish them robustly to make them think twice about taking such actions in the future." It's easier to just think "I hate this person, so I'm going to hurt them."
And at the end of the day, the outcome is the same, so who cares what emotions lie in their heart? If bad people are being punished, and the overall effect is to deter them from doing bad things, does it really matter whether I enjoy punishing them or not?
In a world without hate, those who don't find a way to make deterrents happen are less likely to reproduce. Intellect works just as well as hate for this purpose.
In a world with hate, punishing the person who wronged you "robustly" might just mean that you too will go to prison. Hate - and anger (as I have observed as someone who has had anger management problems) - are almost purely hazardous emotions in the modern world. I would be better off without my anger, and I think the same is true for hate.
I think that as long as you can use your intellect to control your hate (rather than allowing your hate to control your intellect), then it's a beneficial and useful emotion. For example, I hate Antifa members because in the past, some Antifa members thought they could threaten me. If I acted on that hate in an unintelligent manner by going out and killing Antifa members, that would obviously be a bad thing. But if I intelligently insulted Antifa members until they attacked me and THEN I killed them, that would be a good thing, because there would be fewer evil anarchists out there attempting to suppress other people's 1st Amendment rights through intimidation and violence, and that leads to a better society for all of us.
You say that intellect without hate is better, but I *like* my hate,and I don't see any good reason to let it go. Satiating the emotion of anger through the process of revenge is very gratifying to me - as well as to countless other people, to judge by the way social media algorithms work. Why try to extinguish a natural emotion, when it's far healthier to sublimate that emotion towards creating deterrents for bad behavior - a more useful purpose which is also beneficial to society at large?