ProZachJ

I nailed one on this line of reasoning because the person had already expressed moral outrage for the surveillance state and moral support for privacy technologies such as TOR I asked this of one of them and only got a smirk in return I found though that I got further by switching off the argument from morality. I pointed out that perhaps they are correct that we are in a state of nature but as I see it they are simply miscalculating their risk/reward ratio for a number of reasons: 1. They are overestimating their own power if they are not willing to commit physical violence in maintenance of that power. 2. They are under estimating the power of others to act against their efforts. 3. If their measure of success is monetary they aren't doing THAT much better than I for basically the same job and I have a lot lower risk of complete asset seizure in the future. I also will point out to them that they are just being intellectually lazy. Defending something is exponentially harder than attacking it. I also like to bring up the topic of Nash vs Smith with them to point out that their activities are encouraging natural competitors to cooperate in defeating their efforts. It's usually not a good long term survival strategy to incentivize your enemies (and they do think of their targets as enemies mostly from a somewhat left "evil corporate overlords" type mentality) to adopt strategies that will make them stronger. I also discuss my "preference" for ethical behavior in terms of fostering opportunities for coopetition that will increase my power in the world with a lower risk/reward ratio then their approach. I've tried this line of reasoning but it's difficult to succeed with if they stand particularly firm on the concept of "the only good is my good right now". Which I think is why I've found that their particular brand of minor sociopathy is better attacked by questioning their premise that their actions are actually serving their best interest.

I might ask them - "are you trying to dominate me now? do you think I'm trying to dominate you?" I actually did ask this in one case and got only a smirk as an answer.

I work in the field of application security and through friends and industry conferences I've come in contact with a number of people who play for the other team. Many of them have similar life experience and opinions about the world around them as me and frankly are fun and interesting people to have a beer with. All of them have engaged readily in philosophical discussion about what they do and why. The commonalty of their argument struck me, and basically boiled down to: "Look man, let's be honest, all that stuff about free markets, win/win, ethics, it is all fantasy. We live in a state of nature. The strong survive and the weak perish. Our world, bad technology, and my skill means that I am strong. I'm just surviving and frankly your belief in that stuff just serves the purpose of stronger people who want to dominate you." I had fun trying to tear this down in each case. How would you approach it?