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I wasn't asking you to prove to me that the state doesn't exist. I was asking you to reconcile the apparent contradiction between you saying it doesn't exist and then admitting that working for the state is an option that some people choose. Also, I find libertarians and anarchists that obsess over the fact that concepts aren't "real" in a material sense rarely apply that to their own concepts. They try to educate people that "the state" isn't a real thing. But, if concepts aren't real then here is what else isn't real: Anarchism The Free Market Ethics Principles I could go on and on. None of them exist by your criteria. So please do not refer to them or encourage people to believe in them. I said the role itself is not a fiction. The word "role" you can claim is a "fiction" if you want. But I don't see what that proves. Sorry but I don't believe the term "necessary wrong" makes sense. To me that's an oxymoron. I think you're mixing up certain words. If you kill in self-defense, but believe you had no choice, you might feel regret over having ended up in the situation. Guilt is a feeling that has to do with believing you should not have done what you did. If you call something necessary, then it doesn't make any sense to also say you should have done otherwise. If you believe you should have done otherwise, then you don't believe it was necessary to have done, since you are saying you had other superior options. I would say the same about you, my friend. I listened to it. Very interesting. I certainly agree the world is rife with hypocrisy. And I find the overall message of that podcast very important. The podcast also reminded me of this old gem: "It's hard to get a man to understand something if his paycheck depends upon him not understanding it." - Upton Sinclair How exactly did you think it applies here to this discussion though? I noticed one interesting thing. Stefan says he very rarely meets someone that uses violence to achieve their ends in their own life. He laughs at the notion when he asks people if their wife married them voluntarily or if they locked her up against her will. But he leaves out that he knows lots and lots of people who use violence in their personal lives to achieve certain ends - namely to get their children to do what they want. So here you have that relationship again. The average person only initiates violence regularly in two capacities - either in some capacity working for the (non-existent, as I'm told, though it may be) state or in their role (also non-existing I'm told) as a parent. This is why I am comparing Stefan's view of these two situations. Certain forms of government work and parenting are the only two places most people initiate force regularly. Another flaw in his argument: People who don't use violence in their daily lives say that you can't get things done without violence and he says this is stunning hypocrisy. But it's likely that they believe it's BECAUSE the state is there to take on the responsibilities of force that they don't have to use violence. They believe violence is necessary one way or the other and that if the state wasn't in charge of it, they'd have to do it themselves. So there is no contradiction between not using force personally within a state-run society and believing violence is necessary overall within the system to get things done. But despite these specific problems with his argument, I definitely think the issue of people being paid well to be moral hypocrites is hugely important. In fact, it's a topic I'd like to talk about a lot more (and am more interested in really than this topic in this thread, honestly).

The tl;dr in this thread (I agree with you) comes from the fact that after I clarified what I really meant the topic to be in one of my very first few posts, even to the extent of saying I'd prefer to change the title if I could, people - to an almost unbelievable extent - continued to argue straw men. Only two or three people in this entire thread have even bothered to answer the actual question I asked, as you did here (thank you!). What the point proves is that there is a double standard going on. Stefan bases almost his entire hope for the world on encouraging parents to restrain their exercise of power and become more peaceful. But I never hear him encouraging - or even talking as if it's possible - for government workers to restrain their exercise of power. I find it an especially glaring double standard because Stefan repeatedly says "the State doesn't actually exist". He says it is just a bunch of individuals wearing costumes and doing things. Well, if it's just a bunch of individuals, just like parents are just a bunch of individuals, then there is no reason not to treat them similarly and appeal to them to restrain their abuses. >The state does not exist, >Once you no longer believe in insane, violent, nonsense, you will no longer be willing to work for the state. How is it possible that working for the state is an option you can be unwilling to take if the state does not exist? I guess you really did only skim the thread. Probably half of the tl;dr referred to was from people doing exactly what you just did I can't even count how many times people argued about the legitimacy of parental power vs. legitimacy of government power and how many times I explicitly said I'm not raising that issue. And then, after complaining about the tldr-ness, you did the same thing. I don't blame you because I understand you couldn't stomach reading the whole thread. But sort of amusing. Not having read the thread very closely, you also probably missed the discussion that there are other options for raising children than one or two-parent isolated nuclear family households, which probably allow a lot more abuses to take place than some other social structures might. Concentration of power over children can be dangerous just like concentration of power over society?

But the other side to this is that everyone who is in business is also a consumer themselves. So while you may lose on one side by someone else putting out better products at better prices, you also win by living in a system where better products at better prices are available to you.

Roles are not social fictions. A "role" is just a name we place on the relationship to others in which someone is while performing an action. It is very much a real thing that they are in different relations to different people at different times. I said what is right must be assessed in relation to the context. In some cases, you can assess something and decide it's wrong in all contexts. But the point is that just because something is wrong in some contexts, you can't automatically assume it is wrong in all. Saying that in self-defense, violence is wrong, but necessary, is just needlessly confusing. It ends up just being an argument about the meaning of 'wrong.' In my view, if something is necessary, then it isn't wrong to do. Even the dictionary has multiple definitions of wrong. We're probably just each focusing on different ones right now. To me, to say something is both necessary to do and wrong to do calls into question what you mean by "necessary" also. It's just pointlessly confusing. Regardless, the point is if something is necessary to do and someone does it, there is no justification to condemn them for it or for them to feel guilt about it. That is what I mean by it not being wrong.

If you think you know what context means and think it's not relevant to judging whether actions are right or wrong, then I'm not sure you actually know what context means. It was you who asked "Why does the role you play in society have anything to do with you doing the right thing or not?" So I responded to your question by showing how what role you are playing is part of determining if something is right or wrong. Right or wrong is, in many ways, dependent on the role you are playing at the time. Again that isn't to say that some things may not be considered wrong regardless of the role. It's just to say that some things are right in one role and wrong in another. I will use as many words as I need to get my point across, but I'll try to be concise if you are concise. As for analogies, I reserve the right to use whatever analogies I need, but I'll try to use more pleasant ones for you, my friend. haha.

I notice that every time I say something, you disagree with something else, and I point out that you misquoted me, your next move is to talk about "relevance." I connect civilization and states, you misquote me as saying agriculture and states, I point that out. Instead of saying "Sorry, yes you said civilization and states, my mistake, we do agree on that." instead you start talking about "relevance." If you think what I'm saying is not relevant, then why waste your time responding? If you agree with what I say great. If you disagree with what I say, fine. But to respond to things I didn't say, then refuse to retract when I point that out, and then just start saying my comments are irrelevant doesn't make much sense. I'm starting to wonder if we're even discussing the same point here or you think we're having a different discussion than I do for a different purpose. I already clarified the "hand in hand" comment by saying "My statement was "Civilization and the rise of cities/states went hand in hand." When Wikipedia says civilization culminates in the rise of states, that is making the connection even deeper, not looser. They are saying not only do they go together in time but one was the direct outgrowth of the other." So what I am saying is "hand in hand", in this case, turns out to reflect more than just correlation. City/states emerged as a direct result of civilization. They were the "culmination" of that process of civilization. So bringing up "hand in hand" as if it wasn't already qualified is, rather than a misquote, just ignoring something I already addressed. "Unless this means a necessary result of agriculture... well, you know the rest." - Yes, the rest is you take what I say, ignore it, change the subject and argue a straw man. I said what I said. If you agree, great. If you disagree, great. If you find it irrelevant, then why are you responding at all? Your analogy was an attempt to clarify your interpretation of what I said. I said something. You gave an analogy that supposedly reflected the logic of what I had said. I then gave an analogy that better reflects the logic of what I had said. I didn't ignore your analogy. I pointed out that your analogy poorly reflected the logic of what I said by contrasting it with a better analogy (though I did make a mistake as clarified below). You missed the logic of my point which was that a problem in one place may be caused by factors in multiple other places. A country's problem may be caused by governments in multiple other places, not only its own, just as a problem with your car's brakes may have been caused as a result of a mixture of problems in factories all over the world. On your point #2: I've pointed out in the thread that I don't even know what "structural violence" is defined as so I'm not sure how I could argue for or against it. I can't say a thing about whether "structural violence" causes famine or not until that term is defined which I've never seen done in a way that is defensible yet. You're right though that I misspoke about the analogy. You were saying that brakes not working = government violence. I was speaking as if brakes not working = the country failing, with famine just being one aspect of that. So to fix up my comment on the analogy, it is like you saying "the car crashed because the brakes aren't working" and me saying "the car actually may have crashed because of many other factors, and, even if the brakes are now not working, which may or may not be the case, we don't know if that was the original cause yet. It's possible that as the accident began to happen, the person slammed on the brakes and blew out a brake line during the crash, not as the cause of it, but an effect." and so on. In some cases, a country's own government may not be the original cause of the famine. In other cases, the country's own government is problematic, but still not the original cause of the problem, just a part of the problem. In others, the country's own government may be almost completely to blame for the famine.

I don't understand how question 3 is not a scientific question. Scientists - mainly biologists - must decide what is a proper basis on which to divide species. They must identify certain traits as definitive for a subspecies and others not so. That's the very heart of proper biological categorization. So how is that not scientific? Are you saying subspecies are only defined geographically? And you are saying that the subspecies must only give birth to others of that same subspecies, never that one of a given subspecies gives birth to one of the other? But you also just said that the subspecies must be able to interbreed with each other (since they're of the same species, they would). So how could it be a one-to-one thing with subspecies if they can interbreed? Clearly there will be mixings of them no? These are certainly scientific questions in that the proper person to ask them to is a scientist, especially a biologist. They are questions about biological categorization. Do you know the answers to them? "Can you give me a scientific answer to the question, "Why does it matter if psychopaths are a subspecies?" Now THAT is where I don't really understand the meaning of "a scientific answer." What would be a scientific answer to that as opposed to a non-scientific one?

The question of are they "real" is one I don't find relevant. And, frankly, this entire thing where libertarians and anarchists act as if not having physical reality makes something non-existent and irrelevant is something I don't buy into (and which they constantly contradict themselves. For instance, they say "the state" doesn't exist, but then constantly talk about "the state" as an entity). If you require material attributes for every single thing you accept as a concept, then you can simply define the roles by their material attributes. So the parent role = your behavior at the times you are interacting with a child so as to guide and nurture them. Your work role = your behavior at the times you are performing the tasks at your place of employment that fit under your job heading. And so on. Surely you can't say that such differences in the context of your behavior don't materially exist. You are interacting with different people for different purposes, usually even in different places at the times of these behaviors. The "rightness" or "wrongness" of a behavior depends on the situation. You also seem to have misunderstood something about roles. I never said the fact that you can claim to do something within a role makes it right. I simply said determining if it is right or not depends on the role. If you disagree with circumcision, you may say performing that act is wrong in any role. That's not an argument against roles. You still have to evaluate behaviors within the context they take place in. But that doesn't mean the fact you were acting in a role makes it ok. You actually asked me how does context matter in determining whether an action is right or wrong and then ignored the example I already gave. I will repeat it: "If you cut your child open in your role as a parent that's probably "wrong". But cutting open someone's child in your role as a surgeon may be "right." Context matters." Do you see how you cannot answer "Is it right to cut open a child?" without knowing more information? It depends on the circumstances. In order to judge the ethics of the situation, you must know "What is the condition of the child? What is the reason for the cutting? What are the qualifications of the person doing the cutting?" Beyond that, you have to know the role of the person at that time. Even someone who is a qualified surgeon may not be "right" in cutting open a child when they are off duty in some cases. Hopefully that explains to you why context matters. If you want to talk more about it, please make sure and reference my example.

Yes I do think, now that you remind me, that the prostitute and the burned-out abusive family man were used as examples. But I'd want to make sure they were examples of "structural violence" in his view before definitely treating them as such. If they are, then it would point to another element of what he might mean by the term, which has to do with behavior being driven by influences other than what is going on directly in the situation at hand. It's interesting because I consider Systems Thinking one of the most important fields. In Systems Thinking, there is a tenet that says "structure creates behavior." And to some extent that is true. Individualists will say "No, individuals choose their behavior." And both are right to some extent. People do make choices. But those choices, we see time and again, when we look at large-scale behavior, appear not to be independent of other influences, even when we think they are. When you put people in certain structures, certain types of patterns tend to emerge statistically. We can often predict them, even though we don't necessarily ask each person about their individual choice. So how do you explain this? Are individuals choosing or are they just at the mercy of the structures they're in? Well it's one of those paradoxes that comes up when you have emergent properties. They act as individuals at one level and they act as part of a larger system at the same time. They are holons - both wholes in themselves and parts of larger wholes at the same time. So I do think Peter has a point with the "structural" part. I just don't know that he should be using the term "violence." He should just be talking about structural "influences." By throwing in the word "violence" it seems needlessly and detrimentally provocative and controversial. With hoarding, I just think Peter sees the current system - (and speculates that a free market system would do this too) - as tending to concentrate wealth in the hands of a few while others go deprived. No doubt that when this does happen, it creates a certain structure that influences behavior, often for the worse. But again, calling that "violence" is needlessly provocative. It's enough to say structures with such inequality influence behavior in unhealthy ways. And that, of course, still leaves the debate about whether such an outcome is really just a consequence of the current system not being a free market. His refusal to admit we don't currently have a free market and to try to draw conclusions about the free market directly from the current system is really misguided. The incentive for "artificial scarcity" is another issue he is concerned with, but I'm not sure if that ties into "structural violence" or not.

When you say "the same kind of flawed thinking" what exactly is the flaw you are identifying? By flaw, do you mean something scientifically invalid or just something you don't like? If you are speaking scientifically, then my question for you is do you believe that humans are immune to having subspecies (by the way I hope you understand sub here doesn't mean below or underneath. If there are subspecies, then every human would be in one of the subspecies. It isn't like some are full humans not in a subspecies and others are subspecies. Subspecies in biology just means a division of a species. All the subspecies are at the same level of categorization.)? So again, given that understanding, are you saying Homo Sapiens cannot have subspecies? There can be only one subspecies that all Homo Sapiens fall into. If you say our species, unlike any other I'm aware of, cannot have subspecies, then I'm not sure what you base that on. If you agree that Homo Sapiens could feasibly contain subspecies, then the question is which traits are fundamental enough to constitute a true division within the species. I think it's been well-established that many superficial things that people (ie: non-scientists) have attempted to create subspecies around in the past do not even come close to meriting such a division. But this one - significant differences in brain structure and function that affects empathy and conscience and, very importantly, are actually likely not a defect, but a feature for that person that enhances their particular life strategy (usually a parasitic one, also a significant difference from others) - merits a closer look and has gotten a close look from some. I am looking at this from the standpoint of biologists and how they classify organisms, nothing more, nothing less. And this is a hypothesis that I think has enough potential merit to be worthy of discussion The fact that horrible people have, in the past, tried to use somewhat-related pseudoscience to justify terrible acts is not really relevant to the science itself. So if we're going to discuss this topic, we're going to have to agree to talk about it as a scientific topic. It isn't a political topic. If terrible people take some scientific findings and twist them to justify their acts, that is a misuse of science. But scientists themselves cannot control that. Their job is simply finding the truth. (And another caveat is that by scientist, I mean someone practicing the scientific method, not just anybody who has a label calling them a scientist). So if you'd like to talk about this from the standpoint of how a biologist would look at it, the relevant questions are: 1) Is it feasible at all, in a general sense, that Homo Sapiens might actually contain more than one subspecies, all being at the same hierarchical level of categorization (just as is found in many other species)? 2) If you believe the answer to #1 is no, then why? 3) If you believe the answer to #1 is yes, which human traits are fundamental enough that they could merit such a division? 4) Would significant brain structure/functional differences regarding conscience/empathy, which drive a significantly different parasitic life strategy be fundamental enough to merit a different category? If you can't stick to the science and keep going into politics and how people have misused such ideas in the past, we can't really talk about it. It is not the job of a scientist to maneuver their pursuit of the facts based on how terrible people may twist them. I fully and completely oppose the types of ideas you referenced. And what I am talking about here cannot be treated as the same. It is not. Some of the same types of people you're talking about also put forth pseudoscience about genetics to justify their acts. I hardly think we want to shut down discoveries in genetics just because some terrible people can twist the findings and lie about what they really say. The scientific pursuit of truth needs to be separated from the whims of people who may lie about the science later, since that can't really even be predicted anyway.

Morality is much broader than just restraint. As many people have pointed out, you can do a horrible thing, but just do a bit less of it, and I am not sure you'd call that a moral person. Also, someone can restrain themselves for reasons having little to do with morality, like that they don't want to get caught or get in trouble. Morality is a far broader discussion than restraint. The right thing in one role is not always the same as the right thing in another role. If you cut your child open in your role as a parent that's probably "wrong". But cutting open someone's child in your role as a surgeon may be "right." Context matters.

OK then thank you for your answer. "Parent" and "government worker" are roles that individuals play. So I am thinking only of individuals. But individuals act differently depending on the role they are fulfilling at that moment. My question does NOT boil down to "can an individual decide to be moral" and I've made that clear umpteen times. That is a far broader question and one that requires a lot of clarifications and qualifications. I only asked about the possibility of restraint in exercise of power. Just restraint, not even cessation of exercise of power. Thank you for the answer. That is all I was asking.

Well you may think that. But you're just speculating. Dutton's researched this stuff for much of his career. I don't know exactly what his methodology was on that particular list, so perhaps he doesn't have it perfectly correct, but at least he sought out data. As far as I know you haven't done so much as a second of actual research on the subject. Perhaps your argument could make sense to explain it if we found that politicians are often more severe psychopaths. But there simply aren't nearly enough political jobs for most psychopaths to become politicians. Every politician represents hundreds or thousands of people. So just by sheer numbers alone I don't see how your argument could be correct.

So in this post you've argued that "there is no moral obligation for my neighbors to have power over me." I've never raised this issue. You've argued that the state is not moral. I've never raised this issue (and repeatedly, including just recently directly to you, pointed out that I am not raising this issue." You then say "if a parent can act morally then so can a government worker." Except I never asked if they can "act morally." I said can they restrain their exercise of power. So you are typing sentence after sentence arguing with straw men and answering questions I didn't ask. Meanwhile, the question I'm asking is a pretty straightforward yes or no question. Can a person who restrains their exercise of power as a parent also restrain their exercise of power as a government worker. I can see putting a line or two of qualification to your yes or no answer. But other than that, it's really not that complicated a question. Either you believe he can or you don't. Notice the questions I didn't ask. I didn't ask "Is government moral?" I didn't ask "Do you think the government is necessary?" I didn't ask "Do you prefer the person quit his government job?" If you want to talk about those questions, you can raise them. But I haven't raised them.

I'm happy to participate in this type of thought experiment. But I've already made clear multiple times in the thread that my initial post and my title of the thread were a bit misguided. It took me a post or two to reframe what I was actually getting at and at that point I mentioned that I wished I could change the title of the thread. So again, my question in the thread ended up not being about "peaceful parenting vs. peaceful government" but more about if a person can restrain their exercise of power as a parent, can they also restrain their exercise of power as a government worker.

You seem to have just committed the most blatant misquote yet. I said "My understanding is that the rise of civilization and the rise of cities/states went hand in hand" You the said "The first are your vague and squirrely connections you make between agriculture and state, now joined by the phrase, "go hand in hand,"" Notice how I said civilization and the rise of cities/states went hand in hand and you changed it to agriculture and the state going hand in hand. You seem to be right back to arguing straw men. My statement was "Civilization and the rise of cities/states went hand in hand." When Wikipedia says civilization culminates in the rise of states, that is making the connection even deeper, not looser. They are saying not only do they go together in time but one was the direct outgrowth of the other. Do you disagree that civilization and the rise of the state go hand in hand and that the state arose directly from civilization? If you agree, then stop making up things to argue that I didn't say. If you disagree, that's fine. But you disagree with me and Wikipedia and most scholars of civilization I'm aware of. If you argue any other point different than the one I just made again, please don't pretend to be quoting me. Sorry that was just because I hadn't gotten to the rest of my response yet. I think this part is cleared up now. Got it. I chose Singapore completely arbitrarily. You could have picked any country on earth. The point is the system is global and all interconnected. Countries are not isolated entities unaffected by the rest of the world. Even ones that try to be like North Korea can't actually accomplish that. No it's like you saying "the car crashed because the brakes stopped working" and I say "yeah but those brakes have parts in them from 5 different factories, were tested in another place, and so on. So there may be multiple factors involved in them breaking." It seems like repeatedly you are getting these analogies wrong I have an intuition about what PJ means by "structural violence." But I think the term is highly problematic and unhelpful. I wish he would stop using it and replace it with more concrete, specific terms. I can't provide an example of "structural violence" of any kind without a clear definition of it, which I have yet to hear. I could take a guess that one of the main things people like PJ worry about, which they express in the term "structural violence," is hoarding of resources and opportunities. But I wish he would just say "hoarding" and then talk about the problems of hoarding directly. Some might say hoarding is enabled by the state, some might disagree. But at least then people could talk directly about what the concern is. "Structural violence" is too general to even know what it refers to in my view.

So I type: "If you argue something else like "The state is bad and uses violence." then you aren't responding to me since I never argued anything about the general goodness or badness of the state and, in fact, more than once posted specifically that I was NOT discussing that topic so please not to respond as if I am." and in response you explain once again why the state should not exist. Even when I point out that I'm not saying anything about the goodness or badness, in general of the state, I get a reply about that topic. Perhaps this is a way to clarify it that people will understand. People on FDR, including Stefan, are fond of saying that the state actually doesn't even exist. All that exists are individuals in costumes. If you believe that, then stop saying if "the state" is good or bad. It doesn't exist according to you. What does exist, according to you, are the individuals. Now these individuals are not some foreign governmental creatures. They're people from the population. 99% of the people that work in the government are everyday people that live in your neighborhood, send their kids to the same schools as yours and so on. These people are expected to restrain themselves in all of their other roles, including as parents. But there is this idea that as soon as they step foot into their government job, they are now unable to control themselves. I found this to be a strange contradiction. As I've said over and over and over in this thread, the thread is about that individual that plays dual roles and why we think he has the capacity for restraint in one role, but not in the other. To be honest, if you reread the thread, we already sort of got to the point where people conceded that he can restrain himself. Some said he just can't restrain himself completely because if he did he'd lose the job. Others said he can restrain himself, but not as fully as he can in some other jobs.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/eugenics?s=t "the study of or belief in the possibility of improving the qualities of the human species or a human population, especially by such means as discouraging reproduction by persons having genetic defects or presumed to have inheritable undesirable traits (negative eugenics) or encouraging reproduction by persons presumed to have inheritable desirable traits (positive eugenics)" Did you see a single word in any of what I said about encouraging or discouraging reproduction? You don't seem to know the difference between a basic scientific observation of an existing difference vs. a political plan for doing something on the basis of that. I would guess you're not actually into science as a methodology judging by that response. Also, I pointed out examples where Stefan talks about these conditions in similar ways - calling psychopaths "the most dangerous human predator" and comparing them to lions and the rest of us as their prey. Does that mean he is also promoting eugenics? Again, I must point out the irony that it is, in fact, the type of people that have promoted eugenics that are being identified here as predators - not called out to become prey. You seem to have the entire issue reversed.

I can't even decipher what you're getting at. Here is my statement - "A monopoly on being allowed to use violence =/= being required to use violence". Is that statement true or false? Anything else you say about this beyond explaining why that statement is true or false is you responding to things I haven't put forth. You are, of course, welcome to do so. But it doesn't make much sense doing it in response to a quote from me unless you're responding to what I actually said. Edit: Oh now I at least see what you were referring to - the parental thing. No a monopoly on being allowed to use violence doesn't mean nobody else does it. But, as I pointed out, parents don't just do it, but are allowed to do it, just as the state is allowed to do it. Both are allowed to do it for the same reason - because it's in the law. The law says the state can use violence and that parents can use violence, within certain conditions. A monopoly on being allowed to use violence does indeed require that that be the only entity allowed to use violence. That's what a monopoly on being allowed to do something is. Most people on the FDR forums insist on a very narrow definition of "violence." To be called "violence" an act must include direct attack, theft or fraud or threat of such against an actual human being. Whenever someone tries to get away with using the word "violence" in any other way, most people here call bs on it. This is why they react so strongly against PJ's concept of "structural violence." They insist that, in each example he gives of "structural violence," he identify a specific actor who is committing an attack, theft or fraud directly on another human being. If he can't do it, they claim the use of that phrase is propaganda to label something as violent that is not violent. Yet here, you seem to be using the word "violence" in a way that goes beyond that narrow definition people are usually held to here. You are talking about accumulating debts that eventually will cause suffering for a currently unborn person. This seems to me the type of thing that usually would be called out as stretching the definition of "violence." Can you commit violence against a person that doesn't yet exist? Does the FDR community accept that use of the word "violence" even though they certainly won't accept that word in the types of situations PJ brings up? I just find it curious.

I'm simply telling you the fact of what some researchers in the area think. It's not a political statement. It's a scientific one. The logic is that empathy and conscience are so foundational to the very evolution of our very specific subspecies - to the point that we would not have even survived as a subspecies without it - that not having them represents an evolutionarily significant difference. There is also consideration of the evolutionary path that would lead such traits to perpetuate within the species and the argument is that it may be an alternative evolutionary strategy that has co-evolved with the typical one. The statement is also based on research showing some very significant differences in brain structure and function. So this is a very scientifically-based hypothesis. Robert Hare, who is widely considered the world expert on psychopathy and highly respected, calls psychopaths "an "intraspecies predator." So again, you see the evolutionary level of significance in that term. By the way, Stefan himself, in one of his videos about psychopaths as opposed to other people, used the analogy of two different animals, one predator and one prey. I can't remember which animals he used, but it may have been lion and sheep. Look at the description he put under this video too - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDC0PuUTPFE . He put: "The nature, coloring, stripes and habits of the most dangerous human predator." So again, that notion that these are very different creatures living out a very different life strategy is there. You mention that such considerations are dehumanizing and could lead to human rights violations. But, in fact, it is those who dehumanize others and violate human rights that are being considered here. The question is "Is a person who appears to have biological differences that drive them to dehumanize and violate the rights of others consistently - or even to take pleasure in doing so - fundamentally the same as other people?" Nobody is saying they are a different species. Don't mistake that. The farthest anyone is going that has any credibility is saying it may be a sort of separate evolutionary lineage within the same species. A sub-species difference, not a species difference. Very important not to mistake those. If you understand how subspecies are recognized in biology, it has to do with differences in fundamental traits. The question is which traits are fundamental enough to delineate a separate subspecies within a species. For instance, in some organisms, different colored coats indicate different subspecies, in others not so. So it is a reasonable question to ask what traits, among humans, would indicate a different sub-species. Some researchers believe the presence or absence of empathy/conscience capacity is fundamental enough to delineate that split. This is a serious question for biology. It is not a political statement or any statement about what recognizing such a difference would mean politically. That is not the job of scientists to determine. As for "humans vs. politicians," actually, at least according to Kevin Dutton's list, there are a number of careers that attract psychopaths even more than politics. This shouldn't be totally surprising as many very powerful people actually take pay cuts when they go into politics. And some may actually have more power in certain ways in other fields. People don't like the government here so they tend to look at it as the ultimate seat of power, but there are plenty of people outside of government that have more power than some people within government. They may not have certain particular powers - like the option to initiate violence legally - but they may have other powers that they find more valuable than that one would be to them anyway.

There seems to be some confusion over history here. In my understanding, civilization started about 10,000 years ago. Around that time is when city-states started to emerge, hence the name "civilization" which means based on cities. My understanding is that the rise of civilization and the rise of cities/states went hand in hand and that is why civilization has the name that it does. As Wikipedia puts it: "The emergence of civilization is generally associated with the final stages of the Neolithic Revolution, a slow cumulative process occurring independently over many locations between 10,000 and 3,000 BCE, culminating in the relatively rapid process of state formation, a political development associated with the appearance of a governing elite." Is your understanding different? I'm not sure why you seem to think civilization and the rise of states do not go hand in hand. If we don't have information about famine rates before states to compare to famine rates after, then I don't know how you can claim to know scientifically whether states increased or decreased famine overall. I think there may be more data than we're aware of. It's remarkable what historians and archaeologist can sometimes figure out about the past. But if you are saying we don't have the data to compare, then you should be the first to admit we don't know. OK, if you are saying that the particular examples that are pointed to as cases of "structural violence" are actually just cases of state violence, I understand now. The challenge for people who support the idea of "structural violence" is to show examples where violence is occurring that is not emerging from the state. And you are saying the example of famine does not do that. I think we're clear now. Looking at one country in isolation would only tell the whole story if the only factor in a country's famine was the action of its own government. But in many cases, as we've seen, there are many factors and sometimes multiple governments involved in what is going on. And the food supply is a global system at this point. The amount of harvest in Nebraska has effects in Singapore and vice-versa. It's all interconnected.

You seem to be arguing with straw men all over the place. You certainly aren't responding to things I've actually said. All I said is that being allowed to use violence does not require that you use it. We say the state has a monopoly on being allowed to use force sometimes, but that is false. Parents are allowed to use force legally against their own children, as well. In many places, teachers were also once allowed to use force against children legally. If you believe peaceful parenting is possible, then you believe that parents, despite being allowed to use violence, can choose not to use it. If they stop using it, that doesn't mean they aren't still allowed to. They may well still be allowed to. I don't know why anybody is finding this very complicated. Being allowed to do something is a different thing than being required to do it. If you think being allowed to do something = being required to do it, feel free to argue that. If you argue something else like "The state is bad and uses violence." then you aren't responding to me since I never argued anything about the general goodness or badness of the state and, in fact, more than once posted specifically that I was NOT discussing that topic so please not to respond as if I am.

My claim is that if you want to know whether states have led to increased or decreased famine, you have to look at the proportion of people that experienced famine before states vs. after states, not just look at isolated anecdotal stories. That's all I was saying. You seemed to me to be saying that, because you can name examples where states caused famines, that proves that states, overall, have relatively increased famine. All I was pointing out is that naming specific isolated cases like that doesn't prove any general point about the relationship between states and famines. You'd have to compare famine pre-state vs. post-state on the whole. In fact, you have to do even more than that to determine if the state was the causal factor or there is only a correlation, not a causation. So again anecdotal examples of states causing famine simply don't show that states, on the whole, have led to relatively more famine. Do you disagree with that statement about methodology necessary to reach a certain conclusion? Perhaps you've misunderstood that I am somehow arguing for the term "structural violence." I'm not. I'm quite confused by exactly what the term means myself. I wasn't supporting the use of that term. I actually find it a pretty unhelpful term in and of itself. My point with colonialism is to show that famine in a given country may be state-caused, but not by that country's own government. It can be caused by another government meddling. The larger point of that was to show that famine is a global issue with influences coming in and out from all over the world. Looking at one country in isolation doesn't tell the whole story. So you can see that overall, I'm just arguing for the fact that to really understand what goes on with famine, we have to look at the whole system, not isolated cases within it. It's almost like you read what I typed and then did exactly what I complained about. My point is you can't seem to have any discussion on this forum that even mentions the word "state" without someone going "state....state...I hate the state...let me start listing reasons the state is bad." This happens even when you're not discussing whether the state, as a whole , is "good" or "bad" but talking about some other element or repercussion of it. It would be like if you disliked a certain actor and I was talking about a movie they were in and wanted to just discuss the movie and you kept jumping in railing about how much you hate that actor and why they're terrible. Ok, great, I get it. You don't like that actor. And you can go on 100 threads dedicated to the topic of how much that actor sucks. But we're not even discussing whether they are good or bad in this particular discussion. We are just discussing this other topic that their name happens to come up in because they play a part in it. Does every single thread have to be about listing the reasons government is terrible? And, more to the point, if you see someone having any discussion other than "government is terrible" do you have to jump in and remind them that it's terrible every single time because, if they aren't listing the reasons it's terrible at all times, they must be a huge fan of it? You think it's a "dereliction of duty" if you don't respond to every thread that so much as mentions the government with the same litany of complaints about the government? Personally, I think the dereliction of duty comes from the fact that, when you do that, you start to turn people off because it becomes robotic and you start to look like a Pavlovian anti-government rant machine.

You continue to improperly use terms. It is not a "monopoly on violence", but a monopoly on the potential to use violence in a way considered legitimate. That means the possibility to use violence if it is chosen - and within certain limits (even the government in most cases does have some limits and is sometimes restrained, often even by other branches of the same government) - without punishment or retaliation, etc. Perhaps you mean the same thing, but I think it's important to emphasize that having what you are calling a "monopoly on violence" does not mean violence has to actually be used, only that it can be used. You speak of it as if it is an obligation to use violence, rather than simply an option that is allowed that entity. As for asking about my childhood, that is a non-sequitir in this particular case. Not that childhood isn't relevant to many things and how we feel about them. But it's not relevant to the distinction between "monopoly on violence" and "monopoly on the option to use violence in certain situations in a way that has been legitimized."

"Good" and "evil" are not very scientifically-defined terms at this point. I was asked recently about the word "evil" and I explained: "Regardless of whether you choose to use the word “evil” or not, we can find common ground around the concepts of: Activity that is malicious and… Activity that is willfully negligent despite an apparent risk of unnecessary harm or suffering" The idea obviously isn't that a baby is capable of these things while still a baby. The idea is simply that some people may be born with brains that are wired/structured with the tendency to either enjoy such behavior or lack the inhibitory mechanisms that others have so that as they get old enough for it, such behavior does emerge and has a biological basis. Again, I think it's misguided to assume there is one "human nature" that all humans share when it comes to this issue. Most humans may be born with brains capable of a certain level of empathy and inhibition of their malicious or willfully negligent impulses, but a certain percentage may not be. Are the latter group still "human"? It might surprise you but some researchers have actually speculated there may be a subspecies difference here. That is obviously controversial, but it tells you how important this division among levels of capacity for empathy is.