I’m honored that you read my article and thought it was valuable!
For the record, I also think that it’s good to know the truth. Maybe I wish it wasn’t necessary for us to know about these things, but I think it is necessary, and I very much prefer knowing about something and thus being able to act in accordance to that knowledge than not knowing about it. So yeah, don’t let my adverse reaction fool you; I love your work and admire you as a person.
Regarding love and hatred, the points you brought up do make me think. I try to always keep an evolutionary perspective in mind; that is, I tend to assume something is adaptive, especially if it’s survived across big time. So I think that, at least in certain environments, things like the dark tetrad traits (narcissism, machiavellianism, psychopathy, sadism) are adaptive even on a group level; maybe they reach some kind of local maximum of adaptiveness. My hope is that there is a better way to retain the adaptive behavioral manifestations of these traits while avoiding the volatile and maladaptive aspects of these traits, and my belief is that we can approach this by having more correct motivations. Like I really idealise the approaches of people like Gandhi and MLK who recognised the wrongness of the status quo while also trying to create positive change with love and peace; I believe we need more of that. That being said, I take your point that darkness and hate can lead to love/reduction in hatred, and that this may always be true, especially in our non-ideal world.
things like the dark tetrad traits (narcissism, machiavellianism, psychopathy, sadism) are adaptive even on a group level
Yup. And how adaptive they are depends on the distribution of other agent types. For example, against a population of pure pacifists, Dark Tetrad traits may be pretty effective. In a population of agents who cooperate with one another but punish rule-breakers, Dark Tetrad traits are probably less adaptive. Hopefully present-day society is somewhat close to the latter case, although human reproduction isn’t very constrained by material resources in the developed world, so I’m unsure how much society punishing some Dark Tetrad people affects their reproductive fitness. Also, some narcissists “succeed” greatly in our society (Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and too many others to list).
I take your point that darkness and hate can lead to love/reduction in hatred
I mainly mentioned those points in case someone would quibble with the absoluteness of King’s quote. As they say, “all generalizations are false”. In our present world, where we generally don’t kill or tyrannize everyone who disagrees with us, I think it’s generally more effective to move more in King’s direction than our primate instincts incline us to. If you can’t massacre your enemies, you have to find a way to make peace with them.
Hi Brian,
I’m honored that you read my article and thought it was valuable!
For the record, I also think that it’s good to know the truth. Maybe I wish it wasn’t necessary for us to know about these things, but I think it is necessary, and I very much prefer knowing about something and thus being able to act in accordance to that knowledge than not knowing about it. So yeah, don’t let my adverse reaction fool you; I love your work and admire you as a person.
Regarding love and hatred, the points you brought up do make me think. I try to always keep an evolutionary perspective in mind; that is, I tend to assume something is adaptive, especially if it’s survived across big time. So I think that, at least in certain environments, things like the dark tetrad traits (narcissism, machiavellianism, psychopathy, sadism) are adaptive even on a group level; maybe they reach some kind of local maximum of adaptiveness. My hope is that there is a better way to retain the adaptive behavioral manifestations of these traits while avoiding the volatile and maladaptive aspects of these traits, and my belief is that we can approach this by having more correct motivations. Like I really idealise the approaches of people like Gandhi and MLK who recognised the wrongness of the status quo while also trying to create positive change with love and peace; I believe we need more of that. That being said, I take your point that darkness and hate can lead to love/reduction in hatred, and that this may always be true, especially in our non-ideal world.
Thanks for the kind words. :)
Yup. And how adaptive they are depends on the distribution of other agent types. For example, against a population of pure pacifists, Dark Tetrad traits may be pretty effective. In a population of agents who cooperate with one another but punish rule-breakers, Dark Tetrad traits are probably less adaptive. Hopefully present-day society is somewhat close to the latter case, although human reproduction isn’t very constrained by material resources in the developed world, so I’m unsure how much society punishing some Dark Tetrad people affects their reproductive fitness. Also, some narcissists “succeed” greatly in our society (Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and too many others to list).
I mainly mentioned those points in case someone would quibble with the absoluteness of King’s quote. As they say, “all generalizations are false”. In our present world, where we generally don’t kill or tyrannize everyone who disagrees with us, I think it’s generally more effective to move more in King’s direction than our primate instincts incline us to. If you can’t massacre your enemies, you have to find a way to make peace with them.