The "Bad Guy" Bias

[Kai]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/07/AR2008120702830.html?sub=AR

Nations tend to focus far more time, money and attention on tragedies caused by human actions than on the tragedies that cause the greatest amount of human suffering or take the greatest toll in terms of lives. ... In recent years, a large number of psychological experiments have found that when confronted by tragedy, people fall back on certain mental rules of thumb, or heuristics, to guide their moral reasoning. When a tragedy occurs, we instantly ask who or what caused it. When we find a human hand behind the tragedy -- such as terrorists, in the case of the Mumbai attacks -- something clicks in our minds that makes the tragedy seem worse than if it had been caused by an act of nature, disease or even human apathy. ...

    Tragedies, in other words, cause individuals and nations to behave a little like the detectives who populate television murder mystery shows: We spend nearly all our time on the victims of killers and rapists and very little on the victims of car accidents and smoking-related lung cancer. "We think harms of actions are much worse than harms of omission," said Jonathan Baron, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania. "We want to punish those who act and cause harm much more than those who do nothing and cause harm. We have more sympathy for the victims of acts rather than the victims of omission. If you ask how much should victims be compensated, [we feel] victims harmed through actions deserve higher compensation."

Via Overcoming Bias.

[LMNO]

Cf: Katrina.

[Kai]

Yes.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Excellent observation

[Elder Iptuous]

Well, we all know that natural disaster are the will of and angry god, so the victims were no doubt invovled in some debauchery that deserves our scorn.
E.g. the voodoo/mardigras heathens that the hurricane purged, or the deviant scum in kalifornia that the earthquakes threaten....

(actually that was just a joke, but i'm sure some element of that actually made it into the surveys mentioned, no?)

[tyrannosaurus vex]

We have a thirst for retribution. It's hard to feel superior over someone when you are waging a war of revenge against a lack of action or against a system that results in high casualties/victims. It's much more satisfying to lay the blame for a terrible event at a person's feet, like most people have a hard time envisioning, much less worshipping, a God(dess) who has no resemblance to themselves either mentally or physically.

Humanity's most severe character flaw is our innate and nearly undeniable drive to distinguish between ourselves and "The Other." It is because of this that it is much easier and much more satisfying to hate the individual perpetrators of heinous acts than it is to blame ourselves for the tragic functions of our own collective incompetence and neglect, which ironically spawns many such criminals in the first place.

As for natural disasters, I think we may have this sense of powerlessness about the whole situation, and investing too much sympathy in victims of such disasters would force us to focus too much on the fact that there just isn't much we can do. Being a race of control freaks, I can understand why we sweep that sort of thing under the rug.

[hooplala]

We have a thirst for retribution.

It's very true, people in the western world (and possibly elsewhere, I'm simply not as familiar with the other parts of the world) love a witchhunt or a public lynching.  Consider the way James Frey was tarred and feathered on Oprah a few years ago.  Was his book shitty?  Yes.  Was his book made up?  Most likely.  But the way people went after him you would have thought he had murdered Jonbenet Ramsay and used her as a Muppet on So You Think You Have Talent.

[LMNO]

There's a Pratchett quote applicable here, something about how "Damn Random and Impersonal Forces!" just doesn't work as well, or something like that.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

There's a Pratchett quote applicable here, something about how "Damn Random and Impersonal Forces!" just doesn't work as well, or something like that.

There was also a RAW quote where he said that he believed in God, just so he'd have something to moan while having sex.

[fomenter]

There's a Pratchett quote applicable here, something about how "Damn Random and Impersonal Forces!" just doesn't work as well, or something like that.

There was also a RAW quote where he said that he believed in God, just so he'd have something to moan while having sex.

i think it was a joke he made in one of his filmed talks,  it may have been stolen from Carlen

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

There's a Pratchett quote applicable here, something about how "Damn Random and Impersonal Forces!" just doesn't work as well, or something like that.

There was also a RAW quote where he said that he believed in God, just so he'd have something to moan while having sex.

i think it was a joke he made in one of his filmed talks,  it may have been stolen from Carlen

Good old Bob, never come up with your own meme, if you can spread a perfectly good one already made up by someone else

[hooplala]

Well, they both had the same accent, so why not?

[Jenne]

We have a thirst for retribution.

It's very true, people in the western world (and possibly elsewhere, I'm simply not as familiar with the other parts of the world) love a witchhunt or a public lynching.  Consider the way James Frey was tarred and feathered on Oprah a few years ago.  Was his book shitty?  Yes.  Was his book made up?  Most likely.  But the way people went after him you would have thought he had murdered Jonbenet Ramsay and used her as a Muppet on So You Think You Have Talent.

I pretty much think it's a HUMAN concept--the hazing, the rubbernecking on the road to see an accident, ritualistic abuse, domestic violence...doesn't take a postmodernist society to bring these about...humans love the retribution of the wronged...but they rarely reach out and help the victim, esp if that person is a STRANGER.

[Triple Zero]

There's a Pratchett quote applicable here, something about how "Damn Random and Impersonal Forces!" just doesn't work as well, or something like that.

There was also a RAW quote where he said that he believed in God, just so he'd have something to moan while having sex.

fuck that, I make it a point to moan my gf's name, cause she's the Goddess right there and then!

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

There's a Pratchett quote applicable here, something about how "Damn Random and Impersonal Forces!" just doesn't work as well, or something like that.

There was also a RAW quote where he said that he believed in God, just so he'd have something to moan while having sex.

fuck that, I make it a point to moan my gf's name, cause she's the Goddess right there and then!

Yep, I concur.

"Thou Art God"