Comment by disqard
2 days ago
> Bad currency drives out good
That's the second time I've read this phrase on HN this week (earlier, it was in reference to the ad-supported Internet).
The race-to-the-bottom of zeroing out people's empathy to grab fractions of a penny (at scale) also reminds me of the Malthusian trap (aka "rats on the island") in slatestarcodex's "Meditations on Moloch". Whatever little nooks exist where some micro-pennies can still be found, will be farmed (at scale).
Empathy farming is what people with a religious or moral framework would call wicked. The reason the writer here observed that most of the suckers writing sympathy notes appear to be religious is not that religious people are stupid, it's that religious people are the last to completely abandon the notion that other people are real and need their support. They are the last to realize when a false messiah or a fake 105 year old woman baking fake cakes needs their help. It hijacks their moral framework, because they have invested a lifetime in believing certain tropes and terms and what (I as an atheist) would call sappy horseshit, which nonetheless imbues meaning into all aspects of their daily life. They don't suspect that the attack on their dignity will come disguised as an appeal to their faith.
> they are the last to realize when a false messiah [...] needs their help.
> It hijacks their moral framework, because they have invested a lifetime in believing certain tropes and terms and what (I as an atheist) would call sappy horseshit, which nonetheless imbues meaning into all aspects of their daily life. They don't suspect that the attack on their dignity will come disguised as an appeal to their faith.
Being human: allowing ourselves to be vulnerable.
Also being human: the wolves among us will find such humans and prey upon them.
We really are animals, after all.
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