The ENTIRE human race is sadistic

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My latest theory, and one I'm interested to see challenged.

Sadism is gaining joy from someone else's pain.

I believe sadism is in human nature.

Science shows this with the Stanford Prison Experiment.

However, it can also show outside of those exceptional circumstances, admittedly in much less harmful ways.

A good example of this is "slapstick" comedy. Let's say you watch a film where someone falls down and you laugh. Is that not getting joy from the pain of another?

And if you're really angry at someone, it's commonly known that imagining how you'd get revenge on them calms you down - in fact, our minds tell us that getting revenge will make us feel better, more often than not.

So, I conclude, that at a basic level, it is within human nature to be sadistic, and in extreme circumstances the full extent of this is shown.

Discuss.

Sure, I'll go along with that.

One minor correction though: Merely thinking about revenge or even "letting off steam" is known to actually aggravate stress directed at another person, not calm someone down.

Of course this is true about humans.

We are relativistic creatures, even if we don't understand that...

Seeing someone in pain, puts ourselves in a better position, relative to the person in pain.
No matter how bad off you are, it helps to know that there is someone worse off than you.

We can't judge ANYTHING in real terms... we can only judge by comparison.
So, I'm "this" bad off in my life means nothing.
I'm better off, or worse off than so-and-so, has real meaning.

Relativity enters every aspect of the universe, from the nature of space-time itself to the way our minds think.

Well, yes, humans are sadistic.

I find the statement by Exclavius overly mystical:

It seems to assume that there is a unified force we can call "relativity", as it uses the term as if it were this, and seems to imply that the same truth is at play in our psychologies and in physics itself.

I agree 100% with the OP.

Well, the universe is... uh, how shall i put it... universal.
Should it surprise you to see the same set of rules governing things at different levels?

It's no so much that there is a force called relativity, it's that perception is governed by relativity.... In that one's frame of reference is required to make any useful observation, because that frame of reference biases the perception.

The more relative observations one has, the closer you can extract "real" information to ascertain some "ultimate truth" but you would need an infinite sample to get to the full truth, as we can't have infinite sample, all we can do is get closer to the "real"

This applies whether it's looking at a star from various distances and place in the universe, or whether it's taking a statistical poll of people's opinions.

Agreed. I personally believe that reality itself is absolute. I think for the MOST part our senses are reliable enough to process that reality in such a way that almost all of us are in agreement. But because we don't all have that same point of view, it's hardly likely that anyone will regard things are feel about things in exactly the same way.

Color-blindness, for example.

Wow, I guess we have found an area of agreement.

The "closer something is to us" the clearer our view of it. (clearer meaning, the closer the relative view is to the "real")

example... a star 13 million light years away is vastly affected by "relativity"
our sun is hardly affected.

a poll of everyone asking what they think an atom is is less accurate than one taken among particle physicists.

Similarly if we see someone in a situation that is close to our own situation, it is easier for us to "empathize" with them, because we can see what they see, so much more similar to the way that they see it.

Our minds though, have a tendency to "assume our perception is a good representation of reality"
So, working within the frame of the OP, when we observe something, such as a person in pain, it makes us feel relatively better, not just than that person... but relatively better than the average of the universe/humanity. We may "know" that that person is not representative, but what i'm saying is that our emotions view it at a more base level.

Believe it or not there are more things I agree with than disagree with. Religion or topics related to it are not things I take lightly!

I'm not quite so well-versed in "General Relativity" vs. Einsteinian "Special Relativity," other than something about the speed of light. Moral relativity or postmodern relativism, however, is another thing entirely, and you won't likely find me quite so pleasant!

It isn't the same set of rules though. Einstein's theory of relativity refers to rules about physics that relate to the relationship between time, space, and one's inertial frame of reference, and it has great impact on the nature of time, and so on and so forth.

The workings of the mind are instead cognitive limitations that are likely a result of evolution.

The two things are utterly different and an entity capable of being perfectly rational in assessing data is logically possible and has no open contradiction with the workings of the known universe. Einstein's theory is a theory of the workings of the universe. (or even further, if you argue that the real point of relativity in the human mind is a logical point, then Einstein's theory could logically be false, and our universe could work by Newtonian principles, which are non-relative)


Ok, but the issue is that Einstein's relativity only works for inertial frames of reference, but frames of reference that don't have inertia differences, (or even really small differences) are not subject to these problems at all, so I am not sure it really is the same principle or anything close. Even further, if you are making a philosophical point, you have to recognize that Einstein's theory is contingent, and the world could work by non-relative Newtonian rules.


All frames of reference are equally valid in the theory of relativity.

I'm saying relativity is just a byproduct of observation.

But the only venue we have for determining reality, IS observation (and inference based there upon) thus we have to treat it as real... Or at least as a real phenomenon.

I'm also not limiting relativity to JUST Einstein's version, I apply it to ALL observation.

So, perhaps AG, you are right when you say that what i'm saying could imply that relativity is not how the universe works and that newton is closer. It may not be so black and white though, rather a shade of gray in between

Unless you can validly (as opposed to arbitrarily) place an "origin" in the universe, or an "origin" as to what is normal, or an "origin" as what is healthy, (or any other topic where doing so is impossible) then you can only observe comparatively. The mind is imperfect, so it will make mistakes from time to time rating a "good" thing worse than a "less good thing" but as a whole, it functions well in comparing... And most of that comes from arbitrarily applying a positive and negative direction to different aspects of our observation, which may vary on say whether we are upside down, or upside right (metaphorically that is).

And as far as inertial frames... Well if a person is in the same situation as I am, then I see him much closer to the way he is, because I understand his frame of reference, or... because we don't have any inertial difference.
You are reading the concept of inertial difference too stringently, in space time and Einstein's theories it has to do with velocity and/or acceleration and/or mass concentration. But we know all those effects break down once we pass to the micro or sub-micro scale and leave the macro and classical scales behind. The effects, and thus the causes are different, but the principles remain the same. (which all ties into an earlier discussion.... that i don't want to rehash... at least not yet, involving a fellow by the name of Penrose)

Hrm.... I know i'm not the greatest at expressing what i'm thinking... And i know what i'm trying to say, could be said better. ... Here's another perspective on it, though a bit more abstract.

A atom has a lot in similarity to a solar system, which in turn has a lot in similarity to a galaxy, which then to a super-cluster, etc.
But... at atom doesn't look exactly the same as a solar system... it just shares certain characteristics which are somewhat analogous to one another. gravity holds the earth in orbit, and the EMF holds the electron in orbit. There are similarities between gravity and the EMF, but they are not the same, they just work on the same "principles"
the "principle" of relativity (as opposed to Einstein's theory of) is analogous to the centripetal forces.

Take one step backward, and there are likely higher forces working that keep our entire universe in orbit around something else. And "something" observing our entire universe would also have a slightly modified version of relativity altering what they observe from what was really there.

The dicey universe topic

God has been playing dice with us!

But Einstein's version isn't the same phenomenon as the other sort.


Nobody is really ever in the same position though. Not only that, but spatial difference and intertial difference are different, and a change in spatial difference can change information more than inertial difference will tend to.


Inertia is mv, mass times velocity, so you really haven't shown me anything.

Hrm.... I know i'm not the greatest at expressing what i'm thinking... And i know what i'm trying to say, could be said better. ... Here's another perspective on it, though a bit more abstract.


I don't really know your point or what kind of thing you are trying to get at. I mean, atoms are in some sense like the solar system/galaxy/super-cluster/whatever but in many ways they are not. Atoms form atomic and ionic bonds, but there is nothing analogous in the other groupings. I mean, the real commonality is that the universe is bound by forces rather than by something else, and these forces tend to have rotation around a center or some such, but it isn't something special, magical, or anything like that.

prove it. remember you can not have any exceptions or else your statement is false

Are we sadistic?

Several generations ago our ancestors would flock to see a good public flogging or hanging. They would torment some person in the stocks in the public square.
The Romans paid money to see people eaten by lions.

Why don't boxers wear helmets? Because we don't want to see a display of skill, we want to see someone beaten to a bloody pulp.

Car racing is boring unless there is a damn good crash every now and then.

People also attend bridge and chess tournaments. What do you make of that?

ruveyn