Should you help other people and if yes, when? Does it compensate to help others?

[underground-man]

Does whistleblowing (for example) really serve a purpose?

Because think about it.

Instead of international politics think of some workplace or family situation where someone everyone thought to be "honest" turns out to not be what they appear after someone blows the whistle on them.

Or they get exposed or something

If you look back, you realize there have always been signs

It's just that people like that are really good at charming others

Or they enmesh themselves in whatever circle they have and you can't get rid of them without considerable disturbance.

Or they make key people dependent on them somehow.

If someone blows the whistle more often than not what you will have is, even if something happens, that person now becomes a target. If they want to prevent similar people from pulling stuff in the future it will be more difficult

More likely than not the dust will simply settle and people will turn a blind eye to things

In the end, regardless of the outcome, it doesnt address the problem.

And the problem is not that evil people exist because those, the real sociopaths, are a minority. A very small one. The problem is people who believe and/or enable them.

They are either very weak willed or just dumb.

Now imagine you can open their eyes. With dumb people what you have to do is insist a lot, waste a lot of time, and take the risk of them doing something dumb and screwing you over. With enablers, the only way is to convince them it's more beneficial to side against this person than with them.

Either way, even if you get rid of the sociopath, these people won't be made any smarter, stronger, or aware because of it.

If anything, they will just be made weaker because their weak behavior got them noticed and "saved" by someone.

Because they are weak and not very intelligent, they will easily turn on you if someone is good with words, because they think emotionally, or if they are more rational they will just go for whoever they think is "stronger" than you, so to speak. Even if you have a temporary setback, even if you have potential, it doesn't matter. They are prone to pick the wrong side. It's all about appearances.


My point is, is it really worth it to save weak or naive people from their weakness/naivete? Some people may be simply young and foolish and may be reasoned with but this isn't the case for all of them. When does it compensate to help someone?

[dawwg]

With compensational values not being "self-evident" in all cases I think it can be premature to label a class as weak or unintelligent. Indeed it may take a while for observations to reveal a pattern of behavior that can contribute to a hypothesis.

[LuckyR]

Does whistleblowing (for example) really serve a purpose?

Because think about it.

Instead of international politics think of some workplace or family situation where someone everyone thought to be "honest" turns out to not be what they appear after someone blows the whistle on them.

Or they get exposed or something

If you look back, you realize there have always been signs

It's just that people like that are really good at charming others

Or they enmesh themselves in whatever circle they have and you can't get rid of them without considerable disturbance.

Or they make key people dependent on them somehow.

If someone blows the whistle more often than not what you will have is, even if something happens, that person now becomes a target. If they want to prevent similar people from pulling stuff in the future it will be more difficult

More likely than not the dust will simply settle and people will turn a blind eye to things

In the end, regardless of the outcome, it doesnt address the problem.

And the problem is not that evil people exist because those, the real sociopaths, are a minority. A very small one. The problem is people who believe and/or enable them.

They are either very weak willed or just dumb.

Now imagine you can open their eyes. With dumb people what you have to do is insist a lot, waste a lot of time, and take the risk of them doing something dumb and screwing you over. With enablers, the only way is to convince them it's more beneficial to side against this person than with them.

Either way, even if you get rid of the sociopath, these people won't be made any smarter, stronger, or aware because of it.

If anything, they will just be made weaker because their weak behavior got them noticed and "saved" by someone.

Because they are weak and not very intelligent, they will easily turn on you if someone is good with words, because they think emotionally, or if they are more rational they will just go for whoever they think is "stronger" than you, so to speak. Even if you have a temporary setback, even if you have potential, it doesn't matter. They are prone to pick the wrong side. It's all about appearances.


My point is, is it really worth it to save weak or naive people from their weakness/naivete? Some people may be simply young and foolish and may be reasoned with but this isn't the case for all of them. When does it compensate to help someone?

This is a bit difficult to answer, in the sense that the title asks a broad, "philosophical" question, while the post narrows it down considerably to a specific case.

I prefer to reword the post thusly: we all have insight in certain areas, call them our areas of expertise. Similarly we all have things we don't understand very well, call it an area of ignorance. Do we have an obligation to alert those who are ignorant in an area where we have expertise that another who has expertise is cheating them? We have an obligation to do so for those with whom we have a relationship of some depth. However some would also help many others, not out of obligation, but out of a sense of "fairness". Some would not.

[h_k_s]

Does whistleblowing (for example) really serve a purpose?

Because think about it.

Instead of international politics think of some workplace or family situation where someone everyone thought to be "honest" turns out to not be what they appear after someone blows the whistle on them.

Or they get exposed or something

If you look back, you realize there have always been signs

It's just that people like that are really good at charming others

Or they enmesh themselves in whatever circle they have and you can't get rid of them without considerable disturbance.

Or they make key people dependent on them somehow.

If someone blows the whistle more often than not what you will have is, even if something happens, that person now becomes a target. If they want to prevent similar people from pulling stuff in the future it will be more difficult

More likely than not the dust will simply settle and people will turn a blind eye to things

In the end, regardless of the outcome, it doesnt address the problem.

And the problem is not that evil people exist because those, the real sociopaths, are a minority. A very small one. The problem is people who believe and/or enable them.

They are either very weak willed or just dumb.

Now imagine you can open their eyes. With dumb people what you have to do is insist a lot, waste a lot of time, and take the risk of them doing something dumb and screwing you over. With enablers, the only way is to convince them it's more beneficial to side against this person than with them.

Either way, even if you get rid of the sociopath, these people won't be made any smarter, stronger, or aware because of it.

If anything, they will just be made weaker because their weak behavior got them noticed and "saved" by someone.

Because they are weak and not very intelligent, they will easily turn on you if someone is good with words, because they think emotionally, or if they are more rational they will just go for whoever they think is "stronger" than you, so to speak. Even if you have a temporary setback, even if you have potential, it doesn't matter. They are prone to pick the wrong side. It's all about appearances.


My point is, is it really worth it to save weak or naive people from their weakness/naivete? Some people may be simply young and foolish and may be reasoned with but this isn't the case for all of them. When does it compensate to help someone?

Your argument is sophistry. It sounds appealing. But it is not plausible. It is only rhetoric.

You should always do the most noble right thing.

Laws were made to protect people, places, and things.

Laws should be supported.

[h_k_s]

With compensational values not being "self-evident" in all cases I think it can be premature to label a class as weak or unintelligent. Indeed it may take a while for observations to reveal a pattern of behavior that can contribute to a hypothesis.

There is more truth besides merely "self evident" a priori knowledge.

There is also the more complex "a posteriori" deductive and inductive truth. Just a bit more complicated.

[Forestman]

I believe that those who are really interested in knowing the truth should be helped, ready to perceive the unpleasant truth about themselves and others. But such people are few in any country, in my opinion. Most only care about personal interests and allow themselves to be manipulated, not wanting to include their own thinking. In this regard, I recall the expression of Confucius "People like grass - where the wind blows, they goes there." Those, who want to help others, overcome their own egoism, but the same feat is required from those who should receive help, because selfish self-restraint prevents them from overcoming the ossified borders of thinking and ordinary activities.

[dawwg]

overcoming the ossified borders of thinking and ordinary activities.

It's a really, really difficult thing to overcome our ingrained habits. It's one thing to accept a Principle and quite another to put it into practice when our ego gets in the way.

For example I accepted that 'everybody is an unassigned supportive element within the matrix wherein children play' with the condition that the methods we use to resolve conflict can be used against us.

My roommate then went off the deep-end and threatened to shoot me and I was in the position to remove the firing-pin from his weapon, which I did, and then re-installed it after realizing that I was practicing a tactic of atrition