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RULES (updated 01/22/25)
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If you live long enough and interact with the world at large, you will eventually be a victim. You might have avoided 99 other scams or situations where somebody was trying to manipulate you but eventually, you'll fall "victim" to something.
Having a duty to try to keep yourself from being taken advantage of, doesn't mean that you should be denied help when you finally do get taken advantage of and that help be given without judgment.
I'm in the "little bit of both" camp here.
By definition if you're a malicious manipulator you're being a bad person. (Disagree? Look up what "malicious" means....) And bad people really should be punished. (But that's not the end-all, be-all of things: good people should also be rewarded!)
On the other hand, you live in a world where bad actors exist. At some level you have to watch out for yourself instead of dumping that burden on literally everybody around you who in some form or another cares about you.
Where things get complicated for me is when the people who are victims of malicious manipulators have been manipulated through their own desire to be, well, malicious. The victims of 419 scams, for example, are sucked in by malicious manipulators through a desire to benefit through what amounts to malicious manipulation. They wanted to be scammers themselves; it just turns out that they were incompetent at it and got scammed instead. Here my feelings are mixed.
In my mind the law requires the equality of us all (no one should be above the law and also no one should be more targeted by said law). So, no 'malicious people' should not be punished more than other people committing the same 'crime'.
If it is to be respected, any law needs to be fair. If it is not, bad things will happen. That's one of the reasons laws can be amended or removed and... why they should be when they aren't fair.
Edit: typos.
I agree that laws should be applied equally to everyone and I would never suggest otherwise. In this context, malicious would mean intent. So in legal terminology it would be the difference between 1st, 2nd, 3rd degree murder, or manslaughter.
Exactly.
Responsibility cannot be delegated. People are always responsible to keep themselves safe. But it makes sense for them to cooperate in a society to organize their safety.
The problem is that manipulation is part of society. For society to work, people must be unaware of some manipulations but then, manipulators can abuse the blind spots.
Overall it's a cost benefit decision. Some abuse can be easier prevented by regulations, some by personal responsibility.
Just to clarify, what would you consider necessary manipulation? Disregarding the malicious component for a moment even.
Nothing is necessary in particular, but a choice among options.
We desensitize people to compassion, we dogwhistle people into racism, we train people to ignore dishonesty, we make people comply with authority even if they are wrong, we make people believe in science instead of understanding it, and some more.
This is to make people accept their jobs and create the things that are needed.
In general, people don't do stuff on their own. So overall the manipulation is needed if we want to have more than hunter gathering. This can be seen as malicious, but also as benevolent.
This voice sounds very familiar to me. Very shini.
What do you mean?
The issue that arises in these conversations are the semantics. Never have I seen someone mention "manipulators" but then define them in a way that not only includes all the intended people and excludes all of the unintended people but also could be lived up to in a consistent way. Many will point fingers and say "that person is manipulative" and will get upset when I ask "how would you define that", because I work on these kinds of issues, and these kinds of progressions would be vital. The same people, I have noticed, are never content by saying something like "that person is deceptive", because then they can foresee that it will progress into a conversation about how not all "manipulation" entails "deception" and not all "deception" entails "manipulation".
In short, the first issue lies in determining what the boundaries of "manipulation" are.
If you look through any book of law, "manipulation" is a word that is very, very seldomly used, if at all.
Suppose, though, you found core ideas that can be appealed to. Do you try to stop the issue or do you leave it up to the target of these people to fare for themselves? If you can find traces of the "perpetrator" doing something that crosses questionable boundaries as a side effect of itself, definitely the former. This kind of thing can only be settled by elaborating on boundaries. Before I stepped down from some of my positions, I often added these elaborations to whatever modus operandi of management was being used. Fine lines should be applied as much as possible.
As for what society is programmed to do, I like to think people are seekers of enlightenment, although my experiences overwhelmingly suggest the exact opposite occurs from people. The severity and amount of clique-based decision-making comes across as almost monstrous, as anyone who has read the logs of an administrator can tell you. Ironically, being roundabout, often in a way that evokes the image of the people we are referring to, can serve as a demonstrator of the wrongfulness of this way of doing things.