Who decides what is good and bad?

[Coccygia]

If somebody is amoral a la Harry Lime they would see nothing wrong with torturing someone to death just for laughs. Not Mr. Lime's thing, I admit, but consider the Marquis de Sade, for example. Amoral with a taste for inflicting pain (mostly in his fiction, admittedly.) Or mobsters like Whitey Bulger. The two things overlap and are both reprehensible.

I'm saying that Harry Lime didn't derive satisfaction directly from the suffering of others, and thus isn't a good example to use for an immoral (it looks like you're using "amoral" to mean "immoral", here) sadist. I mean, fuck, out of all the comparisons you could have drawn from abundant literature and history to someone who wanted to rape and torture just 'cuz, Harry Lime was a poor option. Marquis de Sade would have been much more apt. Bulger, not so much, as he wasn't a sociopath despite his being sadistic.

Whitey wasn't a sociopath? Oh well, I'll let that slide, I was just using him as an example of a vicious mob boss. I don't know all that much about the guy but he seems like a sociopath to me.

Actually I looked back at my original post in the other thread...I was using Lime as an example of someone with no moral scruples whatsoever (which is what I mean by amoral, which is pretty much the same as a sociopath or psychopath), not a sadist (I understood Furious Grandmothers' post in that sense - that he had no compunction about killing for $1,000,000, and copnsidered the "new experience" factor a bonus - not the same exactly as sadism).

My main point is that, fine, Lime isn't a sadist, he's just as bad if not worse. Not being a sadist doesn't really make him any better.
Someone like him could probably do more damage than a sadist, because of his indifference to his victims.

And anyway...we're talking about a fictional character here. Kind of pointless to analyze him as though he were real. Of course there are plenty of real-life guys like Lime.

Still, I rather enjoyed the quibbling.

[The Parkus Empire]

Whitey wasn't a sociopath? Oh well, I'll let that slide, I was just using him as an example of a vicious mob boss. I don't know all that much about the guy but he seems like a sociopath to me.

No, he wasn't. Sociopaths don't care about people in any deeper sense than they care about a piece of furniture they're really fond of. There was a specific handful of people, including his mother, that Whitey said he'd be he'd be willing to sacrifice himself for, and the death of his son affected him so deeply that he verbally expressed regret over having inflicted that kind of suffering on others.

Actually I looked back at my original post in the other thread...I was using Lime as an example of someone with no moral scruples whatsoever (which is what I mean by amoral, which is pretty much the same as a sociopath or psychopath), not a sadist (I understood Furious Grandmothers' post in that sense - that he had no compunction about killing for $1,000,000, and copnsidered the "new experience" factor a bonus - not the same exactly as sadism).

I was under the impression that you were referencing FG's desire to torture and rape people for fun, which was in the same post, iirc.

[Wazkyraque]

Myself over my actions, You over yours, it is really that difficult.

[Chinese Regions]

Stop genocide

[Furious Grandmothers]

Do you mean we have evolved such that our DNA makes us subjectively feel "bad" to kill fellow human beings, or that it is factually bad to kill fellow human beings?

Our DNA makes us feel bad to kill human beings

DNA, you conniving bastard, making us have a conscience and all.

[Coccygia]

Whitey wasn't a sociopath? Oh well, I'll let that slide, I was just using him as an example of a vicious mob boss. I don't know all that much about the guy but he seems like a sociopath to me.

No, he wasn't. Sociopaths don't care about people in any deeper sense than they care about a piece of furniture they're really fond of. There was a specific handful of people, including his mother, that Whitey said he'd be he'd be willing to sacrifice himself for, and the death of his son affected him so deeply that he verbally expressed regret over having inflicted that kind of suffering on others

.
Not enough that he ever stopped, though.

Actually I looked back at my original post in the other thread...I was using Lime as an example of someone with no moral scruples whatsoever (which is what I mean by amoral, which is pretty much the same as a sociopath or psychopath), not a sadist (I understood Furious Grandmothers' post in that sense - that he had no compunction about killing for $1,000,000, and considered the "new experience" factor a bonus - not the same exactly as sadism).

I was under the impression that you were referencing FG's desire to torture and rape people for fun, which was in the same post, iirc.

Oh, I missed that part. In which case I guess you're right.