Also: "sociopath/psychopath/narcissist" etc. is not just another name for a horrible person.
this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2025
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I seriously hate this debate for the sole reason that FAR too many people take, "don't dehumanize" to mean, "you cannot do 'bad' things to 'bad' people, period." That is a fucking STUPID position to hold, and again, far too many people view, "do not dehumanize" to mean, "you would become a Nazi if you said punching Nazis is good."
Yes, we must remember every human is a human. Good job with the tautological obvious facts of reality! We must also remember many humans betray humanity and do not deserve honor or respect. Sometimes, they don't even deserve life.
It is wholly about how you judge someone else and over what criteria, not about some mystical concept of togetherness. "Dehumanize" is far too generic of a term to create absolute rules with like this. It's just difficult to communicate an exact interpretation with. (see: the many interpretations people are assuming in the rest of the comments)
Look up the trial of Rudolf Höss, the commandant of Auschwitz.
For what he did, there would have been every justification to shoot him in the head and leave his body in a ditch on the side of the road. But instead, we put him on trial, and we got the following statements out of the guy:
My conscience compels me to make the following declaration. In the solitude of my prison cell, I have come to the bitter recognition that I have sinned gravely against humanity. As Commandant of Auschwitz, I was responsible for carrying out part of the cruel plans of the 'Third Reich' for human destruction. In so doing I have inflicted terrible wounds on humanity. I caused unspeakable suffering for the Polish people in particular. I am to pay for this with my life. May the Lord God forgive one day what I have done. I ask the Polish people for forgiveness. In Polish prisons I experienced for the first time what human kindness is. Despite all that has happened I have experienced humane treatment which I could never have expected, and which has deeply shamed me. May the facts which are now coming out about the horrible crimes against humanity make the repetition of such cruel acts impossible for all time.
...and (in a letter to his wife before his execution):
Based on my present knowledge I can see today clearly, severely and bitterly for me, that the entire ideology about the world in which I believed so firmly and unswervingly was based on completely wrong premises and had to absolutely collapse one day. And so my actions in the service of this ideology were completely wrong, even though I faithfully believed the idea was correct.
...and (in the same letter, to his children):
Keep your good heart. Become a person who lets himself be guided primarily by warmth and humanity. Learn to think and judge for yourself, responsibly. Don't accept everything without criticism and as absolutely true... The biggest mistake of my life was that I believed everything faithfully which came from the top, and I didn't dare to have the least bit of doubt about the truth of that which was presented to me. ... In all your undertakings, don't just let your mind speak, but listen above all to the voice in your heart.
We wouldn't have any of that if we had treated Höss like an animal, rather than a human being.
Yes. I never said to treat them like a rabid dog coming at you. (unless they are coming at you, of course)
Like I said, it's about how you judge someone (such as a proper trial vs flippant execution) and on what criteria.
The main thrust of my point is: Policing language while there are people out there gleefully murdering children and rigging the economy so that more suffer for their gains is pathetic pedantry and only a practice of self-fellatio at best, and running interference for these despicable monsters at worst.
Some people do, in fact, deserve to be called absolute trash monsters for betraying humanity, and do, in fact, deserve to be treated differently. Permanent incarceration (if they are the irredeemable type) after due process is still treating someone differently.
They are dehumanizing people right now, as we speak. It has to stop. One way or another.
The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people. -- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
People speak out. It's not silence but silent. The zone is flooded to drown those voices. The tragedy is that people don't know whom they can trust.
All dehumanizers are sub-literate neaderthals
Dehumanizing AI is a good thing.
Please cool it with the clankphobia. ChatGpt, Claude and Gemini are as human as you or me they just live on the wire instead of inside a skull.
You can't dehumanise things that are nowhere near human. How did you interpret this post in order to arrive at this comment??
Just don’t use AI gen while you’re doing it.
You can't dehumanize what was never human to begin with.
Which, kind of drags the entire thing from the meta level down to the object level. There were cases of dehumanization in not-that-ancient history where the dehumanizers explicitly claimed the victims are not humans. American slavery is one example. The Holocaust is another. MAGAs (still) won't claim explicitly that the minorities they dehumanize are not human. If we stay at the meta level, wouldn't that make them worse that than slavers and actual Nazis who can say they are not dehumanizing because their victims were never human to being with?
It shouldn't.
We humanize lots of non-human things all the time. Pets, animals used as meat, 1 month old fetuses, fictional characters, religious figures, etc.
It is as human to humanize as it is to dehumanize because it's in our nature to attempt to define what is and isn't us.
When you attribute value to a being because you see humanity in it, you are making a value statement that a being has worth because it has humanity, not because it has life which is precious.
Ultimately, dehumanizing ourselves is how we can extend our compassion to other beings. When we accept that we are no more alive than pigs are, we accept that pigs, too, are living being with their own thoughts, subjective experience, and suffering.
You can absolutely dehumanize things that were never human, because what it means to be human is neither universal nor static. AI is human to people who don't understand how LLMs work. There's a thought experiment called Roco's basilisk (trigger warning as it can induce anxiety) that entirely banks on people's tendency to humanize AI. You can argue that people are dumb and just don't understand that that's not how AI works, but how something works often has no bearing on how it is perceived by people.
More people than ever are asking what it means to be human in the face of something that almost communicates like one. We are not dehumanizing AI because of it's race, gender, or color, because that is not clearly defined in AI. We're dehumanizing AI because we are asking what it means to be human outside of superficial context.
I mean... I get your point, but AI is literally not human.
The Measure of a Man does a far better job of going into this than I can, but suffice to say, what package someone is wrapped in shouldn't be the arbiter of what qualifies as a person. Does this apply to AI in its current form? I'd say no, but does it apply to whales, octopuses, pigs, possible aliens, possible AI implementations in the future? That's a little trickier.
A valid observation at the object level - but not at the meta level. That is - the reason why it's okay to dehumanize AI but not okay to dehumanize is that your claim that "AI is not human" is correct while our hypothetical racist's claim that " are not human" is incorrect - and not because of some general principle like the one in the meme.
I agree, though to "dehumanize" someone has many meanings to many different people. To many, even calling some people despicable garbage is beyond the pale.
I think the whole debate is stupid. Most agree some people deserve at least permanent incarceration; a fate worse than death depending on ones' beliefs of an afterlife. Policing language over feefees when there are people out there gleefully murdering children is pedantic self-fellatio and completely and utterly misses the point.
Also policing language over feelings leads to the worst abusers figuring out how to play the system and getting other people policed for there fee fees.
The bullies play victim.
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Nah fuck that. Zionists have forfeit their humanity. They can burn to death for all I care.
How long until you decide Palestinians have forfeit their humanity?
Not the OP you replied to, but I would say approximately 1 second after genocide. Anyone who kills people based on physical attributes like skin color, hair type, facial structure, what languages they speak, what they worship, who they love, or where they were born has forsaken humanity.
Dehumanization, tribalism, racism, religious intolerance.
Name a more iconic, perfidious quartet.
What's wrong with religious intolerance? Of someome can choose religion, I can mock them
If they're not harming anyone, leave them the fuck alone. You're still discriminating even if it's their choice.
Notable exception: "Not men. Fascists."
Don't forget land lords
I aint no tankie but I was referencing this utterly cold quote from Soviet sniper Lyudmila Pavlichenko.
I know
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