It is really no harder to manipulate or indoctrinate someone with a high IQ. It's not a measure of resistance to the former.

Of course, a perfectly reasonable question is "how many people does it take to give someone the right to kill?". If 66 million is enough, is 50 million? 10 million? How about a hundred thousand? Which countries, therefore, have leaders with the moral backing to do so, and which are too small.

The idea that popular support makes murder acceptable is ludicrous in and of itself, if you doubt this look at our depictions of Hitler.

I agree with everything that comes after this statement.

Obama has been given the authority to kill along the officially legislated channels of his office. So, there is the distinction: Dzokhar Tsarnaev had no authority to do what he did. What he did was also clearly immoral.

President Obama has the authority. What he's doing is questionably immoral. It's also not the only thing he does that affects people in a material way good or bad.

This is the relativity of moral decisions and the only way out is to try to define morality in absolute terms, which has resulted in many religions and philosophical works. The purest (i.e. simplest) form of a moral framework is that of Jainism - it promotes full restrictions on all forms of violence except when necessary for survival (e.g. a farmer killing a farm animal to feed his family).

This may seem like common sense, but it helps that it's defined in a simple form. This is why we don't agree with Tsarnaev or terrorist groups - what they do is not necessary for survival, it serves other purposes. This is why we sometimes just as easily don't agree with president Obama's choices. It has nothing to do with "proper channels", "authority" or any of those words.

Their average IQ is 100 by definition. If everyone got twice as smart overnight, the average IQ would still be 100.

Of course it's extremely easy to say, the heck with it. I'm just going to adapt myself to the structures of power and authority and do the best I can within them. Sure, you can do that. But that's not acting like a decent person. You can walk down the street and be hungry. You see a kid eating an ice cream cone and you notice there's no cop around and you can take the ice cream cone from him because you're bigger and walk away. You can do that. Probably there are people who do. We call them "pathological." On the other hand, if they do it within existing social structures we call them "normal." But it's just as pathological. It's just the pathology of the general society. -- Noam Chomsky

It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets. -- Voltaire

Conversely, think about how easy it is to write someone off because he or she looks like a low-life. Why do we always try to understand the motivations of attractive and female killers, while other segments of society are ignored entirely?

Obama's good-looking, but people don't admire him because of his policy on drones. We don't have videos of him launching a drone strike and melting away into the crowd. The parent raises a good point, but it's not exactly relevant to this discussion.

Just because I think it's trivial doesn't mean I don't experience it.. but point taken, it's not trivial. Seeing that little comment about Obama grayed out without any reply annoyed me, I flew off the handle there sorry.

I know far too many young women who stay in abusive or worthless relationships because they think they can fix the guy, or that deep inside the guy is just misunderstood. Where does that instinct come from?

I guess knowing what you want can matter more than what exactly you want, at least to people who themselves are even weaker and easily impressed. Also, someone who is passionate about random or even evil stuff will often be more fascinating than someone who is lukewarm or cowardly about saving the world, I think that much is obvious.

Also, for every female who is into a serial killer, a thousand are into Justin Bieber. So I'm not even sure there is such an "instinct". There may be broken females who had shitty fathers, though, and to those, the abuse they know might be preferable to the liberty and decision making they never learned. But that's just armchair psychology, I don't really know. But oh boy did I ponder this, I had my fair share of being treated like a doormat for being friendly, as well as sexual offers for being narcissistic - I don't understand it, either. I kinda paused caring about it, maybe it will come to me in a dream. (or a HN reply ^^)

Obama's good-looking, but people don't admire him because of his policy on drones.

Well, before we have even the faintest idea how this stuff works and is or isn't connected, who is to say? Does it matter what he officially says? If this stuff is, for example, "genes speaking to genes" ("Why do lionesses like lions who kill the children they had with another male? Why wouldn't we find something similar in humans, if not something way more advanced?"), wouldn't it matter way more what he does? I often wondered this about Hitler, if some people didn't actually (at least subconsciously) notice and agree to his hate and nihilism, even though they picked up his rhetoric and euphemisms. Are people really that easily misled? Or are they just rationalizing?

We don't have videos of him launching a drone strike and melting away into the crowd.

Exactly. That's how much more slick he is; not how much less violent. In the same way, a mafia boss might be more attractive than a thug on the payroll of the same mafia boss, even though physically much weaker, and more refined in behaviour.