I think we have all had a moment or two where we derived some pleasure from another person's misfortune, but most of the time there is some context. I think for most people it happens when they feel that someone else is getting their comeuppance, or some application of karma. Otherwise I can't think of any times that I felt any sort of satisfaction from someone else's suffering where there wasn't some sort of context.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
