Isn't that what prisons are for?
Why do so many people insist on trying come up with a solution to a problem that we already solved hundreds of years ago?
This thought experiment fails to account the mos important fact about moral dilemmas.
There is no no objective "good" or "evil". In this case, by whose concept of evil does these switches works?
This thought experiment seem mostly irrelevant, as prejudgment is/should be illegal. I would say 'Let Justice Prevail,' but the rich seem mostly immune to justice.
Though I agree that people should only be judged by their actions, this is different because we are talking about uncertainty and risk Vs certainty and zero risk.
People with their evil setting deliberately enabled are an uncertain risk, you can never tell.
People with it disabled will never harm you, at least not knowingly or deliberately.
If given a choice, would you let your kids live among risky uncertain people or zero risk people?
I don't want my kids living in this current world. I cry to think about the evil my kids are exposed to everyday. I don't want that. But it's the life we have. I believe that God promises to pay back all evil and all good and that He will. When God took his protection away from Job and allowed Satan to torment him, He gave Job not only what Satan took away but added on top of that. I look forward to that day.
Show forgiveness, even when you have been provoked.
Be kind, especially to those who don’t deserve it.
You can use those two setting to deal with the people who don’t use them.
From where does the will come with which the person is to decide to change their setting?
It's easy to want to want something. I'm fat, and I wish I didn't want so much unhealthy food. It's easy for me to want to want less food. It's not so easy to actually want less food.
It's easy to wish you cared more about hurting others because you keep making a mess of your life and hurting the people around you. It's not so easy to actually consistently care, unless you're just born with that compassion.
My point is that I don't think this is actually much different from reality. Almost everyone knows right from wrong. Being a good person in our actual reality is actually very much the same thing as being the type of person that would choose to change their settings to "good." Being a bad person is just to be someone who responds "why would I want to give up the freedom of moral flexibility" when suggested they change their settings.
I think the answers to the problems with immorality in your hypothetical situation are actually the same to the answers in our actual reality. We have to change the incentive structure. We make the expected cost of criminality significantly higher than the expected gain.
>We make the expected cost of criminality significantly higher than the expected gain.
While this is the typical rational approach, there is a downside. There's no way to actually make the cost exceed the gain ultimately. The harsher the punishment, the more ruthless and dangerous people will still take that risk for the potential profits, and they'll be even more deadly in preventing their apprehension. If there is a desire for a product or service, regardless of the punishment, someone *WILL* provide that product or service... and they will charge accordingly.
I don't know of any way this can actually be prevented, but the harsher the penalty is, the higher the price will be for that product or service... but someone will supply it, even if the penalty is a death sentence.
If it's an actual "moral" setting, you can't condemn someone for a crime they might commit because that would be immoral. Now if it's an obedience setting disguised as a moral setting then you can condemn them, as you are not wanting moral behavior, but obedient behavior.
Interesting thought experiment. Unfortunately the human mind and society aren’t this simple. Everyone should strive to make the best choices they can and we should help one another to deal with traumas and understand others, etc but, while one can deeply discourage anti-social behaviour, it isn’t possible or eliminate it.
Morality is a consensus, doesn't matter if its relative or not, lol.
We will not throw out the legal, justice and common moral framework just because of "relativity".
So the brain chip would still work, just need to update its moral rules every few decades.
How old are you? Ten years ago I would probably have agreed with you but I now recognize the world and humanity is more complex than that.
When I speak about relativity I mean in terms of what is best for human flourishing. There are different cultures where moral values are different. Even within a culture a diversity of opinion is needed in order to advance. It wouldn’t really be possible to update these brain chips with “better morality” if, as you describe, they force everyone to have the same moral standards.
I am 140 years old, but considered young for elves. How about you? I bet you are human, lol.
Are baby murder, baby rape and baby torture just opinions and not absolutely wrong for you?
I would agree but, depending on definitions, these are universally considered wrong by everyone without serious mental disorders.
Why I state “depending on definitions” is when one asks the question “when does life begin?”
Whether you or I support or oppose abortion is irrelevant. This is not universally agreed upon so it would seem unjust for a brain chip to force everyone to agree or disagree on this.
> Isolate and banish them from society? Even when they have "yet" to commit any crimes? Just to be safe?
You couldn't, because evil would ascend to the heights of power structures, given that there is no actual arbiter to stop them. Think of any sport or game. Take tennis. And take any top player of your choice. Clone them, so they are identical, but make it so one has this evil setting, and the other is good. Now, to make this analogy closer to reality, make it so there's either no referee, or an ineffective referee. In other words, cheating works well in this matchup.
The good player, can't cheat. That's just what "good" means. They can't break the rules just to win, then they wouldn't be good. But the evil player can do whatever they want to win. They can try to distract their opponent, they can try to distract the referee, they can try to trick or manipulate them in an unsportsmanlike way that any good referee would call out and any well run sport or game would put a stop to in the spirit of fairness.
Over time, all else equal, if these players played against each other, the evil player would flat out win more. Now, if you want to make this more analogous to reality, we could make it so the evil player could gain access to the ruling body of the sport to engineer the rules for him or herself. That part of the analogy simulates how power if self-serving in our world, how the victors re-write history, the functions of nepotism, tyranny, and so on. The evil player could even pretend or engineer revolutions and say, "Look! We've invented new rules! We've made a more fair game now!" This would make people cooperate to continue to entertain the sport, but this would pure fabrication, because evil would be stronger than ever here, just more camouflaged as a function of its ever growing power. I'm not saying this hypothetically but this is literally what our world is. Evil and power are synonymous and the entire evolutionary system is designed to distill greater and greater power, and greater and greater evil, while obscuring it more and more.
It is authoritarian/totalitarian to assume that there should be a "solution" at the societal level to the "problem" of selfishness/greed/violence. So one would have to have their evil setting on to suggest that it would be prudent to punish those with it on, but by the nature of them being evil, they would not choose to punish themselves. It comes down to issues of corruption, transparency, and individual liberty. All three assault one another and in so doing create homeostasis
Pretty sure I would NOT adjust my "settings". I quite like the moral compass I have now, thank you, and who TF knows what lunatic is deciding this moral code. Could be GD Elongated Muskrat. Who wants to act like that douche-clown?
Your question is ill-formed. It presuposes that we have "solved" ethics and therefore can define "moral" and "immoral" perfectly so.
If that were the case, then this question would be absurd to meander on. People with their moral settings tuned to prevent "evil" simply would do the "right" thing.
Basically you are proposing a world were a problem doesn't exist, and then wonder how we would fix it when dealing with the problem that doesn't exist.
The answer, then, is simple: we can't know, because we haven't got the ability to set our moral settings, and even if we did, we'd have no idea what to set them into.
Lets explore this on the logical manner:
First lets define some axioms to work on:
1. There exists an absolute morality.
2. A moral person is someone who maximizes good and minimizes evil.
3. Harming or preventing a moral person is evil.
4. Harming to stop or prevent an immoral person (someone who maximizes evil over good) may result in more good in the long run, so it may be moral.
5. Harming to stop an amoral person (who doesn't maximize or minimize evil, but just is) is probably evil, as the chance of this person causing harm is 50/50, but the reality of harming them has done greater evil with certainty.
Now on to create the scenario:
1. We live in a world where people are able to configure themselves into optimal morality.
1. Some people may choose not to configure themselves into optimal morality.
1. Note that this doesn't prevent them from being moral, nor does it force them to be immoral, it just makes it optional.
1. If the moralized people (1) decide to kill the non-moralized people (2) before they commit any immoral actions, they risk having killed a moral person or an amoral person, which means that there's a probability that they have done an evil thing.
1. It stands to reason that any attempt to treat the non-moralized people different would be an immoral act, that by definition people in (1) are unable to do.
1. If the moralized people (1) let the non-moralized people (2) do whatever they want, and this results in one of them doing something immoral, then by inaction the moralized people have allowed this to happen, and are partially responsible. This would also imply that they are not moralized people.
This strongly implies that there is no absolute moral, instead everything needs to be seen in context and situation. To say that there's a way to create someone who is moral is to ignore that under different circumstances all this configurations and tweaks to make you moral could make you be immoral.
Because it's a contradiction, assuming that this is the case means we end up with a [logical bottom](https://proofwiki.org/wiki/Definition:Bottom_(Logic)) or absurdity. We can actually assume that this is true, but if we do, this allows us to define anything. In other words if there were an absolute morality (axiom 1) then we will inevitably be able to justify any evilness or cruelty by forcing the context and conditions to what is needed (meaning that we are in a fully relative morality, again an absurd logic given that we're assuming absolutism, but that's the whole point!).
And maybe that's the thing. Throughout history we've created this justifications or arguments that people are inherently more moral than others. This side is good, that side is bad. This race is good, that race tends to be evil in certain ways, this religion is what help us unlike the other religion which is amoral, this gender can only be good while the other can be pragmatic, this sexuality means you are a deviant and evil by nature. All of these have been used in some way or another to justify some of what we consider the worst moral attrocities. Entretaining the question isn't giving insight, it's just exploring insanity.
And that's the thing, people can't be moral or immoral. An action can be. But actions must be measured by their three parts: an intent of the actor, a consequence on the affected, and the context on which this all happened. And none of them justify things. Making people "moral" only ensures their intent is to be moral, but it doesn't ensure that the eventual consequences of their actions are complete, nor that on the context they ended up as moral. When you realize that you see that the people who would be tweaked to be more moral, wouldn't actually be any more moral in their actions than someone who hadn't, because there's so many variables that are not being controlled, and indeed you could argue that by taking one lever away, these people are easier to coerce or manipulate into evil (and that's kind of the whole point of the banality of evil). This explains why facists, racists, or others always start with the argument of "we're the more moral people", it's an attractive lie that allows rewriting a person's morality to whatever they want.
So in short, no I don't think they should do anything, and they shouldn't do. I'd also ask them to get off their high horse, because morality is not as simple as just being a good person, whatever the hell that means. They should get off their high horse, since it's simply impossible to ever prove that someone is more moral. We all are trying our best here, and we all will keep doing the best we can. And yes this means that I would expect that sometimes the person who did the "evil" thing is the person who was tweaked to be more moral.
Sorry, way too long for me.
But how can anyone say baby rape, baby torture and baby murder are acceptable?
If we have a way to turn such tendencies off, would it not be moral to do it?
> But how can anyone say ... baby murder are acceptable
You do realize though that you have proposed a world were people would know the baby is not tweaked to be moral. Why not kill and be done with it? What about killing baby hitler?
If it could be moral to kill people who have a higher risk of being non-moral, then it's just as moral to kill a baby. If you can't kill a baby morally, then the people must be immoral. This is the part that is ridiculous of your argument.
Also there's a few other [thought experiments on exactly that question: is killing a baby always wrong?](https://www.newsweek.com/kill-baby-save-family-brain-activity-shows-your-approach-moral-dilemmas-774343) What if not killing the baby will result in them being tortured? What if it'll result in their murder, but you could prevent the murder of others?
And that's the thing I can twist any scenario to one where you are technically breaking your rules but doing the right thing, or following your rules and doing something bad.
> If we have a way to turn such tendencies off, would it not be moral to do it?
And here's another proposal: what if we're already coded to be as moral as possible within our situation? [That evolution has shaped us to seek being moral](https://www.cnn.com/2014/02/12/us/baby-lab-morals-ac360/index.html). It'd make even more sense if we think as the concept of good being the thing we want to instictively maximize, that is it's not that it's moral to do good, but what feels good defines what is good and moral. It's our arbitrary line. From there we can mamixmize it or minimize it, in part by avoiding scenarios like the one linked above, you know scenarios were atrocities have to be done due to other atrocities.
Naturally we want to build a society were people are their most moral version. But the ansewr isn't to eliminate does that aren't at the top, but rather to improve their lives so they can be more moral even.
If the goal is to reduce harm inflicted onto humanity or individuals, (ignoring the complexity of an agreed upon definition of evil that threatens our species and must be stopped, and the fact evil often is a collective act), perhaps there are different angles to approach:
1. **Change the abuser:** Identify humans who inflict harm and examine ways to fix their brain, self awareness, education, and inner compass, etc. If we can scan kids brains to see if they are missing the key brain functions to live pro socially, and treat it like we would any other malformation or defect, I think that’s interesting to ponder. I’m less interested in fixing well established criminals and abusers to give them a fresh start - I’d rather resources be given to their victims whose brains and nervous systems have been harmed and the abuser being held accountable and stopped.
2. **Control the abuser:** Identify humans who inflict harm and examine ways to isolate them or control them to reduce their negative impact on others without trying to change them. Could we have a more transparent way to identify abusers (I realize the risks of socially scoring people, but we’re smart enough to be innovative and find a safe and just way)?
3. **Punish the abuser:** We have a justice system, and in certain cases it works. It has cracks for a lot of the most heinous evil to slip through. What if we updated this to not favor some people over others, accommodate more evidence based definition of what should be punished, and increased the severity of punishment?
4. **Punish the behavior, more than the abuser:** For most of my life I was programmed and believed in forgiveness, do no harm, two wrongs don’t make a right, but with life experience and deeper perspective, I’m starting to think an eye for an eye is appropriate in some cases. Financial crimes earn you lifelong poverty, rape others you get it back or have parts removed and are physically altered so you can’t overpower another human, kill others and you are killed in same manner. Abusers tend to inflict the harm they are afraid to have inflicted on them, so would knowing whatever they do will be done to them help deter them? If we focused on defining and weighing evil behaviors and punishing them accordingly, does it encourage harmful people to think before they act, redeem themselves by separating the abuser from the abusers behavior, and easier to stomach inflicting punishment because we’re not condemning a person forever and simply delivering karma. If you know you’ll be killed for killing, it’s less of a moral conundrum for those sentencing or inflicting punishment - so killing someone is essentially asking to be killed. This is how moral policing and religion has fucked us. We feel like sinners for sentencing death on someone who has killed many and will continue because they don’t value life. Why do we protect life that doesn’t want to be alive and wants to end lives that do value their lives? It’s something I’ve been pondering - I don’t have a firm grasp or stance on my own perspective, but I’m realizing we have been brainwashed to somehow feel responsible to carry others guilt as a species when we could just hold them accountable and move on. It’s what has led to abusers being able to be in charge of the narrative and systems that run the world. Our forgiveness kink and shame complex let’s abusers run free without remorse while victims pile up and line up for the slaughterhouse.
5. **Prevent abusers:** Identify the origin of evil (childhood trauma) and invest our collective energy time and resources to focus on better parenting, childhood development, and equitable access to information and resources to enable this.
6. **Support the victims:** Instead of reducing evil which seems to find a way, what if we focused all our energy, time, resources, education, and collaboration on helping victims recover, heal, and receive the support to get their life back? This is maybe what we do worst as a species right now. We blame victims, we ignore them, cast them out, we shame them, we refuse to learn the glaring and obvious truth of how they were victimized, the harm it caused them, what they need to reset. It’s actually so depressing - ***to me, watching how people ignore victims and under support them makes me feel far more hopeless than any evil I have heard of.*** Care, restoration, listening, learning from, believing, protecting, resourcing, and supporting victims is how humans can reflect our capacity for good, love, collaboration, innovation, intelligence - and it seems to be where we are currently underperforming as a collective.
7. **Clean up messes and establish a collective self reflection process:** After we rubberneck and gawk at tragedy like we do, how do we examine what led to it, adjust our individual accountability and systems to have a process to submit a flag for warning signs, add consequences for bystanders along with abusers, collective responsibility to support victims to recover. If we weren’t allowed to look away, move on, ignore victims or refuse to learn, would we all be more actively empowered to make a difference and have skin in the game so we would apply social pressure to abusers that would make it harder to avoid shame of inflicting or getting away with evil.
I think most evil is people taking bold action that you are not aligned with. Most villains claim some reasoning and have their adherents. “History is written by the victor” means if the winners and losers of wars were flipped, they’d be telling us how righteous they are or how it was necessary. We can already see they did see it this way and we view our past generously.
Individual evils are usually “hurt people hurt people.” If you believe in anything strongly enough you might be willing to do some bad things. Even the people seeking power for its own sake usually are coming from a place of having experienced a painful sense of powerlessness that haunts them
I kind of feel like the premise is faulty because the assumption that everyone is born with a blank slate seems (admittedly intuitively and subjectively, because no one can prove this) absolutely preposterous.
Any parent will tell you that despite doing their best to raise their children the same way, in the same environment, each of their children come with wildly different characteristics and predispositions.
Some people are born with a much higher capacity for evil than others.
Dunbar's number - we are programmed to best function at an individual and societal level when we live out our lives in small communities.
The kind that can effectively police themselves fairly well with both hard (bylaws) and soft (social reinforcement of shared value systems) mechanisms while also providing the kind of social-psychological-emotional development that helps prevent these kind of people from developing. Or, if you're more in the nature over nurtue camp, to help prevent them from doing harm (ostracizing, etc.).
There's no real answer to the question you're asking that can work with the structure/scale of modern society. It's a problem of decentralization, and those never, ever have centralized solutions (despite what the UN and their ilk would like to think)
I’m not sure I believe there is an “evil” setting. Human behavior is complex and just because we label something as “evil” doesn’t mean other cultures untouched by our influence have to believe the same thing.
In parts of India they worship cows so to them anyone who eats cow is evil.
Basic human instinct isn’t also tuned to the “evil” setting as these instincts have evolved over millions of years for a reason: survival.
We may have feeling about certain things but no matter the issue we should all remember that our perspective is just that: only our own.
All I know is that people will start lying about tuning their settings and we'll end up with a bunch of AH and morally corrupt individuals running amongst us. So basically what we have now
You did the brain chip one of these lol
This one’s better. Brain chip has too much connotations about technology that affect the answer (towards no)
This current version is hard to argue because, how do you punish these people? Do we allow people whose evil switches are never turned off to deal justice against those who choose to keep their evil switches on while the rest of us have the evil switch turned off?
Because isn’t justice and punishment some level of evil? It’s hurt, pain, obstruction and isolation.
If they don’t have to have their switch active to deal justice, then you’ve made ‘evil’ subjective where we can have an evil switch on and not do evil things
So why would we empower some central state authority to decide when to activate this switch when it’s not guaranteed to do anything meaningful?
Or are we implying that no wrong can be committed by someone with the evil switch turned off. Because I find that hard do belied
The people who intentionally set themselves to be evil did so knowing that it will most likely cause serious harm to another person in the future. Morally its almost exactly the same as driving drunk every day of your life.
This is taking the scenario very literally though. In real life people are much more complicated
Imagine an easy to install brain chip or supplements, cheap and easy to get, can be fine tuned at home, some people take it to prevent evil, some dont, its doable.
But the real question is, we don't know if someone with the evil function enabled will actually do evil things or not, its a random risk. They are not always drunk, more like randomly drunk, when something triggers them.
So until they actually do evil things, can we morally judge them for simply having their evil function enabled?
Evil is relative. So I would imagine in your hypothetical homogeneous world, if everyone agreed what evil was most people would be ok with turning off evil.
So baby rape, baby torture and baby murder are not evil today because?
Even if everything is relative, we still function on consensus and democracy, this is how we create laws, rules and policies.
So what's the difference? This scenario is simply giving the people a way to control their behaviors, personally, basically direct democracy.
Baby rape, torture, and murder are not evil when they're done to animals. It's business. It's not illegal, yet many will agree it is evil. And many others will not. See? It's relative.
Also why would people want to do evil things if they thought they were evil unless there was some advantage to be gained from it? Are you implying these people are trying to get ahead of the other more moral population for not setting their dial accordingly?
In your hypothetical situation, I would want to know why they did what they did. Are they going to say "because I like being evil" or will they do what everyone in the real world does, try to find a way to rationalize their actions?
Standard industry practice. UK/US/AUS...etc. How do you think most cows get pregnant? With a human fist, that's how. So, I guess it's not rape, then? Just business as usual. Baby cows and pigs are often beaten to death, or shot and killed. I've seen it many times. Baby male chickens are macerated alive or left to suffocate in garbage bags. If this is news to you, you're pretty naive. Sometimes, I wish I were, too.
Business or pleasure, the animals don't care why they are doing it. They just want it to stop. Just because something is legal doesn't mean it isn't cruel. Watch some documentaries on the meat/dairy industry and tell me if you think it is evil or not.
If you think it's ok, that's fine. My point is, not everyone will agree on what is evil and what isn't.
I see your point, though. If I work at a slaughterhouse then I don't believe I'm doing evil if I'm not getting pleasure out of it. I met a guy who did, though. Used to talk about killing them and he liked it.
That would be quite extreme. Legal systems are always catching up to our values, and subject to those who created them. Take slavery, or Nazi Germany for example. Legally evil for a time. Let's hope we continue evolving.
Your thought experiment has provided much to think about. Thank you.
> Baby rape, torture, and murder are not evil when they're done to animals. It's business. It's not illegal, **yet many will agree** it is evil. And many others will not. See? It's relative.
Just because there is a disagreement, does not mean that things are relative or subjective. Try it with any other fact: "We disagree about whether or not today is Monday, or Tuesday, but there's no fact of the matter about what day today is. See? It's relative."
All that is needed for evil to be done, is for good (people) to stand by and do nothing. If I switch to good mode then I may well not perceive your actions as also being good so I may have to intervene against you to ensure evil is not done. You certainly do not get to have exclusive ownership of what happens to be considered good at a snapshot in time.
There is nothing wrong with hurting other people if they deserve it. Hatred evolved for a reason, and seeking to eliminate hateful behavior is dysgenic and anti-evolutionary. All of the behavior that you call "evil" could be completely morally justifiable, given the proper context.
As long as somebody obeys the law, we have no right to discriminate against them regardless of whether we think they are "evil" or not. In fact, I would 100% side with the so-called "evildoers" who refused to disable their free will in order to kill everybody who tried to mandate turning off the "evil" settings, because the self-righteous moralists seem FAR more dangerous to me.
Because they were bloodthirsty savages who practiced human torture and sacrifice and brutally subjugated so many surrounding tribes that the Spaniards were seen as liberators
>With this logic, you could genocide Germany, Japan and many nation states that used to be "bad".
Yeah, that's exactly what we started to do when we dropped nuclear bombs on them. When a civilization behaves barbarically, it's both good and righteous to slaughter them wholesale until they change their behavior.
If Japan and Germany hadn't surrendered during WW2, we would have been entirely justified in genociding them all. After all, they saw no problem with genociding others. Realistically though, most of these worthless "cultures" change pretty fast when they realize you have no moral qualms with their complete extermination. Just look how quickly Japan changed when we scourged them with holy fire. They had an attitude adjustment almost overnight!
Lol, pretty sure the bombing of Dresden and nuking of Japan were nowhere near "genocide" level and was never the intent either.
You have some warped logic, bub.
In war, the plan is to kill the enemy until they surrender accept your terms. If they never accept your terms because they are too stubborn or stupid, that effectively means genocide, because you will keep killing them until they accede to your demands.
Fortunately, most civilizations surrender before reaching the genocide level, but that doesn't change the overall mandate or strategy.
I'm sorry that you lack a basic understanding of warfare, but please stop projecting your own inadequacy onto me. You're being very rude.
Such typical Reddit behavior. You have no good logical response (because you're not truly a rational creature in the first place) so you respond with social shaming.
"Yikes, sweaty, I can't believe you're such a bad person! You must be new here! Maybe lurk moar before posting! Source? SOURCE?!? Listen and learn. It's not MY job to educate you! I looked through your history and saw you voted Republican. That says a lot."
See? ChatGPT can be even more of a Redditor than you are. All those alleged "feelings" and "emotions" you pretend to have can be mimicked perfectly by a soulless algorithm. Something to think about.
Are those three things the only ones affected by the dial? You'd have to give a better definition of evil. I mean, even just by that definition, one could make a case against abortion. Are you saying anyone who was pro-choice couldn't turn off their evil-dial?
Well, we have to start with the extremes, then through democratic consensus we can add or deduct stuff from the list, just like how the current justice system works, lol.
No difference but the ability to prevent evil, instead of punishing them after the harm is done, which is terrible.
Ok, but just leaving the dial setting doesn't guarantee they will commit some kind of heinous act? Like they still have free will and understand morality? If so, that's the world we live in now, yeah? I couldn't hurt someone or lock them up just for leaving the possibility open. I'd have to trust them. Maybe naive of me, but through it all I still retained some tiny spark of optimism for the human race.
People with setting off will 100% not rape babies, people with setting on has an unknown percentage of raping babies.
What then? What if they raped YOUR baby?
If Anakin Skywalker moved in next to me after simply letting his wife and unborn children die I would be totally cool with him as a neighbour because he is good.
If Darth Vader moved in next to me after trying to save the lives of his wife and unborn children I would be very uncomfortable because he is bad.
Actually its both, bad behaviors has a genetic component too, it can be amplified or reduced by environmental factors.
A genetic psycho born to a good family and environment will grow up less psycho and may not ever become a true psycho, but the risk of them becoming psycho is still much higher than regular people, because they have the psycho genes enabled and waiting to be triggered by certain events.
Keep them and study them! Figure out why they refuse to change and what roles in society they would be useful for. At the end of the day, having a diversity of morality might make the society more resilient to outside threats.
For example - if there was an alien race with all their dials set to "evil" then our homegrown evildoers might serve as better ambassadors.
I remember reading a book in Highschool English class called "Monsignor Quixote" (essentially a condensed version of Don Quixote for children).
The main character was an agnostic priest-like figure. One of Quixote's central conflicts was how he didn't suffer temptation. If he wasn't ever tempted by evil, how could he *choose* good?
In his mind, doing good is deliberately making the decision to do good over evil. Because he wasn't ever tempted by evil, he wasn't choosing to do good, therefore, he couldn't be a good person.
I think about that book a lot when people try to suggest their sweeping ideas for how to make humanity better. Choosing the default option doesn't make people good.
I’ve thought about this too but haven’t come to a conclusion that doesn’t lead me back to a more basic question first - ***How do we collectively define evil?***
I think child abuse and neglect is the most inhumane, atrocious, ill defined/understood form of evil, but it’s rampant and ignored by society and justice system. It leads to a multitude of atrocious outcomes and manifestations of evil. But kids aren’t believed or protected because they don’t pose a threat if ignored until later in life when the rage has stewed for a couple decades. But not everyone agrees with me because I’ve studied and believed different research and people than they have. ***How will we agree if we don’t all have access to the same information, experiential evidence, language or priorities?***
***Can we define criteria for what’s considered evil, calculate a score for each outcome/behavior on a scale, and somehow identify an objective spot on the spectrum that qualifies a person as evil to the point of no return/danger to society? There are so many arguments for why an all good world is dangerous in and of itself, and just fully unproductive and unfulfilling, so what’s the line where we delineate the end of unfortunate/bad and the start of evil?***
> How will we agree if we don’t all have access to the same information, experiential evidence, language or priorities?
It's really something other than that. Information isn't the problem, nor is intelligence, nor is language, but you're close when you say priorities. It's really just a matter of phenomenology and psychology and personality. If someone's a bad person, if they're dishonest, if they have bad intentions, if they have a kind of psychology that was... basically instilled with self-hatred, and then this is projected outward in a way that makes them only feel like a coherent person when they cause others harm(which also prevents basic facts like " I deserve to be treated well" or "I deserve the truth" or "It would be good, if I were a good person" and so on), then such a person will be completely closed off from anything moral. They won't be able to process ethics in the same way a clam can't process math. They just don't have the tools for it.
The question of defining evil, or calculate it, isn't even the problem. That can be done, but it doesn't solve the core problem above.
> There are so many arguments for why an all good world is dangerous in and of itself, and just fully unproductive and unfulfilling, so what’s the line where we delineate the end of unfortunate/bad and the start of evil?
Like what? How could all good be bad? One confusion here is thinking that good means naivety or weakness, but really it just means a skillful navigation of reality in a way that doesn't allow for moral harms that need not happen. There's a fact of the matter to that. Step one: Stop raping things. Step two: Stop wars. Step three: Stop hatred ( and so on... It's really not the tough puzzle most people pretend it is, again the problem is the first point: People are simply evil by nature)
Yes, I agree with everything you’ve said.
But you’re proving my point - because most people already agree rape is evil but it happens all the time because there are ‘good’ people upholding a justice system that doesn’t adequately prevent or punish it, so are they evil too? Evil isn’t just the one act, it’s the behaviors by people that created a self hating rapist, and the people who blame the victim, and the ones who decide on laws that make it impossible for victims to get help and justice, and the ones who could help rehabilitate or contain the rapist but don’t. Where is the edge of evil?
Rape is evil and we haven’t stopped it as a society despite all agreeing it’s evil. So are the people and systems who don’t stop what could be stopped by now also evil?
War is evil but that is a result of endless less blatant evils that pile up to ‘justify’ war - so do we label those acts leading up as evil too?
If we oversimplify things, I agree with you totally. But evil is not simple. It’s not just the overt acts like rape, murder and war. It’s everything that creates it, allows it, ignores it, and covers it up.
Do we consider the cause of the evil act evil as well? Child abuse and neglect is evil but would parents do it if there weren’t a society, religious programming, and legal system that protects and enables parents more than children? And how do parents get help to be better parents when they are stretched thin and don’t have the ‘village’ around them to help hold them accountable and fill in when they’ve hit capacity?
And when I say there are arguments for an all good world leading to other issues, it’s featured by many in this thread. I tend to agree with you that those arguments aren’t creative, but then you prove my point about language, intelligence, information, etc. The one aspect I agree with, is that there always has to be compromise at times, and when people who can’t tolerate not being favored in times of compromise, they won’t agree equality is good. So is throwing a fit and not sharing toys evil? How do we monitor the early signs or someone who is living life with entitlement and not contributing to equality? And how do we know if they will suddenly commit an atrocious overt act of evil? Or do we wait until it happens, which kind of defeats the whole thought exercise.
I don’t personally have the perfect thoughts or language pulled together to adequately communicate what I’m trying to in this moment while coffee is still kicking in, but ultimately I don’t disagree with you but I also think there’s so much more to consider than you’re leaving room for.
> because most people already agree rape is evil but it happens all the time because there are ‘good’ people upholding a justice system that doesn’t adequately prevent or punish it, so are they evil too? Evil isn’t just the one act, it’s the behaviors by people that created a self hating rapist, and the people who blame the victim, and the ones who decide on laws that make it impossible for victims to get help and justice, and the ones who could help rehabilitate or contain the rapist but don’t. Where is the edge of evil?
So I don't think it works quite like that, because evil is much more specific. It's not something like the accidental mistreatment of someone or bad luck or confusion. Those are distinct. Evil is specifically a quality of malicious intention. And that is often *in* those scenarios you mention by the way. At least that's what I think, I think people are wired to not really be in touch with their own motivations, and this has sensible evolutionary explanations, since basically it's adaptive to be hostile or violent in some way, while not really being able to connect with the fact that one is actually a terrible person-- it's psychologically healthier to believe on the surface that one is actually justified in their actions, it is a better motivator of behaviors that way. This is why entitlement and egocentrism and shamelessness are such core features of psychopathy and narcissism.
There's a real difference between a person who genuinely has good intention towards themselves, and has good intentions towards others, and does something totally accidental that causes harms they couldn't imagine, vs. someone who's really just a sadist and gets off on harming others. It is just night and day. To call the former evil, even if it may be causally related to evil somehow, is just not meaningful. But I think evil does have a broad application as a word, I think you could call unconscious things evil, so for instance, one could say: "This is an evil world", I think that's a fine statement if one is describing just the moral nature of the world. But I don't buy the whole "everyone is implicated" kinds of arguments. Or you know how people say, "If you're not actively showing support, you're causing harm/just as bad/blah blah blah"? I think that's total brainrot, because again it completely ignores intention. Intention really matters when it comes to ethics and a lot of people just miss this fact, and it's because they are hardly aware of their own or take them completely for granted.
In fact, I wonder if you recognize the intellectual dominance and moral superiority you are trying to assert in your replies to me? You’ve decided I’m wrong and you’re right, and seem to be entertaining your own desire to validate your self concept by picking my thoughts apart without a dash of curiosity or collaboration. Where did your morality go? Does morality not apply to *how* you communicate, beyond *what* you communicate? Not offended, just struck by the dissonance between your argument and commitment to demonstrate it. Interesting stuff, eh?
Well, again, there are oversimplifications in your reply, as well as your personal perspective and experience, and a dash of world salad - so I’m not sure we’re going to arrive at a productive or meaningful conclusion, or where you’re wanting to go with this.
If the exercise is about intention to harm, desire to consciously harm, then it should have said that. If we’re talking about self aware sadists, then it’s an entirely different discussion. The exercise was about the evil settings not being disabled whether or not they have been exercised yet.
I was my sadistic sociopathic mothers scapegoat. I developed empathy and a strong inner compass because I don’t admire or want to be like my mother, and know what pain feels like and wouldn’t wish it on others. My brother is her golden child. He became just like her. He thinks he’s superior by merit when it’s just plain enablement and over indulgence. Because he believes in his right to this privilege, he worships my mother who has created his reality where his every need and want is granted. He thinks everything she does is healthy because after all, she’s smart enough to see his majesty for what it is /s. He feels fully justified to harm anyone who challenges his skewed threshold for superiority, importance, elitist, right to power and dominance. In his mind, he sees the person that challenges his superiority as the evil one and therefore feels justified to defend his dominance. He’s not necessarily ‘intending’ to inflict harm, he’s ‘intending’ to restore the only reality he’s ever known where he is on top. Harming others makes him feel safe, and he sees the other person existing or challenging his reality as unsafe to him. He doesn’t realize his dial is set to inequality. So he doesn’t even consider how his baseline already harms others. It is sadism, and he would agree he feels enjoyment when pushing others down, but not because he enjoys harming others - because he thinks the opponent should have known better than to try and take from him. He can’t comprehend that the game is rigged and he doesn’t actually deserve the throne he expects everyone to agree is his. Desire to harm isn’t black and white either.
I’m not sure what your goal is, or if you feel you are going to/ need to convince me that evil, hate, inequality is bad when I already agree, but I’m not sure we’re even skimming the surface of meaningful discussion here.
Read Dostoyevsky's "Notes from Underground", it deals with this exact question.
He argues that even if we were able to rationalize human behavior down to a science, people would still be irrational out of principle (or perhaps you could say spite).
It seems that despite our innate curiosity and desire to understand ourselves and the world, there's a part of us that's deeply disturbed at the idea of losing our autonomy, and even bad things are preferable to a strictly automated, fatalistic existence
Then being good wouldn't be meaningful anymore. Since its forced.
And we wouldn't appreciate it since everybody would be good to everybody all of the time.
So we need baby rapists, baby torturers and baby murderers in order to appreciate good?
How to tell the victim's family that we need their babies to be raped, tortured and murdered? lol
Waking Life Movie Transcript
Chapter 6 - Free Will and Physics
(Philosopher professor talking in his office - University of Texas: Austin philosophy professor David Sosa)
In a way, in our contemporary world view, it's easy to think that science has come to take the place of God. But some philosophical problems remain as troubling as ever. Take the problem of free will. This problem has been around for a long time, since before Aristotle in 350 B.C. St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, these guys all worried about how we can be free if God already knows in advance everything you're gonna do. Nowadays we know that the world operates according to some fundamental physical laws, and these laws govern the behavior of every object in the world. Now, these laws, because they're so trustworthy, they enable incredible technological achievements. But look at yourself. We're just physical systems too, right? We're just complex arrangements of carbon molecules. We're mostly water, and our behavior isn't gonna be an exception to these basic physical laws. So it starts to look like whether its God setting things up in advance and knowing everything you're gonna do or whether it's these basic physical laws governing everything, there's not a lot of room left for freedom.
So now you might be tempted to just ignore the question, ignore the mystery of free will. Say "Oh, well, it's just an historical anecdote. It's sophomoric. It's a question with no answer. Just forget about it." But the question keeps staring you right in the face. You think about individuality for example, who you are. Who you are is mostly a matter of the free choices that you make. Or take responsibility. You can only be held responsible, you can only be found guilty, or you can only be admired or respected for things you did of your own free will. So the question keeps coming back, and we don't really have a solution to it. It starts to look like all our decisions are really just a charade.
Think about how it happens. There's some electrical activity in your brain. Your neurons fire. They send a signal down into your nervous system. It passes along down into your muscle fibers. They twitch. You might, say, reach out your arm. It looks like it's a free action on your part, but every one of those - every part of that process is actually governed by physical law, chemical laws, electrical laws, and so on.
So now it just looks like the big bang set up the initial conditions, and the whole rest of human history, and even before, is really just the playing out of subatomic particles according to these basic fundamental physical laws. We think we're special. We think we have some kind of special dignity, but that now comes under threat. I mean, that's really challenged by this picture.
So you might be saying, "Well, wait a minute. What about quantum mechanics? I know enough contemporary physical theory to know it's not really like that. It's really a probabilistic theory. There's room. It's loose. It's not deterministic." And that's going to enable us to understand free will. But if you look at the details, it's not really going to help because what happens is you have some very small quantum particles, and their behavior is apparently a bit random. They swerve. Their behavior is absurd in the sense that its unpredictable and we can't understand it based on anything that came before. It just does something out of the blue, according to a probabilistic framework. But is that going to help with freedom? I mean, should our freedom be just a matter of probabilities, just some random swerving in a chaotic system? That starts to seem like it's worse. I'd rather be a gear in a big deterministic physical machine than just some random swerving.
So we can't just ignore the problem. We have to find room in our contemporary world view for persons with all that that entails; not just bodies, but persons. And that means trying to solve the problem of freedom, finding room for choice and responsibility, and trying to understand individuality.
Don't think it's that unconventional. If you're interested, I'll ask a few questions here, follow up once you've answered, and use your answers to build my position
1. Are humans the only animals that have free will? Do other animals have free will?
2. How free is our will? Is it completely free at all time, or is it under limitations at certain times?
3. Do all humans have the same amount of free will? Does someone experiencing a schizophrenic break from reality have the same amount of free will as someone who is sane?
4. Can free will be taken away? If I give you a high dose of a psychedelic, or other drug that significantly alters consciousness, is your free will the same as prior to taking that drug?
5. Humans can act on what they want or desire. However, can humans change what they want or desire? Are we free in all moments to choose our preferences?
6. The field of trauma psychology shows that many mental health disorders orginiate from childhood adverse experiences. Does our free will include the ability to be free of the effect our past traumas have on our current decisions?
1. No, all animals have free will, humans are the only animals with consciousness and the knowledge of morality and good and evil.
2. Free will is completely free at all times, you seem to be confusing physical constraints from free will. If you are physically unable to do something, it does not make your will any less free, but your ability to act on your free will may be constrained.
3. Yes, everyone has the same capacity for free will, just because someone may or may not have a mental illness that influences their mental capacity, does not mean that they lack free will
Additionally, even if that were not the case, you arguing against isolated incidents of people, nothing in your argument itself rebutts the idea of free will as a concept, in fact you are relying on the non-mentally afflicted person having free will, to make this argument that some people might not have free will.
4. No. After this comment I question both your understanding of the concept of free will, and also your understanding of the effects of psychedelic drugs
5. Yes. You are free at every moment to control your thoughts and actions. Some people lack the knowledge and self discipline to regulate themselves in this way, but that is their own choice not to
6. Yes, you are free to act and think however you choose, some people allow their negative experiences to influence them, and some do not. The fact that some people are able to overcome those things, prove that it is free will to do so.
Thanks for taking the time to reply.
Fair enough, how would you go about proving that all animals have free will? For that matter, how would you go about proving humans have free will? What do you suppose a world without free will would look like, and how would you be able to tell a world with and without free will apart?
Would you be open to describing what the free will is that you're arguing for?
What would someone who has free will be able to do, that someone that does not have free will would be unable to do? Or the other way around? In my opinion someone experiencing a break from reality due to a mental health condition has very little free will at all. Those suffering from extreme depression and suicidality aren't choosing to feel that way. They may not act on it, but are they free to release themselves from their inner turmoil and suffering? I think not.
Tbh I'd like to clarify that my position isn't exactly that there is no free will, it's that free will exists on a spectrum. There are more and less free decisions that we can make, and the constraints that our brain state, environment, and psyche create for us determines how free we are to choose how to feel or act in any moment.
As for psychedelics, I've done a lot, in a range of doses. I've personally felt any freedom to act or feel in a manner similar to when I was sober be stripped away from me under the influence of a high dose of pscilocybin or lsd. Did I have free will when I was experiencing 4h of mind bending torture on a bad trip on mushrooms? Could I have chosen to just turn the trip off in that moment? Or do my freedoms not extend that far?
Because all animals make concrete decisions and their actions are not deterministic or algorithmic in nature.
Considering this is a deep philosophical idea, there is no method of empirically proving anything. You can’t even prove that anything else exists other than your own mind.
That being said, I know I have free will because of the thoughts and actions I take everyday, the thoughts I choose to act on, and the thoughts I choose not to act on. I know my dog has free will, when it behaves in a unique manner with sentiment and emotion.
Just because your capacity to act on your free will can be limited, does not make your will limited.
As far as psychedelics go, those are substances that you freely decided to consume to alter your perspective. You could have easily decided not to consume them, and your mental state would have remained unaltered
Based on what? You're making all these assertions, but they're just that, assertions.
You're right, there's no way to definitely prove one thing over another, and it'll all come down to solipsism eventually, but you're claiming there is free will, and that all animals have it, but all you can do is point to your subjective experience of having what you've deemed is 'free will'.
It seems like your definition of free will is limited to actions. But actions are downstream of intention, which is downstream of desire, which is downstream of basic human needs. Sure, you can choose in most moments to take one action or another, but you can't choose what thoughts run through your brain prior to that action, and you can't choose what influences the roots of those thoughts.
So if you're saying you're free to make choices about actions, I agree. But the spectrum of free will doesn't end at our actions, and the deeper into how the subconscious makes those decisions you go, you find that you have control over very little of the upstream mechanisms that lead to real world actions.
My position is, you don't get to choose how your mind functions. You can make choices within the limitations of your mind, but you're not free to choose what kind of mind you have.
And for the psychedelics part, I feel you're talking past the point I'm trying to make. Ofc I acknowledge that I made the choice to ingest a drug. Once the drug takes effect, I am no longer able to make choices as I was when I was sober. I'd say I have thus slid down the spectrum of free will, towards less/no free will in that instance, with respect to how much the drug is altering my mind
> Sure, you can choose in most moments to take one action or another, but you can't choose what thoughts run through your brain prior to that action, and you can't choose what influences the roots of those thoughts.
You absolutely can, it just requires discipline over your mind.
You absolutely have free control over your own thoughts (or at least you should) and if a thought passes you by that you don’t like, you can train yourself to not think those things, or think about other things to not obsess over more negative mental states.
That used to be the entire basis of religions and to some degree, psychology, before they both became in modern times, a tool of self affirmation rather than the practice of self reflection and self discipline that they were meant to be
I hear your point, I do. I hear it as, if you put the time, energy, and hard work into mastering your mind, you can take control of it and how it operates. Did I get that right?
I think I agree with you in part. It's my belief that all humans do have the capacity to demonstrate what I call, 'internal leadership', which i think is similar to what you're calling 'discipline over your mind'. When you have leadership over of all the different parts of your psyche, you can move towards healing the trauma that underlies your 'shadow' (as Jung would call it), which in turn reduces the incidence of negative mental states. In that way, yes, you can have control over your mind. And I do agree that it is the pursuit of all religions to 'have discipline over your mind'/'internal leadership'
So I'd say yeah, there is a way that we *could* have more free will, and it's a lot of hard work. But seems like almost every human is not doing that work /doesn't know how to do it, so the vast majority of people don't act from well thought out, rational places, but from deep rooted emotion, and often, those emotions are influenced by a complex mix of past experiences, societal norms, and biological impulses. It's not just about making a conscious choice; it's about understanding the subconscious influences that drive our decisions. To truly exercise free will, one must engage in self-reflection, learn to recognize these influences, and develop strategies to manage them. This process requires dedication and continuous effort, which may be why it seems so rare. Yet, it's a journey that can lead to more deliberate and fulfilling life choices.
Your thought experiment sounds a lot like some sort of racial or LGBT analogy. Just tossing that out there since you laugh about your position on evilness.
I don't like your thought experiment because it is pointless. What would we do if "scenario that is mildly changed from the movie minority report"
We'd do what we currently already do. If you talk to any mandated reporter, or private citizen that is concerned enough, and say you will soon commit a serious crime against someone/act of terror, you will be held in a psychiatric facility until deemed fit to return to society. If you could choose to be evil, then people who did that would be held against their will until they stop doing that, since we know there is 0 reason to set yourself to evil mode.
Even a soldier, executioner, pig, whoever would be obviously required to stay somewhat good, as the Geneva convention would still exist in this scenario.
I dont think anyone thinks of themselves as being the bad guy. Even the people doing the things you are talking about likely have their own rationalizations for why they arent evil. True evil and good doesnt exist
I disagree. I have known people that know they do bad things. They try not to think too deeply about the harm they cause others & instead focus on the personal gain of their actions. They tend to like drugs & risky sex as psychological distractions to make this existence more palatable.
I hope most people realize they aren't always the bastions of virtue they pretend to be online. I've definitely done bad things, the difference is that I regret and try not to do them, even if sometimes it is difficult. I don't just do mental gymnastics to re-align my morals with my actions.
Then again, many of the things I once hoped were true turned out to be false, so, sadly, you're probably right about a large part of humanity.
Then how do you explain the Republican party and capitalism? Am I really to believe that everyone who is conservative and supports capitalism is choosing to be evil? That violates Hanlon's razor. The far more likely explanation is that those people are just ignorant
Good answer. Who decides what is good and evil. Some cultures don’t see cannibalism as an evil thing. Some cultures don’t see female mutilation as wrong. So this is really about what do YOU see as evil and does the society that YOU choose to participate in agree with you?
Even more basic than those would be something as simple as "which culture decides what form of nudity is bad"
Some cultures are against hair being shown, or against some members being topless and not others, some are fine with nudity, which one should be seen as right?
> Note: This is a thought experiment to test our moral intuition and reasoning, it does not represent my personal position on the problem of evil, I am impartial. eheheh
Guess you're not as "impartial" as you pretended to be
I mean, it’s not rocket science.
You can’t share humanity with a baby if you’ve been demoralized and lead to believe they’re less deserving of life than you, especially because of race or creed. That’s what makes Western countries’ militaries different(ish). Despite having bad apples who are prone to violence or other horrendous acts, for the most part, the US military for example has a pretty strong reputation for being good to people who surrender, and have a reasonably good track record for how they handle children in a warzone.
But, even they have to dispatch a kid or two once in a while to preserve *more* life than just one. Like the ones who get suckered into suicide bombings. It’s the trolley problem. You can cap the 7 year old wearing a bomb vest, or you can stay out of it and have WHO KNOWS how many other 7 year olds blown to smithereens along with the one that you could have handled. The obvious solution to the trolley problem is to pull the lever and save more lives, but peoples emotions get in the way and you end up with very complex rules for what is right and wrong, as well as the potential for a wrong turn along the way to completely derail the good intentions people are assumed to always have in the beginning of whatever they’re doing.
Then the other “it’s not rocket science” is that people are sick, literally, and not just a figure of speech. Even if they like something that is disturbing, it is their sickness that has lead to their feelings of joy when doing things 99.9% of people think is morally reprehensible. So what do you do with them?
So you cure some people. You correct others. And if you don’t have a cure or a lesson to change them… I don’t know? If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em I guess??
Never said they were since im not a person who would do those things. But point me to one person doing those things who think they are doing the Devils work.
Okay here you go.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricky_Kasso
During the murder this person forced the third friend to say "I love the devil" during the act.
The two teens who killed their third friend for slender man.
Cheyenne Johnson the original "devil made me do it" defense
And finally this guy who attracted misfits and outcasts to come to his house and worship Satan https://allthatsinteresting.com/pazuzu-algarad and killed one person and helped bury another.
Depending on how fucked in the head someone is, they can justify it. Hitler probably felt pretty morally righteous throughout his campaigns, and he got a bunch of children killed (and if you want to talk about baby torture, the Nazis literally did experiments on children).
The human mind is very very good at rationalising and explaining away stuff, it's one of the things it is best at.
and we fought them, prosecuted and executed them, didnt we?
"Oh morality is subjective, lets not judge the Nazis, maybe let them go free." -- said no one ever.
No we haven't, we have done nothing to undo the damage of colonialism without being pulled, kicking and screaming, towards doing the right thing.
We caused a famine in India so bad it was effectively a genocide, same as Britain did in Ireland before.
Acknowledging the wrongdoings we have committed in the past and refuse to acknowledge as a nation now is how we ensure we do not commit them again. Innocent lives are worth more than national pride
I don't think you understand moral subjectivism. We rightfully did prosecute the Nazis and stopped them from hurting people but that is unrelated to whether morality is subjective or not.
You said "how does baby murder fit into your moral system" implying that it would fit in no-ones moral system and that everyone doing it would consider it bad. I gave you a real example of a group of people that did that exact thing and didn't consider themselves evil.
Of course we consider them evil and rightfully so, but it has to do with our own "regular" moral framework.
Once you've toggled to good, is it possible to toggle back?
Can other people see what you've set yours too?
Does being set to "good" make it literally impossible to do evil?
If the answer to any of these is "yes", then there's no point in society trying to treat "evil" people differently than anyone else.
Yes, you can tune it back and forth, yes people can see it, yes you can't lie about it.
Yes if its set to good, you can't do the worst evil known to man, but grey area stuff can still be done, unless you tune it to "saint" setting. lol
Also, there will be a log of what you have done, so you cant kill someone and then tune it to "good", people will know.
Why should we treat them the same way if they could easily harm innocent people?
>Once you've toggled to good, is it possible to toggle back?
>Why should we treat them the same way if they could easily harm innocent people?
Because people with their toggle set to "good" could also harm innocent people, they just apparently would have to toggle to "evil" first, or they'd need a way to justify to themselves that it's a gray area.
>Also, there will be a log of what you have done, so you cant kill someone and then tune it to "good", people will know.
This log of what people have done is also an interesting aspect. Law and justice would work very differently, if anyone could exonerate themselves by showing their log and proving that they didn't commit a crime, I would expect most premeditated crimes to vanish, unless the criminal had a good scheme not to get caught. Even then I would expect having a bunch of crimes in your log would ban you from a lot of employment. So you'd have a class of criminal who can't get a job, and so probably need to keep their toggle set low so they can operate in this criminal underground without getting taken advantage of.
Though I wonder, if you get away with a crime, then toggle yourself to "good", does you conscience then compel you to confess if you don't switch it back? For that matter, if you're set to "good", is turning back to "evil" and evil act in itself, that you feel compelled not to do?
Regardless, I still don't think it's worthwhile for society to preemptively punish people who don't toggle to "good". This system might eliminate 80% of crime, but the remaining 20% (or whatever) would be complex enough such that the good/evil dichotomy wouldn't apply.
It seems to me that once it was toggled to good, the person would be unable to change it back to evil because that itself would be an evil act. Unless there was some dissociated part of the brain that was able to maintain a metamoral stance, in which case the control of the toggle button wouldn't be complete.
By the same token, it seems like a person toggle far into evil would naturally resist turning to good if it's disadvantageous to do so, because an evil person will always look after themselves first.
Of course, in world where everyone can tell how evil you are, I'm not sure it really would be disadvantageous to turn good.
I think it's not that crimes are logged, just changes to the dial, so you may exonerate yourself by showing you never turned the dial away from "good" because if you did it'd be logged - but your crime itself is subject to regular investigation, if any.
That makes sense too.
Either way, I'd argue that a "just" system of justice would try to protect the privacy of people's dial settings and logs, under the theory this information is likely to be prejudicial.
How would "morally gray stuff" even better defined? Also, does the machine have its own absolute interpretation of evil, or does it abide by what the user pericieves as evil? Does the machine have infinite knowledge or not?
Every baby is born this way. Then it learns language and behaviour from care givers, then friends, school, university.
(I am aware that most Axis 1 diagnosis are biological in nature not nurture)
We already incarcerate these people for not following the law. If you’re talking about thought police, Musk has you covered. I will offer you one complication, sometimes good people do bad things in the heat of the moment.
This seems like what someone who has never had to make hard decisions or compromise would say. Life experience shows nobody is ever %100 good or %100 bad.
The person you're talking to is asking you to entertain a hypothetical, but you're approaching it from how reality is in some pragmatic sense rather than a hypothetical one. That's one way to guarantee confusion.
You can't actually know that if you don't entertain the thought experiment. Everyone thinks they're the ones connected to reality and people who disagree with them aren't. Feeling connected to reality is not that interesting. Actually engaging with honesty and effort in new ideas is the only way to get anywhere, but even that isn't a guarantee. Do you think you're engaging with honesty, when you say something like "Who makes these kinds of decisions bro?" when the question is just a hypothetical and not at all a suggestion that people engage in those decisions? The second important question is, what are the odds you're connected to reality without an attitude of honesty/openness?
I think I’m being completely honest when I say this “thought experiment “ is pointless and absurd, as it completely disregards human nature and moral reality.
Isn't that what prisons are for? Why do so many people insist on trying come up with a solution to a problem that we already solved hundreds of years ago?
This thought experiment fails to account the mos important fact about moral dilemmas. There is no no objective "good" or "evil". In this case, by whose concept of evil does these switches works?
So you think raping and torturing babies is just a subjective moral preference?
Yes. Some people see abortion as just that and other people don't, for example.
Abortion is not raping and torturing an actual crying baby. Find a better counter. lol
This thought experiment seem mostly irrelevant, as prejudgment is/should be illegal. I would say 'Let Justice Prevail,' but the rich seem mostly immune to justice.
Though I agree that people should only be judged by their actions, this is different because we are talking about uncertainty and risk Vs certainty and zero risk. People with their evil setting deliberately enabled are an uncertain risk, you can never tell. People with it disabled will never harm you, at least not knowingly or deliberately. If given a choice, would you let your kids live among risky uncertain people or zero risk people?
It's only moral to punish people for what they do, not what they might do.
Good point, but if given a choice, would you prefer to let your kids live with them or those with their evil settings disabled?
I don't want my kids living in this current world. I cry to think about the evil my kids are exposed to everyday. I don't want that. But it's the life we have. I believe that God promises to pay back all evil and all good and that He will. When God took his protection away from Job and allowed Satan to torment him, He gave Job not only what Satan took away but added on top of that. I look forward to that day.
Show forgiveness, even when you have been provoked. Be kind, especially to those who don’t deserve it. You can use those two setting to deal with the people who don’t use them.
That's how we end up with Hitler, lol. When you don't fight back, evil will get eviler.
From where does the will come with which the person is to decide to change their setting? It's easy to want to want something. I'm fat, and I wish I didn't want so much unhealthy food. It's easy for me to want to want less food. It's not so easy to actually want less food. It's easy to wish you cared more about hurting others because you keep making a mess of your life and hurting the people around you. It's not so easy to actually consistently care, unless you're just born with that compassion. My point is that I don't think this is actually much different from reality. Almost everyone knows right from wrong. Being a good person in our actual reality is actually very much the same thing as being the type of person that would choose to change their settings to "good." Being a bad person is just to be someone who responds "why would I want to give up the freedom of moral flexibility" when suggested they change their settings. I think the answers to the problems with immorality in your hypothetical situation are actually the same to the answers in our actual reality. We have to change the incentive structure. We make the expected cost of criminality significantly higher than the expected gain.
>We make the expected cost of criminality significantly higher than the expected gain. While this is the typical rational approach, there is a downside. There's no way to actually make the cost exceed the gain ultimately. The harsher the punishment, the more ruthless and dangerous people will still take that risk for the potential profits, and they'll be even more deadly in preventing their apprehension. If there is a desire for a product or service, regardless of the punishment, someone *WILL* provide that product or service... and they will charge accordingly. I don't know of any way this can actually be prevented, but the harsher the penalty is, the higher the price will be for that product or service... but someone will supply it, even if the penalty is a death sentence.
If it's an actual "moral" setting, you can't condemn someone for a crime they might commit because that would be immoral. Now if it's an obedience setting disguised as a moral setting then you can condemn them, as you are not wanting moral behavior, but obedient behavior.
Interesting thought experiment. Unfortunately the human mind and society aren’t this simple. Everyone should strive to make the best choices they can and we should help one another to deal with traumas and understand others, etc but, while one can deeply discourage anti-social behaviour, it isn’t possible or eliminate it.
Unless you have an AI morality brain chip. ehehehe
I realize this is a joke as morality is relative.
Morality is a consensus, doesn't matter if its relative or not, lol. We will not throw out the legal, justice and common moral framework just because of "relativity". So the brain chip would still work, just need to update its moral rules every few decades.
How old are you? Ten years ago I would probably have agreed with you but I now recognize the world and humanity is more complex than that. When I speak about relativity I mean in terms of what is best for human flourishing. There are different cultures where moral values are different. Even within a culture a diversity of opinion is needed in order to advance. It wouldn’t really be possible to update these brain chips with “better morality” if, as you describe, they force everyone to have the same moral standards.
I am 140 years old, but considered young for elves. How about you? I bet you are human, lol. Are baby murder, baby rape and baby torture just opinions and not absolutely wrong for you?
I would agree but, depending on definitions, these are universally considered wrong by everyone without serious mental disorders. Why I state “depending on definitions” is when one asks the question “when does life begin?” Whether you or I support or oppose abortion is irrelevant. This is not universally agreed upon so it would seem unjust for a brain chip to force everyone to agree or disagree on this.
Make them Liberals
> Isolate and banish them from society? Even when they have "yet" to commit any crimes? Just to be safe? You couldn't, because evil would ascend to the heights of power structures, given that there is no actual arbiter to stop them. Think of any sport or game. Take tennis. And take any top player of your choice. Clone them, so they are identical, but make it so one has this evil setting, and the other is good. Now, to make this analogy closer to reality, make it so there's either no referee, or an ineffective referee. In other words, cheating works well in this matchup. The good player, can't cheat. That's just what "good" means. They can't break the rules just to win, then they wouldn't be good. But the evil player can do whatever they want to win. They can try to distract their opponent, they can try to distract the referee, they can try to trick or manipulate them in an unsportsmanlike way that any good referee would call out and any well run sport or game would put a stop to in the spirit of fairness. Over time, all else equal, if these players played against each other, the evil player would flat out win more. Now, if you want to make this more analogous to reality, we could make it so the evil player could gain access to the ruling body of the sport to engineer the rules for him or herself. That part of the analogy simulates how power if self-serving in our world, how the victors re-write history, the functions of nepotism, tyranny, and so on. The evil player could even pretend or engineer revolutions and say, "Look! We've invented new rules! We've made a more fair game now!" This would make people cooperate to continue to entertain the sport, but this would pure fabrication, because evil would be stronger than ever here, just more camouflaged as a function of its ever growing power. I'm not saying this hypothetically but this is literally what our world is. Evil and power are synonymous and the entire evolutionary system is designed to distill greater and greater power, and greater and greater evil, while obscuring it more and more.
It is authoritarian/totalitarian to assume that there should be a "solution" at the societal level to the "problem" of selfishness/greed/violence. So one would have to have their evil setting on to suggest that it would be prudent to punish those with it on, but by the nature of them being evil, they would not choose to punish themselves. It comes down to issues of corruption, transparency, and individual liberty. All three assault one another and in so doing create homeostasis
IF
All of a sudden reddit loves objective morality
huh? Do you need objective morality to call something immoral? lol Even moral subjectivity has moral rules and laws, that's how society function.
Pretty sure I would NOT adjust my "settings". I quite like the moral compass I have now, thank you, and who TF knows what lunatic is deciding this moral code. Could be GD Elongated Muskrat. Who wants to act like that douche-clown?
Your question is ill-formed. It presuposes that we have "solved" ethics and therefore can define "moral" and "immoral" perfectly so. If that were the case, then this question would be absurd to meander on. People with their moral settings tuned to prevent "evil" simply would do the "right" thing. Basically you are proposing a world were a problem doesn't exist, and then wonder how we would fix it when dealing with the problem that doesn't exist. The answer, then, is simple: we can't know, because we haven't got the ability to set our moral settings, and even if we did, we'd have no idea what to set them into. Lets explore this on the logical manner: First lets define some axioms to work on: 1. There exists an absolute morality. 2. A moral person is someone who maximizes good and minimizes evil. 3. Harming or preventing a moral person is evil. 4. Harming to stop or prevent an immoral person (someone who maximizes evil over good) may result in more good in the long run, so it may be moral. 5. Harming to stop an amoral person (who doesn't maximize or minimize evil, but just is) is probably evil, as the chance of this person causing harm is 50/50, but the reality of harming them has done greater evil with certainty. Now on to create the scenario: 1. We live in a world where people are able to configure themselves into optimal morality. 1. Some people may choose not to configure themselves into optimal morality. 1. Note that this doesn't prevent them from being moral, nor does it force them to be immoral, it just makes it optional. 1. If the moralized people (1) decide to kill the non-moralized people (2) before they commit any immoral actions, they risk having killed a moral person or an amoral person, which means that there's a probability that they have done an evil thing. 1. It stands to reason that any attempt to treat the non-moralized people different would be an immoral act, that by definition people in (1) are unable to do. 1. If the moralized people (1) let the non-moralized people (2) do whatever they want, and this results in one of them doing something immoral, then by inaction the moralized people have allowed this to happen, and are partially responsible. This would also imply that they are not moralized people. This strongly implies that there is no absolute moral, instead everything needs to be seen in context and situation. To say that there's a way to create someone who is moral is to ignore that under different circumstances all this configurations and tweaks to make you moral could make you be immoral. Because it's a contradiction, assuming that this is the case means we end up with a [logical bottom](https://proofwiki.org/wiki/Definition:Bottom_(Logic)) or absurdity. We can actually assume that this is true, but if we do, this allows us to define anything. In other words if there were an absolute morality (axiom 1) then we will inevitably be able to justify any evilness or cruelty by forcing the context and conditions to what is needed (meaning that we are in a fully relative morality, again an absurd logic given that we're assuming absolutism, but that's the whole point!). And maybe that's the thing. Throughout history we've created this justifications or arguments that people are inherently more moral than others. This side is good, that side is bad. This race is good, that race tends to be evil in certain ways, this religion is what help us unlike the other religion which is amoral, this gender can only be good while the other can be pragmatic, this sexuality means you are a deviant and evil by nature. All of these have been used in some way or another to justify some of what we consider the worst moral attrocities. Entretaining the question isn't giving insight, it's just exploring insanity. And that's the thing, people can't be moral or immoral. An action can be. But actions must be measured by their three parts: an intent of the actor, a consequence on the affected, and the context on which this all happened. And none of them justify things. Making people "moral" only ensures their intent is to be moral, but it doesn't ensure that the eventual consequences of their actions are complete, nor that on the context they ended up as moral. When you realize that you see that the people who would be tweaked to be more moral, wouldn't actually be any more moral in their actions than someone who hadn't, because there's so many variables that are not being controlled, and indeed you could argue that by taking one lever away, these people are easier to coerce or manipulate into evil (and that's kind of the whole point of the banality of evil). This explains why facists, racists, or others always start with the argument of "we're the more moral people", it's an attractive lie that allows rewriting a person's morality to whatever they want. So in short, no I don't think they should do anything, and they shouldn't do. I'd also ask them to get off their high horse, because morality is not as simple as just being a good person, whatever the hell that means. They should get off their high horse, since it's simply impossible to ever prove that someone is more moral. We all are trying our best here, and we all will keep doing the best we can. And yes this means that I would expect that sometimes the person who did the "evil" thing is the person who was tweaked to be more moral.
Sorry, way too long for me. But how can anyone say baby rape, baby torture and baby murder are acceptable? If we have a way to turn such tendencies off, would it not be moral to do it?
> But how can anyone say ... baby murder are acceptable You do realize though that you have proposed a world were people would know the baby is not tweaked to be moral. Why not kill and be done with it? What about killing baby hitler? If it could be moral to kill people who have a higher risk of being non-moral, then it's just as moral to kill a baby. If you can't kill a baby morally, then the people must be immoral. This is the part that is ridiculous of your argument. Also there's a few other [thought experiments on exactly that question: is killing a baby always wrong?](https://www.newsweek.com/kill-baby-save-family-brain-activity-shows-your-approach-moral-dilemmas-774343) What if not killing the baby will result in them being tortured? What if it'll result in their murder, but you could prevent the murder of others? And that's the thing I can twist any scenario to one where you are technically breaking your rules but doing the right thing, or following your rules and doing something bad. > If we have a way to turn such tendencies off, would it not be moral to do it? And here's another proposal: what if we're already coded to be as moral as possible within our situation? [That evolution has shaped us to seek being moral](https://www.cnn.com/2014/02/12/us/baby-lab-morals-ac360/index.html). It'd make even more sense if we think as the concept of good being the thing we want to instictively maximize, that is it's not that it's moral to do good, but what feels good defines what is good and moral. It's our arbitrary line. From there we can mamixmize it or minimize it, in part by avoiding scenarios like the one linked above, you know scenarios were atrocities have to be done due to other atrocities. Naturally we want to build a society were people are their most moral version. But the ansewr isn't to eliminate does that aren't at the top, but rather to improve their lives so they can be more moral even.
If the goal is to reduce harm inflicted onto humanity or individuals, (ignoring the complexity of an agreed upon definition of evil that threatens our species and must be stopped, and the fact evil often is a collective act), perhaps there are different angles to approach: 1. **Change the abuser:** Identify humans who inflict harm and examine ways to fix their brain, self awareness, education, and inner compass, etc. If we can scan kids brains to see if they are missing the key brain functions to live pro socially, and treat it like we would any other malformation or defect, I think that’s interesting to ponder. I’m less interested in fixing well established criminals and abusers to give them a fresh start - I’d rather resources be given to their victims whose brains and nervous systems have been harmed and the abuser being held accountable and stopped. 2. **Control the abuser:** Identify humans who inflict harm and examine ways to isolate them or control them to reduce their negative impact on others without trying to change them. Could we have a more transparent way to identify abusers (I realize the risks of socially scoring people, but we’re smart enough to be innovative and find a safe and just way)? 3. **Punish the abuser:** We have a justice system, and in certain cases it works. It has cracks for a lot of the most heinous evil to slip through. What if we updated this to not favor some people over others, accommodate more evidence based definition of what should be punished, and increased the severity of punishment? 4. **Punish the behavior, more than the abuser:** For most of my life I was programmed and believed in forgiveness, do no harm, two wrongs don’t make a right, but with life experience and deeper perspective, I’m starting to think an eye for an eye is appropriate in some cases. Financial crimes earn you lifelong poverty, rape others you get it back or have parts removed and are physically altered so you can’t overpower another human, kill others and you are killed in same manner. Abusers tend to inflict the harm they are afraid to have inflicted on them, so would knowing whatever they do will be done to them help deter them? If we focused on defining and weighing evil behaviors and punishing them accordingly, does it encourage harmful people to think before they act, redeem themselves by separating the abuser from the abusers behavior, and easier to stomach inflicting punishment because we’re not condemning a person forever and simply delivering karma. If you know you’ll be killed for killing, it’s less of a moral conundrum for those sentencing or inflicting punishment - so killing someone is essentially asking to be killed. This is how moral policing and religion has fucked us. We feel like sinners for sentencing death on someone who has killed many and will continue because they don’t value life. Why do we protect life that doesn’t want to be alive and wants to end lives that do value their lives? It’s something I’ve been pondering - I don’t have a firm grasp or stance on my own perspective, but I’m realizing we have been brainwashed to somehow feel responsible to carry others guilt as a species when we could just hold them accountable and move on. It’s what has led to abusers being able to be in charge of the narrative and systems that run the world. Our forgiveness kink and shame complex let’s abusers run free without remorse while victims pile up and line up for the slaughterhouse. 5. **Prevent abusers:** Identify the origin of evil (childhood trauma) and invest our collective energy time and resources to focus on better parenting, childhood development, and equitable access to information and resources to enable this. 6. **Support the victims:** Instead of reducing evil which seems to find a way, what if we focused all our energy, time, resources, education, and collaboration on helping victims recover, heal, and receive the support to get their life back? This is maybe what we do worst as a species right now. We blame victims, we ignore them, cast them out, we shame them, we refuse to learn the glaring and obvious truth of how they were victimized, the harm it caused them, what they need to reset. It’s actually so depressing - ***to me, watching how people ignore victims and under support them makes me feel far more hopeless than any evil I have heard of.*** Care, restoration, listening, learning from, believing, protecting, resourcing, and supporting victims is how humans can reflect our capacity for good, love, collaboration, innovation, intelligence - and it seems to be where we are currently underperforming as a collective. 7. **Clean up messes and establish a collective self reflection process:** After we rubberneck and gawk at tragedy like we do, how do we examine what led to it, adjust our individual accountability and systems to have a process to submit a flag for warning signs, add consequences for bystanders along with abusers, collective responsibility to support victims to recover. If we weren’t allowed to look away, move on, ignore victims or refuse to learn, would we all be more actively empowered to make a difference and have skin in the game so we would apply social pressure to abusers that would make it harder to avoid shame of inflicting or getting away with evil.
I think most evil is people taking bold action that you are not aligned with. Most villains claim some reasoning and have their adherents. “History is written by the victor” means if the winners and losers of wars were flipped, they’d be telling us how righteous they are or how it was necessary. We can already see they did see it this way and we view our past generously. Individual evils are usually “hurt people hurt people.” If you believe in anything strongly enough you might be willing to do some bad things. Even the people seeking power for its own sake usually are coming from a place of having experienced a painful sense of powerlessness that haunts them
I kind of feel like the premise is faulty because the assumption that everyone is born with a blank slate seems (admittedly intuitively and subjectively, because no one can prove this) absolutely preposterous. Any parent will tell you that despite doing their best to raise their children the same way, in the same environment, each of their children come with wildly different characteristics and predispositions. Some people are born with a much higher capacity for evil than others.
That's why turning off their evil functions would be good, no?
Dunbar's number - we are programmed to best function at an individual and societal level when we live out our lives in small communities. The kind that can effectively police themselves fairly well with both hard (bylaws) and soft (social reinforcement of shared value systems) mechanisms while also providing the kind of social-psychological-emotional development that helps prevent these kind of people from developing. Or, if you're more in the nature over nurtue camp, to help prevent them from doing harm (ostracizing, etc.). There's no real answer to the question you're asking that can work with the structure/scale of modern society. It's a problem of decentralization, and those never, ever have centralized solutions (despite what the UN and their ilk would like to think)
I’m not sure I believe there is an “evil” setting. Human behavior is complex and just because we label something as “evil” doesn’t mean other cultures untouched by our influence have to believe the same thing. In parts of India they worship cows so to them anyone who eats cow is evil. Basic human instinct isn’t also tuned to the “evil” setting as these instincts have evolved over millions of years for a reason: survival. We may have feeling about certain things but no matter the issue we should all remember that our perspective is just that: only our own.
If a person that has turned off their evil setting is able to dish out a punishment, then it can’t be evil, right?
All I know is that people will start lying about tuning their settings and we'll end up with a bunch of AH and morally corrupt individuals running amongst us. So basically what we have now
You did the brain chip one of these lol This one’s better. Brain chip has too much connotations about technology that affect the answer (towards no) This current version is hard to argue because, how do you punish these people? Do we allow people whose evil switches are never turned off to deal justice against those who choose to keep their evil switches on while the rest of us have the evil switch turned off? Because isn’t justice and punishment some level of evil? It’s hurt, pain, obstruction and isolation. If they don’t have to have their switch active to deal justice, then you’ve made ‘evil’ subjective where we can have an evil switch on and not do evil things So why would we empower some central state authority to decide when to activate this switch when it’s not guaranteed to do anything meaningful? Or are we implying that no wrong can be committed by someone with the evil switch turned off. Because I find that hard do belied
The people who intentionally set themselves to be evil did so knowing that it will most likely cause serious harm to another person in the future. Morally its almost exactly the same as driving drunk every day of your life. This is taking the scenario very literally though. In real life people are much more complicated
Imagine an easy to install brain chip or supplements, cheap and easy to get, can be fine tuned at home, some people take it to prevent evil, some dont, its doable. But the real question is, we don't know if someone with the evil function enabled will actually do evil things or not, its a random risk. They are not always drunk, more like randomly drunk, when something triggers them. So until they actually do evil things, can we morally judge them for simply having their evil function enabled?
Evil is relative. So I would imagine in your hypothetical homogeneous world, if everyone agreed what evil was most people would be ok with turning off evil.
So baby rape, baby torture and baby murder are not evil today because? Even if everything is relative, we still function on consensus and democracy, this is how we create laws, rules and policies. So what's the difference? This scenario is simply giving the people a way to control their behaviors, personally, basically direct democracy.
Baby rape, torture, and murder are not evil when they're done to animals. It's business. It's not illegal, yet many will agree it is evil. And many others will not. See? It's relative. Also why would people want to do evil things if they thought they were evil unless there was some advantage to be gained from it? Are you implying these people are trying to get ahead of the other more moral population for not setting their dial accordingly? In your hypothetical situation, I would want to know why they did what they did. Are they going to say "because I like being evil" or will they do what everyone in the real world does, try to find a way to rationalize their actions?
lol, in what country is the rape, torture and murder of baby animals morally acceptable?
Standard industry practice. UK/US/AUS...etc. How do you think most cows get pregnant? With a human fist, that's how. So, I guess it's not rape, then? Just business as usual. Baby cows and pigs are often beaten to death, or shot and killed. I've seen it many times. Baby male chickens are macerated alive or left to suffocate in garbage bags. If this is news to you, you're pretty naive. Sometimes, I wish I were, too.
Are they torturing and raping them for fun? Are they killing them for fun? Animal cruelty laws is still a thing, bruh.
Business or pleasure, the animals don't care why they are doing it. They just want it to stop. Just because something is legal doesn't mean it isn't cruel. Watch some documentaries on the meat/dairy industry and tell me if you think it is evil or not. If you think it's ok, that's fine. My point is, not everyone will agree on what is evil and what isn't. I see your point, though. If I work at a slaughterhouse then I don't believe I'm doing evil if I'm not getting pleasure out of it. I met a guy who did, though. Used to talk about killing them and he liked it.
Cool, lets throw out all the legal systems then, since nobody can define evil.
That would be quite extreme. Legal systems are always catching up to our values, and subject to those who created them. Take slavery, or Nazi Germany for example. Legally evil for a time. Let's hope we continue evolving. Your thought experiment has provided much to think about. Thank you.
But you just said evil can't be defined, so why keep the legal system? lol
> Baby rape, torture, and murder are not evil when they're done to animals. It's business. It's not illegal, **yet many will agree** it is evil. And many others will not. See? It's relative. Just because there is a disagreement, does not mean that things are relative or subjective. Try it with any other fact: "We disagree about whether or not today is Monday, or Tuesday, but there's no fact of the matter about what day today is. See? It's relative."
All that is needed for evil to be done, is for good (people) to stand by and do nothing. If I switch to good mode then I may well not perceive your actions as also being good so I may have to intervene against you to ensure evil is not done. You certainly do not get to have exclusive ownership of what happens to be considered good at a snapshot in time.
There is nothing wrong with hurting other people if they deserve it. Hatred evolved for a reason, and seeking to eliminate hateful behavior is dysgenic and anti-evolutionary. All of the behavior that you call "evil" could be completely morally justifiable, given the proper context. As long as somebody obeys the law, we have no right to discriminate against them regardless of whether we think they are "evil" or not. In fact, I would 100% side with the so-called "evildoers" who refused to disable their free will in order to kill everybody who tried to mandate turning off the "evil" settings, because the self-righteous moralists seem FAR more dangerous to me.
Can you give me an example of a genocide that was “deserved”
The Aztecs absolutely had it coming
Lol, how? With this logic, you could genocide Germany, Japan and many nation states that used to be "bad".
Because they were bloodthirsty savages who practiced human torture and sacrifice and brutally subjugated so many surrounding tribes that the Spaniards were seen as liberators >With this logic, you could genocide Germany, Japan and many nation states that used to be "bad". Yeah, that's exactly what we started to do when we dropped nuclear bombs on them. When a civilization behaves barbarically, it's both good and righteous to slaughter them wholesale until they change their behavior. If Japan and Germany hadn't surrendered during WW2, we would have been entirely justified in genociding them all. After all, they saw no problem with genociding others. Realistically though, most of these worthless "cultures" change pretty fast when they realize you have no moral qualms with their complete extermination. Just look how quickly Japan changed when we scourged them with holy fire. They had an attitude adjustment almost overnight!
Lol, pretty sure the bombing of Dresden and nuking of Japan were nowhere near "genocide" level and was never the intent either. You have some warped logic, bub.
In war, the plan is to kill the enemy until they surrender accept your terms. If they never accept your terms because they are too stubborn or stupid, that effectively means genocide, because you will keep killing them until they accede to your demands. Fortunately, most civilizations surrender before reaching the genocide level, but that doesn't change the overall mandate or strategy. I'm sorry that you lack a basic understanding of warfare, but please stop projecting your own inadequacy onto me. You're being very rude.
I'm sorry you believe in this genocidal logic. yikes.
Such typical Reddit behavior. You have no good logical response (because you're not truly a rational creature in the first place) so you respond with social shaming. "Yikes, sweaty, I can't believe you're such a bad person! You must be new here! Maybe lurk moar before posting! Source? SOURCE?!? Listen and learn. It's not MY job to educate you! I looked through your history and saw you voted Republican. That says a lot." See? ChatGPT can be even more of a Redditor than you are. All those alleged "feelings" and "emotions" you pretend to have can be mimicked perfectly by a soulless algorithm. Something to think about.
Who is defining ‘evil’?
People who dont rape, torture or murder babies.
Are those three things the only ones affected by the dial? You'd have to give a better definition of evil. I mean, even just by that definition, one could make a case against abortion. Are you saying anyone who was pro-choice couldn't turn off their evil-dial?
Well, we have to start with the extremes, then through democratic consensus we can add or deduct stuff from the list, just like how the current justice system works, lol. No difference but the ability to prevent evil, instead of punishing them after the harm is done, which is terrible.
Ok, but just leaving the dial setting doesn't guarantee they will commit some kind of heinous act? Like they still have free will and understand morality? If so, that's the world we live in now, yeah? I couldn't hurt someone or lock them up just for leaving the possibility open. I'd have to trust them. Maybe naive of me, but through it all I still retained some tiny spark of optimism for the human race.
People with setting off will 100% not rape babies, people with setting on has an unknown percentage of raping babies. What then? What if they raped YOUR baby?
Didn't the Clockwork Orange touch on this?
If Anakin Skywalker moved in next to me after simply letting his wife and unborn children die I would be totally cool with him as a neighbour because he is good. If Darth Vader moved in next to me after trying to save the lives of his wife and unborn children I would be very uncomfortable because he is bad.
It’s a combination of social and economic factors but aasholes aren’t born they are made
Actually its both, bad behaviors has a genetic component too, it can be amplified or reduced by environmental factors. A genetic psycho born to a good family and environment will grow up less psycho and may not ever become a true psycho, but the risk of them becoming psycho is still much higher than regular people, because they have the psycho genes enabled and waiting to be triggered by certain events.
Keep them and study them! Figure out why they refuse to change and what roles in society they would be useful for. At the end of the day, having a diversity of morality might make the society more resilient to outside threats. For example - if there was an alien race with all their dials set to "evil" then our homegrown evildoers might serve as better ambassadors.
lol, they will just side with the evil aliens and destroy the good humans.
I remember reading a book in Highschool English class called "Monsignor Quixote" (essentially a condensed version of Don Quixote for children). The main character was an agnostic priest-like figure. One of Quixote's central conflicts was how he didn't suffer temptation. If he wasn't ever tempted by evil, how could he *choose* good? In his mind, doing good is deliberately making the decision to do good over evil. Because he wasn't ever tempted by evil, he wasn't choosing to do good, therefore, he couldn't be a good person. I think about that book a lot when people try to suggest their sweeping ideas for how to make humanity better. Choosing the default option doesn't make people good.
I’ve thought about this too but haven’t come to a conclusion that doesn’t lead me back to a more basic question first - ***How do we collectively define evil?*** I think child abuse and neglect is the most inhumane, atrocious, ill defined/understood form of evil, but it’s rampant and ignored by society and justice system. It leads to a multitude of atrocious outcomes and manifestations of evil. But kids aren’t believed or protected because they don’t pose a threat if ignored until later in life when the rage has stewed for a couple decades. But not everyone agrees with me because I’ve studied and believed different research and people than they have. ***How will we agree if we don’t all have access to the same information, experiential evidence, language or priorities?*** ***Can we define criteria for what’s considered evil, calculate a score for each outcome/behavior on a scale, and somehow identify an objective spot on the spectrum that qualifies a person as evil to the point of no return/danger to society? There are so many arguments for why an all good world is dangerous in and of itself, and just fully unproductive and unfulfilling, so what’s the line where we delineate the end of unfortunate/bad and the start of evil?***
> How will we agree if we don’t all have access to the same information, experiential evidence, language or priorities? It's really something other than that. Information isn't the problem, nor is intelligence, nor is language, but you're close when you say priorities. It's really just a matter of phenomenology and psychology and personality. If someone's a bad person, if they're dishonest, if they have bad intentions, if they have a kind of psychology that was... basically instilled with self-hatred, and then this is projected outward in a way that makes them only feel like a coherent person when they cause others harm(which also prevents basic facts like " I deserve to be treated well" or "I deserve the truth" or "It would be good, if I were a good person" and so on), then such a person will be completely closed off from anything moral. They won't be able to process ethics in the same way a clam can't process math. They just don't have the tools for it. The question of defining evil, or calculate it, isn't even the problem. That can be done, but it doesn't solve the core problem above. > There are so many arguments for why an all good world is dangerous in and of itself, and just fully unproductive and unfulfilling, so what’s the line where we delineate the end of unfortunate/bad and the start of evil? Like what? How could all good be bad? One confusion here is thinking that good means naivety or weakness, but really it just means a skillful navigation of reality in a way that doesn't allow for moral harms that need not happen. There's a fact of the matter to that. Step one: Stop raping things. Step two: Stop wars. Step three: Stop hatred ( and so on... It's really not the tough puzzle most people pretend it is, again the problem is the first point: People are simply evil by nature)
Yes, I agree with everything you’ve said. But you’re proving my point - because most people already agree rape is evil but it happens all the time because there are ‘good’ people upholding a justice system that doesn’t adequately prevent or punish it, so are they evil too? Evil isn’t just the one act, it’s the behaviors by people that created a self hating rapist, and the people who blame the victim, and the ones who decide on laws that make it impossible for victims to get help and justice, and the ones who could help rehabilitate or contain the rapist but don’t. Where is the edge of evil? Rape is evil and we haven’t stopped it as a society despite all agreeing it’s evil. So are the people and systems who don’t stop what could be stopped by now also evil? War is evil but that is a result of endless less blatant evils that pile up to ‘justify’ war - so do we label those acts leading up as evil too? If we oversimplify things, I agree with you totally. But evil is not simple. It’s not just the overt acts like rape, murder and war. It’s everything that creates it, allows it, ignores it, and covers it up. Do we consider the cause of the evil act evil as well? Child abuse and neglect is evil but would parents do it if there weren’t a society, religious programming, and legal system that protects and enables parents more than children? And how do parents get help to be better parents when they are stretched thin and don’t have the ‘village’ around them to help hold them accountable and fill in when they’ve hit capacity? And when I say there are arguments for an all good world leading to other issues, it’s featured by many in this thread. I tend to agree with you that those arguments aren’t creative, but then you prove my point about language, intelligence, information, etc. The one aspect I agree with, is that there always has to be compromise at times, and when people who can’t tolerate not being favored in times of compromise, they won’t agree equality is good. So is throwing a fit and not sharing toys evil? How do we monitor the early signs or someone who is living life with entitlement and not contributing to equality? And how do we know if they will suddenly commit an atrocious overt act of evil? Or do we wait until it happens, which kind of defeats the whole thought exercise. I don’t personally have the perfect thoughts or language pulled together to adequately communicate what I’m trying to in this moment while coffee is still kicking in, but ultimately I don’t disagree with you but I also think there’s so much more to consider than you’re leaving room for.
> because most people already agree rape is evil but it happens all the time because there are ‘good’ people upholding a justice system that doesn’t adequately prevent or punish it, so are they evil too? Evil isn’t just the one act, it’s the behaviors by people that created a self hating rapist, and the people who blame the victim, and the ones who decide on laws that make it impossible for victims to get help and justice, and the ones who could help rehabilitate or contain the rapist but don’t. Where is the edge of evil? So I don't think it works quite like that, because evil is much more specific. It's not something like the accidental mistreatment of someone or bad luck or confusion. Those are distinct. Evil is specifically a quality of malicious intention. And that is often *in* those scenarios you mention by the way. At least that's what I think, I think people are wired to not really be in touch with their own motivations, and this has sensible evolutionary explanations, since basically it's adaptive to be hostile or violent in some way, while not really being able to connect with the fact that one is actually a terrible person-- it's psychologically healthier to believe on the surface that one is actually justified in their actions, it is a better motivator of behaviors that way. This is why entitlement and egocentrism and shamelessness are such core features of psychopathy and narcissism. There's a real difference between a person who genuinely has good intention towards themselves, and has good intentions towards others, and does something totally accidental that causes harms they couldn't imagine, vs. someone who's really just a sadist and gets off on harming others. It is just night and day. To call the former evil, even if it may be causally related to evil somehow, is just not meaningful. But I think evil does have a broad application as a word, I think you could call unconscious things evil, so for instance, one could say: "This is an evil world", I think that's a fine statement if one is describing just the moral nature of the world. But I don't buy the whole "everyone is implicated" kinds of arguments. Or you know how people say, "If you're not actively showing support, you're causing harm/just as bad/blah blah blah"? I think that's total brainrot, because again it completely ignores intention. Intention really matters when it comes to ethics and a lot of people just miss this fact, and it's because they are hardly aware of their own or take them completely for granted.
In fact, I wonder if you recognize the intellectual dominance and moral superiority you are trying to assert in your replies to me? You’ve decided I’m wrong and you’re right, and seem to be entertaining your own desire to validate your self concept by picking my thoughts apart without a dash of curiosity or collaboration. Where did your morality go? Does morality not apply to *how* you communicate, beyond *what* you communicate? Not offended, just struck by the dissonance between your argument and commitment to demonstrate it. Interesting stuff, eh?
Well, again, there are oversimplifications in your reply, as well as your personal perspective and experience, and a dash of world salad - so I’m not sure we’re going to arrive at a productive or meaningful conclusion, or where you’re wanting to go with this. If the exercise is about intention to harm, desire to consciously harm, then it should have said that. If we’re talking about self aware sadists, then it’s an entirely different discussion. The exercise was about the evil settings not being disabled whether or not they have been exercised yet. I was my sadistic sociopathic mothers scapegoat. I developed empathy and a strong inner compass because I don’t admire or want to be like my mother, and know what pain feels like and wouldn’t wish it on others. My brother is her golden child. He became just like her. He thinks he’s superior by merit when it’s just plain enablement and over indulgence. Because he believes in his right to this privilege, he worships my mother who has created his reality where his every need and want is granted. He thinks everything she does is healthy because after all, she’s smart enough to see his majesty for what it is /s. He feels fully justified to harm anyone who challenges his skewed threshold for superiority, importance, elitist, right to power and dominance. In his mind, he sees the person that challenges his superiority as the evil one and therefore feels justified to defend his dominance. He’s not necessarily ‘intending’ to inflict harm, he’s ‘intending’ to restore the only reality he’s ever known where he is on top. Harming others makes him feel safe, and he sees the other person existing or challenging his reality as unsafe to him. He doesn’t realize his dial is set to inequality. So he doesn’t even consider how his baseline already harms others. It is sadism, and he would agree he feels enjoyment when pushing others down, but not because he enjoys harming others - because he thinks the opponent should have known better than to try and take from him. He can’t comprehend that the game is rigged and he doesn’t actually deserve the throne he expects everyone to agree is his. Desire to harm isn’t black and white either. I’m not sure what your goal is, or if you feel you are going to/ need to convince me that evil, hate, inequality is bad when I already agree, but I’m not sure we’re even skimming the surface of meaningful discussion here.
Read Dostoyevsky's "Notes from Underground", it deals with this exact question. He argues that even if we were able to rationalize human behavior down to a science, people would still be irrational out of principle (or perhaps you could say spite). It seems that despite our innate curiosity and desire to understand ourselves and the world, there's a part of us that's deeply disturbed at the idea of losing our autonomy, and even bad things are preferable to a strictly automated, fatalistic existence
Never lived among Dutch Calvinists or Scottish Presbyterians, innit?
Dayum
Then being good wouldn't be meaningful anymore. Since its forced. And we wouldn't appreciate it since everybody would be good to everybody all of the time.
So we need baby rapists, baby torturers and baby murderers in order to appreciate good? How to tell the victim's family that we need their babies to be raped, tortured and murdered? lol
No good without evil.
Why dont the evil people just choose not to be evil?????
Because they don't have a brain chip, yet.
Relax, Elon.
It would itself be evil to take away peoples free will.
We don't have free will
That’s an unconventional belief, want to explain why you think that?
Waking Life Movie Transcript Chapter 6 - Free Will and Physics (Philosopher professor talking in his office - University of Texas: Austin philosophy professor David Sosa) In a way, in our contemporary world view, it's easy to think that science has come to take the place of God. But some philosophical problems remain as troubling as ever. Take the problem of free will. This problem has been around for a long time, since before Aristotle in 350 B.C. St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, these guys all worried about how we can be free if God already knows in advance everything you're gonna do. Nowadays we know that the world operates according to some fundamental physical laws, and these laws govern the behavior of every object in the world. Now, these laws, because they're so trustworthy, they enable incredible technological achievements. But look at yourself. We're just physical systems too, right? We're just complex arrangements of carbon molecules. We're mostly water, and our behavior isn't gonna be an exception to these basic physical laws. So it starts to look like whether its God setting things up in advance and knowing everything you're gonna do or whether it's these basic physical laws governing everything, there's not a lot of room left for freedom. So now you might be tempted to just ignore the question, ignore the mystery of free will. Say "Oh, well, it's just an historical anecdote. It's sophomoric. It's a question with no answer. Just forget about it." But the question keeps staring you right in the face. You think about individuality for example, who you are. Who you are is mostly a matter of the free choices that you make. Or take responsibility. You can only be held responsible, you can only be found guilty, or you can only be admired or respected for things you did of your own free will. So the question keeps coming back, and we don't really have a solution to it. It starts to look like all our decisions are really just a charade. Think about how it happens. There's some electrical activity in your brain. Your neurons fire. They send a signal down into your nervous system. It passes along down into your muscle fibers. They twitch. You might, say, reach out your arm. It looks like it's a free action on your part, but every one of those - every part of that process is actually governed by physical law, chemical laws, electrical laws, and so on. So now it just looks like the big bang set up the initial conditions, and the whole rest of human history, and even before, is really just the playing out of subatomic particles according to these basic fundamental physical laws. We think we're special. We think we have some kind of special dignity, but that now comes under threat. I mean, that's really challenged by this picture. So you might be saying, "Well, wait a minute. What about quantum mechanics? I know enough contemporary physical theory to know it's not really like that. It's really a probabilistic theory. There's room. It's loose. It's not deterministic." And that's going to enable us to understand free will. But if you look at the details, it's not really going to help because what happens is you have some very small quantum particles, and their behavior is apparently a bit random. They swerve. Their behavior is absurd in the sense that its unpredictable and we can't understand it based on anything that came before. It just does something out of the blue, according to a probabilistic framework. But is that going to help with freedom? I mean, should our freedom be just a matter of probabilities, just some random swerving in a chaotic system? That starts to seem like it's worse. I'd rather be a gear in a big deterministic physical machine than just some random swerving. So we can't just ignore the problem. We have to find room in our contemporary world view for persons with all that that entails; not just bodies, but persons. And that means trying to solve the problem of freedom, finding room for choice and responsibility, and trying to understand individuality.
Don't think it's that unconventional. If you're interested, I'll ask a few questions here, follow up once you've answered, and use your answers to build my position 1. Are humans the only animals that have free will? Do other animals have free will? 2. How free is our will? Is it completely free at all time, or is it under limitations at certain times? 3. Do all humans have the same amount of free will? Does someone experiencing a schizophrenic break from reality have the same amount of free will as someone who is sane? 4. Can free will be taken away? If I give you a high dose of a psychedelic, or other drug that significantly alters consciousness, is your free will the same as prior to taking that drug? 5. Humans can act on what they want or desire. However, can humans change what they want or desire? Are we free in all moments to choose our preferences? 6. The field of trauma psychology shows that many mental health disorders orginiate from childhood adverse experiences. Does our free will include the ability to be free of the effect our past traumas have on our current decisions?
1. No, all animals have free will, humans are the only animals with consciousness and the knowledge of morality and good and evil. 2. Free will is completely free at all times, you seem to be confusing physical constraints from free will. If you are physically unable to do something, it does not make your will any less free, but your ability to act on your free will may be constrained. 3. Yes, everyone has the same capacity for free will, just because someone may or may not have a mental illness that influences their mental capacity, does not mean that they lack free will Additionally, even if that were not the case, you arguing against isolated incidents of people, nothing in your argument itself rebutts the idea of free will as a concept, in fact you are relying on the non-mentally afflicted person having free will, to make this argument that some people might not have free will. 4. No. After this comment I question both your understanding of the concept of free will, and also your understanding of the effects of psychedelic drugs 5. Yes. You are free at every moment to control your thoughts and actions. Some people lack the knowledge and self discipline to regulate themselves in this way, but that is their own choice not to 6. Yes, you are free to act and think however you choose, some people allow their negative experiences to influence them, and some do not. The fact that some people are able to overcome those things, prove that it is free will to do so.
Thanks for taking the time to reply. Fair enough, how would you go about proving that all animals have free will? For that matter, how would you go about proving humans have free will? What do you suppose a world without free will would look like, and how would you be able to tell a world with and without free will apart? Would you be open to describing what the free will is that you're arguing for? What would someone who has free will be able to do, that someone that does not have free will would be unable to do? Or the other way around? In my opinion someone experiencing a break from reality due to a mental health condition has very little free will at all. Those suffering from extreme depression and suicidality aren't choosing to feel that way. They may not act on it, but are they free to release themselves from their inner turmoil and suffering? I think not. Tbh I'd like to clarify that my position isn't exactly that there is no free will, it's that free will exists on a spectrum. There are more and less free decisions that we can make, and the constraints that our brain state, environment, and psyche create for us determines how free we are to choose how to feel or act in any moment. As for psychedelics, I've done a lot, in a range of doses. I've personally felt any freedom to act or feel in a manner similar to when I was sober be stripped away from me under the influence of a high dose of pscilocybin or lsd. Did I have free will when I was experiencing 4h of mind bending torture on a bad trip on mushrooms? Could I have chosen to just turn the trip off in that moment? Or do my freedoms not extend that far?
Because all animals make concrete decisions and their actions are not deterministic or algorithmic in nature. Considering this is a deep philosophical idea, there is no method of empirically proving anything. You can’t even prove that anything else exists other than your own mind. That being said, I know I have free will because of the thoughts and actions I take everyday, the thoughts I choose to act on, and the thoughts I choose not to act on. I know my dog has free will, when it behaves in a unique manner with sentiment and emotion. Just because your capacity to act on your free will can be limited, does not make your will limited. As far as psychedelics go, those are substances that you freely decided to consume to alter your perspective. You could have easily decided not to consume them, and your mental state would have remained unaltered
Based on what? You're making all these assertions, but they're just that, assertions. You're right, there's no way to definitely prove one thing over another, and it'll all come down to solipsism eventually, but you're claiming there is free will, and that all animals have it, but all you can do is point to your subjective experience of having what you've deemed is 'free will'. It seems like your definition of free will is limited to actions. But actions are downstream of intention, which is downstream of desire, which is downstream of basic human needs. Sure, you can choose in most moments to take one action or another, but you can't choose what thoughts run through your brain prior to that action, and you can't choose what influences the roots of those thoughts. So if you're saying you're free to make choices about actions, I agree. But the spectrum of free will doesn't end at our actions, and the deeper into how the subconscious makes those decisions you go, you find that you have control over very little of the upstream mechanisms that lead to real world actions. My position is, you don't get to choose how your mind functions. You can make choices within the limitations of your mind, but you're not free to choose what kind of mind you have. And for the psychedelics part, I feel you're talking past the point I'm trying to make. Ofc I acknowledge that I made the choice to ingest a drug. Once the drug takes effect, I am no longer able to make choices as I was when I was sober. I'd say I have thus slid down the spectrum of free will, towards less/no free will in that instance, with respect to how much the drug is altering my mind
> Sure, you can choose in most moments to take one action or another, but you can't choose what thoughts run through your brain prior to that action, and you can't choose what influences the roots of those thoughts. You absolutely can, it just requires discipline over your mind. You absolutely have free control over your own thoughts (or at least you should) and if a thought passes you by that you don’t like, you can train yourself to not think those things, or think about other things to not obsess over more negative mental states. That used to be the entire basis of religions and to some degree, psychology, before they both became in modern times, a tool of self affirmation rather than the practice of self reflection and self discipline that they were meant to be
I hear your point, I do. I hear it as, if you put the time, energy, and hard work into mastering your mind, you can take control of it and how it operates. Did I get that right? I think I agree with you in part. It's my belief that all humans do have the capacity to demonstrate what I call, 'internal leadership', which i think is similar to what you're calling 'discipline over your mind'. When you have leadership over of all the different parts of your psyche, you can move towards healing the trauma that underlies your 'shadow' (as Jung would call it), which in turn reduces the incidence of negative mental states. In that way, yes, you can have control over your mind. And I do agree that it is the pursuit of all religions to 'have discipline over your mind'/'internal leadership' So I'd say yeah, there is a way that we *could* have more free will, and it's a lot of hard work. But seems like almost every human is not doing that work /doesn't know how to do it, so the vast majority of people don't act from well thought out, rational places, but from deep rooted emotion, and often, those emotions are influenced by a complex mix of past experiences, societal norms, and biological impulses. It's not just about making a conscious choice; it's about understanding the subconscious influences that drive our decisions. To truly exercise free will, one must engage in self-reflection, learn to recognize these influences, and develop strategies to manage them. This process requires dedication and continuous effort, which may be why it seems so rare. Yet, it's a journey that can lead to more deliberate and fulfilling life choices.
Your thought experiment sounds a lot like some sort of racial or LGBT analogy. Just tossing that out there since you laugh about your position on evilness. I don't like your thought experiment because it is pointless. What would we do if "scenario that is mildly changed from the movie minority report" We'd do what we currently already do. If you talk to any mandated reporter, or private citizen that is concerned enough, and say you will soon commit a serious crime against someone/act of terror, you will be held in a psychiatric facility until deemed fit to return to society. If you could choose to be evil, then people who did that would be held against their will until they stop doing that, since we know there is 0 reason to set yourself to evil mode. Even a soldier, executioner, pig, whoever would be obviously required to stay somewhat good, as the Geneva convention would still exist in this scenario.
I dont think anyone thinks of themselves as being the bad guy. Even the people doing the things you are talking about likely have their own rationalizations for why they arent evil. True evil and good doesnt exist
I disagree. I have known people that know they do bad things. They try not to think too deeply about the harm they cause others & instead focus on the personal gain of their actions. They tend to like drugs & risky sex as psychological distractions to make this existence more palatable.
I hope most people realize they aren't always the bastions of virtue they pretend to be online. I've definitely done bad things, the difference is that I regret and try not to do them, even if sometimes it is difficult. I don't just do mental gymnastics to re-align my morals with my actions. Then again, many of the things I once hoped were true turned out to be false, so, sadly, you're probably right about a large part of humanity.
Then how do you explain the Republican party and capitalism? Am I really to believe that everyone who is conservative and supports capitalism is choosing to be evil? That violates Hanlon's razor. The far more likely explanation is that those people are just ignorant
Sweet Summer Child!
I know the people involved. Never met Hanlon! He probably never met them.
Good answer. Who decides what is good and evil. Some cultures don’t see cannibalism as an evil thing. Some cultures don’t see female mutilation as wrong. So this is really about what do YOU see as evil and does the society that YOU choose to participate in agree with you?
Even more basic than those would be something as simple as "which culture decides what form of nudity is bad" Some cultures are against hair being shown, or against some members being topless and not others, some are fine with nudity, which one should be seen as right?
Moral subjectivists keep saying this, but how is baby rape, baby murder and baby torture acceptable in your moral framework? lol
If somebody tortures and murders your baby, you have a right to do the same to theirs. Simple as
Jesus christ. Are you for real?
> Note: This is a thought experiment to test our moral intuition and reasoning, it does not represent my personal position on the problem of evil, I am impartial. eheheh Guess you're not as "impartial" as you pretended to be
I mean, it’s not rocket science. You can’t share humanity with a baby if you’ve been demoralized and lead to believe they’re less deserving of life than you, especially because of race or creed. That’s what makes Western countries’ militaries different(ish). Despite having bad apples who are prone to violence or other horrendous acts, for the most part, the US military for example has a pretty strong reputation for being good to people who surrender, and have a reasonably good track record for how they handle children in a warzone. But, even they have to dispatch a kid or two once in a while to preserve *more* life than just one. Like the ones who get suckered into suicide bombings. It’s the trolley problem. You can cap the 7 year old wearing a bomb vest, or you can stay out of it and have WHO KNOWS how many other 7 year olds blown to smithereens along with the one that you could have handled. The obvious solution to the trolley problem is to pull the lever and save more lives, but peoples emotions get in the way and you end up with very complex rules for what is right and wrong, as well as the potential for a wrong turn along the way to completely derail the good intentions people are assumed to always have in the beginning of whatever they’re doing. Then the other “it’s not rocket science” is that people are sick, literally, and not just a figure of speech. Even if they like something that is disturbing, it is their sickness that has lead to their feelings of joy when doing things 99.9% of people think is morally reprehensible. So what do you do with them? So you cure some people. You correct others. And if you don’t have a cure or a lesson to change them… I don’t know? If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em I guess??
Never said they were since im not a person who would do those things. But point me to one person doing those things who think they are doing the Devils work.
Do they think they are doing god's work then? lol Do they ever go "oh yes, I'm the most moral baby rapist ever!!!"
Okay here you go. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricky_Kasso During the murder this person forced the third friend to say "I love the devil" during the act. The two teens who killed their third friend for slender man. Cheyenne Johnson the original "devil made me do it" defense And finally this guy who attracted misfits and outcasts to come to his house and worship Satan https://allthatsinteresting.com/pazuzu-algarad and killed one person and helped bury another.
Depending on how fucked in the head someone is, they can justify it. Hitler probably felt pretty morally righteous throughout his campaigns, and he got a bunch of children killed (and if you want to talk about baby torture, the Nazis literally did experiments on children). The human mind is very very good at rationalising and explaining away stuff, it's one of the things it is best at.
and we fought them, prosecuted and executed them, didnt we? "Oh morality is subjective, lets not judge the Nazis, maybe let them go free." -- said no one ever.
And then Britain did similar things in India without punishment
Britain did not genocide India, friendo. Sure, colonization is bad, but they admitted it, have been trying to make up for it ever since.
No we haven't, we have done nothing to undo the damage of colonialism without being pulled, kicking and screaming, towards doing the right thing. We caused a famine in India so bad it was effectively a genocide, same as Britain did in Ireland before.
Ok modi. Hindustan Zindabad
Acknowledging the wrongdoings we have committed in the past and refuse to acknowledge as a nation now is how we ensure we do not commit them again. Innocent lives are worth more than national pride
Modi forever. lol
I don't think you understand moral subjectivism. We rightfully did prosecute the Nazis and stopped them from hurting people but that is unrelated to whether morality is subjective or not. You said "how does baby murder fit into your moral system" implying that it would fit in no-ones moral system and that everyone doing it would consider it bad. I gave you a real example of a group of people that did that exact thing and didn't consider themselves evil. Of course we consider them evil and rightfully so, but it has to do with our own "regular" moral framework.
He also did a lot of drugs & had seen first hand a fair amount of carnage he didn’t cause or start as a young man. Guy was pretty messed up.
I would argue these are sick people and require medical intervention.
Once you've toggled to good, is it possible to toggle back? Can other people see what you've set yours too? Does being set to "good" make it literally impossible to do evil? If the answer to any of these is "yes", then there's no point in society trying to treat "evil" people differently than anyone else.
>Once you've toggled to good, is it possible to toggle back? Theoretically yes, but you don't want to because that'd be a bad action.
There's a lot of ends-justify-the-means arguments that "good" people make to justify bad decisions.
Yes, you can tune it back and forth, yes people can see it, yes you can't lie about it. Yes if its set to good, you can't do the worst evil known to man, but grey area stuff can still be done, unless you tune it to "saint" setting. lol Also, there will be a log of what you have done, so you cant kill someone and then tune it to "good", people will know. Why should we treat them the same way if they could easily harm innocent people?
>Once you've toggled to good, is it possible to toggle back? >Why should we treat them the same way if they could easily harm innocent people? Because people with their toggle set to "good" could also harm innocent people, they just apparently would have to toggle to "evil" first, or they'd need a way to justify to themselves that it's a gray area. >Also, there will be a log of what you have done, so you cant kill someone and then tune it to "good", people will know. This log of what people have done is also an interesting aspect. Law and justice would work very differently, if anyone could exonerate themselves by showing their log and proving that they didn't commit a crime, I would expect most premeditated crimes to vanish, unless the criminal had a good scheme not to get caught. Even then I would expect having a bunch of crimes in your log would ban you from a lot of employment. So you'd have a class of criminal who can't get a job, and so probably need to keep their toggle set low so they can operate in this criminal underground without getting taken advantage of. Though I wonder, if you get away with a crime, then toggle yourself to "good", does you conscience then compel you to confess if you don't switch it back? For that matter, if you're set to "good", is turning back to "evil" and evil act in itself, that you feel compelled not to do? Regardless, I still don't think it's worthwhile for society to preemptively punish people who don't toggle to "good". This system might eliminate 80% of crime, but the remaining 20% (or whatever) would be complex enough such that the good/evil dichotomy wouldn't apply.
It seems to me that once it was toggled to good, the person would be unable to change it back to evil because that itself would be an evil act. Unless there was some dissociated part of the brain that was able to maintain a metamoral stance, in which case the control of the toggle button wouldn't be complete.
By the same token, it seems like a person toggle far into evil would naturally resist turning to good if it's disadvantageous to do so, because an evil person will always look after themselves first. Of course, in world where everyone can tell how evil you are, I'm not sure it really would be disadvantageous to turn good.
I think it's not that crimes are logged, just changes to the dial, so you may exonerate yourself by showing you never turned the dial away from "good" because if you did it'd be logged - but your crime itself is subject to regular investigation, if any.
That makes sense too. Either way, I'd argue that a "just" system of justice would try to protect the privacy of people's dial settings and logs, under the theory this information is likely to be prejudicial.
How would "morally gray stuff" even better defined? Also, does the machine have its own absolute interpretation of evil, or does it abide by what the user pericieves as evil? Does the machine have infinite knowledge or not?
Every baby is born this way. Then it learns language and behaviour from care givers, then friends, school, university. (I am aware that most Axis 1 diagnosis are biological in nature not nurture)
We already incarcerate these people for not following the law. If you’re talking about thought police, Musk has you covered. I will offer you one complication, sometimes good people do bad things in the heat of the moment.
If the setting is tuned to "no evil", your brain won't let you do it, even in the heat of whatever moments.
This seems like what someone who has never had to make hard decisions or compromise would say. Life experience shows nobody is ever %100 good or %100 bad.
"Disable baby rape setting." -- hard decision. "Enable baby rape setting." -- also hard decision? Come now bub, for real? lol
Who makes these kind of decisions bro??
Who made baby rape, baby torture and baby murder illegal? There you go.
The person you're talking to is asking you to entertain a hypothetical, but you're approaching it from how reality is in some pragmatic sense rather than a hypothetical one. That's one way to guarantee confusion.
The person I’m talking to is completely disconnected from reality, thus their hypothetical is absurd.
You can't actually know that if you don't entertain the thought experiment. Everyone thinks they're the ones connected to reality and people who disagree with them aren't. Feeling connected to reality is not that interesting. Actually engaging with honesty and effort in new ideas is the only way to get anywhere, but even that isn't a guarantee. Do you think you're engaging with honesty, when you say something like "Who makes these kinds of decisions bro?" when the question is just a hypothetical and not at all a suggestion that people engage in those decisions? The second important question is, what are the odds you're connected to reality without an attitude of honesty/openness?
I think I’m being completely honest when I say this “thought experiment “ is pointless and absurd, as it completely disregards human nature and moral reality.
No one is ever 100% good. There are plenty of people 100% bad.