4 ms·

I believe that evil only exists in fairy tales. There are better words to describe the immoral actions of others, including Hitler.

by iguana 13y ago

derefr 13y ago
But the evil in fairy tales is only the way it is because the characters who perpetrate it are purposefully one-dimensional, their motivations and justifications left unrevealed so as to not give the reader too much empathy for them. Even their evil, on level-headed scrutiny (ignoring the story narrator's attempt to sway you to one side of an us-vs-them debate with rhetoric), is "righteous and shortsighted." Which is to say--even their evil isn't "evil." And if you've reduced a word to signifying nothing at all, perhaps you're just trying to run away from allowing the things it does signify to be labelled? If the "evil" in fairy tales is, deep down, the same kind of justified, empathizable action that real people in our real world do every day, then why can't the thing the real people do also be called evil? I'm guessing that, after a few rounds of clarification, your real problem with the term might be its true definition: evil is basically a useful bit of meta-ethics jargon meaning "something that is subjectively offensive to the part of my utility function I assume my culture shares with me, as evidenced through mythos and communicated social norms." It's that "subjective" part that people get tripped up by--"evil" (and its opposite "good") are only defined given a utility function and a culture of empathizable peer-beings who share some part of that utility function. Without the utility function, you might have something unclipperific[1], but not something evil. Without the empathizable peers, it might be something you find personally offensive, but this feeling won't be shared to others via sympathetic anger (offense at losing in a fair competition, for example, feels like "rage", not like "observing an evil being perpetrated.") [1] http://lesswrong.com/lw/fv3/by_which_it_may_be_judged/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/fv3/by_which_it_may_be_judged/
flyinRyan 13y ago
I go the other direction. I believe a person can be evil and do evil while believing themselves good. The results of your actions are what matters, not what you thought when you committed them.

I believe that evil only exists in fairy tales. There are better words to describe the immoral actions of others, including Hitler.

by iguana 13y ago

I believe that evil only exists in fairy tales. There are better words to describe the immoral actions of others, including Hitler.

derefr 13y ago

But the evil in fairy tales is only the way it is because the characters who perpetrate it are purposefully one-dimensional, their motivations and justifications left unrevealed so as to not give the reader too much empathy for them. Even their evil, on level-headed scrutiny (ignoring the story narrator's attempt to sway you to one side of an us-vs-them debate with rhetoric), is "righteous and shortsighted." Which is to say--even their evil isn't "evil." And if you've reduced a word to signifying nothing at all, perhaps you're just trying to run away from allowing the things it does signify to be labelled? If the "evil" in fairy tales is, deep down, the same kind of justified, empathizable action that real people in our real world do every day, then why can't the thing the real people do also be called evil? I'm guessing that, after a few rounds of clarification, your real problem with the term might be its true definition: evil is basically a useful bit of meta-ethics jargon meaning "something that is subjectively offensive to the part of my utility function I assume my culture shares with me, as evidenced through mythos and communicated social norms." It's that "subjective" part that people get tripped up by--"evil" (and its opposite "good") are only defined given a utility function and a culture of empathizable peer-beings who share some part of that utility function. Without the utility function, you might have something unclipperific[1], but not something evil. Without the empathizable peers, it might be something you find personally offensive, but this feeling won't be shared to others via sympathetic anger (offense at losing in a fair competition, for example, feels like "rage", not like "observing an evil being perpetrated.") [1] http://lesswrong.com/lw/fv3/by_which_it_may_be_judged/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/fv3/by_which_it_may_be_judged/

flyinRyan 13y ago

I go the other direction. I believe a person can be evil and do evil while believing themselves good. The results of your actions are what matters, not what you thought when you committed them.