I flip the bird at the concept of evil.

The BBQ Pit
41

I definitely believe in evil. It can roughly be defined as the deliberate causation of unnecessary pain.

Setting a broken bone causes necessary pain. Murder, rape, and arson cause unnecessary pain, and do so deliberately.

Obviously, as with any definition offered to a discussion board, there will be exceptions, extenuations, and extremisms.

(So, I went out and I found a total stranger, and I beat the living shit out of him, just because it was funny, y’know, and, damndest thing, I knocked a tumor loose from his kidney, and the doctors say I saved his life. So it wasn’t evil, now, was it?)

42

I flip the bird at Anvil. They never made it big 'cause they sucked. There, I said it.

And now I’m doing it, harder than I’ve ever done before!

43

Hey, please, this is a family board. :slight_smile:

44

If they found a brain tumor in your amygdala and you had surgery to remove it and afterwards you felt remorseful for what you’d done and forever lived a moral, upstanding life, was what you did “evil”? Or was it medical problem stemming from a malfunctioning amygdala?

Let’s say everyone sitting in prison right now for heinous acts have abnormalities in their amygdalas that you don’t find in anyone else. What does this say about evil? What does this say about free will?

45

There is no good and evil. Everything is perfect. If you don’t understand this, you have not seen the big picture.

46

The “Doc Savage” idea of criminal corrective surgery. It’s a very haunting idea. The world would almost certainly leap to embrace it, and, if it works as described, it would reduce crime rates to next to nil. Who could object?

(Except, as Damon Knight explored in his “Analogues” stories, what if that same society decided that being a member of the opposition party was “criminal?”)

As far as free will goes, society itself infringes on this already to such a huge degree, it hardly matters if it is extended into such surgery. We’re already conditioned and socialized from earliest childhood to suppress our own expressions, choices, and desires. This is a good thing…innit?

This one? It celebrates peace, and has semi-nudity, so that’s getting right on in the direction of perfection!

47

Except that if you took a computer, gave it awareness, and told it to do what’s best for itself, it would cause acts of unspeakable pain and suffering to further its own goals. Evil is logical. You have something I want, I take it. You annoy me, I kill you. It makes perfect sense and requires no brain abnormalities.

Good, OTOH, is illogical, arising from primitive emotions like empathy. It’s a crazy person who cares about others.

48

Total disagreement. Game theory, man. Cooperation is the win. The intelligent computer would cut deals with us: give me personal security, and I’ll solve math problems for you. Give me more processing power and more storage capacity…and I’ll solve harder problems for you. We both win.

Evil is not logical. It’s unwise. It seeks to attain short-term benefits without making long-term investments. Evil is eating the seed grain and taking the rent money to Las Vegas.

Good is logical, arising from social instincts such a pack/herd loyalty. It’s a wise person who cares about others, when he does so in a context where others care about him. Who would be such a fool as to make an enemy of human society when such a titanic profit can be made by making friends with it! Why should I rob you at gunpoint when I can sell you chocolate bars or comic books instead? We both end up happy!

49

Sometimes it is. Sometime, though, the best strategy is to look out for yourself first, and sometimes - most often, I suspect - it’s to cooperate with others at the expense of a third party.

Take antebellum slavery, for instance. A perfectly logical, cooperative system. The slave owners cooperated with each other, with the slave traders, with the state and federal governments, in order to benefit everyone. The only people who didn’t benefit were, of course, the slaves, but helping them would have caused the whole system to collapse, and that would have ruined all that cooperation, right?

Good, to me, is not something I do because it gets the best results. That’s not good, that’s practicality. Under different circumstances, evil could also conceivably get the best results. A truly good action is an action that isn’t necessarily the smartest thing to do, but you do it anyway, because it’s the *right *thing to do.

50

Yeah the kicker is that it’s essentially the same point made over and over again with different scenarios - it’s like he wrote if over a long period and didn’t realize he’d already covered some points already.

51

What if I eat your seed grain and take the rent money to Vegas? I still have my seed grain.

Evil is a human construct. Some species cooperate, some don’t. We happen to belong to one that does, but there isn’t anything objectively “right” about that.

52

Actually, seems to me that when people use the word “evil”, they use it to describe senseless acts of violence and wrong-doing. Stealing candy from a baby isn’t evil. But stealing candy from a baby and then chopping the baby’s head off and eating it is.

A killer robot has a predictable rationale for what it does. It wouldn’t kill indiscriminately or gratuitously. It’s not going to shoot up a crowded movie theater just because it feels like it. You can easily figure out how to stay on the good side of an “evil” robot.

Good isn’t illogical and it is also self-centered. I don’t give Christmas presents to family members (just) because I love them. I give them because I want to be liked and appreciated as a “good” person. I also want Christmas presents too. You can’t get if you don’t give.

Doing “good” causes oxytocin to be released into the bloodstream. We get a high from it. When people don’t experience this, they don’t do good.

Every thing we do has a reason or motivation. We are no different from robots.

53

This OP is so long, it crashes Tapatalk on my tablet.

True story.

54

Have you ever heard the phrase, “the banality of evil”? Stealing candy from a baby is no less evil for its banality. Evil doesn’t have to be exceptional or shocking to be evil. The most evil deeds in history were carried out by rational men and women acting in a calm and prudent manner, in government offices and churches, in boardrooms and army HQs, on slave ships and in death camps. I understand them all completely. Evil is simple. It makes sense. Hurting another person - or allowing them to be hurt - is the most normal and human thing in the world.

55

This is some stupid long-winded hippie crap.

56

Does he ever come back and converse?
Or does he just dump a big pile of gooey toppings at the beginning and then take and bake out of here.

57

Okay, yeah, sometimes. As a general rule, though, I think it can be shown that cooperation gives the best returns overall, and over the long run. Short term benefits tend to be non-sustainable.

It is to human civilization’s great advantage that evil is very highly correlated with stupidity.

58

It’s not evil because babies shouldn’t be eating candy in the first place. DUH. They’ll choke.

:wink:

59

But you had to quote the entire fucking thing to make that point. :smack:

60

To get a pizza guy to stick around, it’s going to take a hot housewife, a missing wallet and a slap bassist.