The calculus of evil

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

People bandy about certain terms rather loosely, and I’m opposed on principle to such sloppiness. What I’d like to know is:

  1. Exactly how many people must I kill to be correctly titled a “mass murder?”

  2. How many people most be ruled with an iron fist before one is a “tyrant?”

  3. If one kills off a large percentage of a race or creed, but they weren’t selected to die based on race or creed, it just worked out that way by luck, is that genocide?

  4. Similarly, if one kills the sole surviving member of a race or creed is that genocide? What if it’s an accident?

  5. What is the minimum race/creed distribution necessary in a mass murder to qualify as genocide? For example, say one kills a million people. If they are all the same race than clearly that’s genocide. What happens if only 40% of the people you kill are from the same race/creed as your target group and the rest represent a standard distribution of the population. Does that qualify?

  6. “Heinous” gets thrown around quite a bit, but where is the line? Name me three things that are very close to being heinous but don’t quite cross the line, and then name three things that are heinous, but just barely. That way I can figure out where the line is.

  7. What exactly is the lowliest wimpiest weapon that fully qualifies as a WMD?

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  1. 5
  2. Smalller than you might think. Even offices have tyrants. The minimum is one tyrant + 3 subjects.
  3. An ammonium nitrate and diesel fuel load in the back of a Pinto that is pushed into a busy street.
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Strictly speaking, no.

Depends on motivation. You’ll probably get a footnote in your Who’s Who of Potential Genocidal Maniacs entry about the controversy.

Again, it’s all about your motivation.

I’m sure you’ve seen the Bill & Ted’s series more recently than me, but I’m pretty sure you’ll be able to figure it out from there. IIRC, they call things both “heinous” and “relatively heinous.”

Well, it’s a matter of opinion. European settlers to the Americas would probably say the flu, but I think umpteen million dead natives would argue that it’s really not lowly or wimpy.

BTW, where you going anywhere with this?

4

I was thinking along those lines today about terms like “Brutal Rape”. You often hear of somebody who was “brutally raped”, but isn’t every rape brutal? You never hear of a “Gentle Rape” or “Considerate Rape”. But if somebody can be brutally raped, does it not follow that they could be kindly raped? Isn’t rape brutal enough? When I hear “Rape” I the brutality is assumed. If any violence accompanied the rape, I would call it raped and beaten, and the brutality of the act would be self evident.

Perhaps, then, being gently, considerately raped is a thing that is heinous, but just barely.

On the other side, I would consider a “swirly” to be almost heinous, but not quite. Any human waste involved, then it might cross that line…

(Note that I do not intend to make light of very serious things like rape and swirlies.)

5

I can’t be of much help regarding the calculus of evil.

I’m still trying to figure out the algebra of misbehaviour, myself… then there’s the geometry of naughtiness as well. :frowning:

6

If you’re 22 and have slow, soft, sex in a hotel room by the beach with candles and incense with your 17 year old girlfriend after a romantic date, I’d call that a gentle rape.

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  1. Exactly how many people must I kill to be correctly titled a “mass murder?”

There are several variables here. I would say as few as three possibly…but if they were your wife and the two guys she was sleeping with your just an enraged cuckold. On the other hand if she was sleeping withsay, five differnet guys and you killed all of them, your back to mass murderer. (No one said calculus was easy.) Of course if you kill a whole bunch of people but do it all in a couple of hours, the correct term of address is “spree killer”.

  1. How many people most be ruled with an iron fist before one is a “tyrant?”

I’m with Shagnasty. Could just be your wife and children (although it helps if you have several children…or several wives come to think of it). Or it could just be your employees. On the other hand, perversly, if you are the leader of a very very small contry the best you will probably get is “tin pot dictator” however many heels you wear out grinding people under them.

  1. If one kills off a large percentage of a race or creed, but they weren’t selected to die based on race or creed, it just worked out that way by luck, is that genocide?

I say yes. However if someone accused you of having genocidal tendencies, you might be able to fight that in court.

  1. Similarly, if one kills the sole surviving member of a race or creed is that genocide? What if it’s an accident?

Hard to say. Maybe if you killed the last fertile heterosexual couple. After all, if there’s only one, they’re finished anyway.

  1. What is the minimum race/creed distribution necessary in a mass murder to qualify as genocide? For example, say one kills a million people. If they are all the same race than clearly that’s genocide. What happens if only 40% of the people you kill are from the same race/creed as your target group and the rest represent a standard distribution of the population. Does that qualify?

Errr…Hitler killed lots of people who weren’t Jews but he seems to qualify by most people’s standards.

The last two i will have to give some more thought to.

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Technically, there is no reason to believe that this can’t be handled by simple algebra.

Integrals are their own special type of evil.

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“Hey honey, want to make complementary angles tonight?”

10

Don’t be an asymptote.

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Okay, and you keep your hands off my latus rectum.

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There is sort of a law of diminishing returns at work here: After you have killed ten, any additional don’t really add much to your status until you kill your first hundred. Then there is a lag until your first thousand, and so forth.

Thus, comparisons of the relative evilness of Hitler vs Stalin vs Mao really don’t do much. Once you’ve hit ten million, what’s a few million either way?

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1. Exactly how many people must I kill to be correctly titled a "mass murder?"
5

2. How many people most be ruled with an iron fist before one is a "tyrant?"
As few as 1. However, the smaller the number, the more important “iron fist” becomes. Locking people up in your basement, iron-fisted. Using your position as manager at the quickie mart to deny Amish kids soft-drinks, not so much.

**3. If one kills off a large percentage of a race or creed, but they weren’t selected to die based on race or creed, it just worked out that way by luck, is that genocide?
**
If you kill the King of Florida, is it regicide? Only if they’re recognized as such. Likewise, if your deed is recognized as damaging to a particular race or creed, then yes.

4. Similarly, if one kills the sole surviving member of a race or creed is that genocide? What if it’s an accident?
Going back to #1, no. Killing one person is murder. Extinguishing a race requires a significant proportion. Or, to look at it another way, how many people of distinguishing characteristics does it require to establish a race or creed?

5. What is the minimum race/creed distribution necessary in a mass murder to qualify as genocide? For example, say one kills a million people. If they are all the same race than clearly that’s genocide. What happens if only 40% of the people you kill are from the same race/creed as your target group and the rest represent a standard distribution of the population. Does that qualify?
I may be working under a different definition, but to me, Genocide is more about percentages than total numbers. Killing 40% of Shriners is mass murder, but not a Genocide. Killing 98% of them is. To answer the expected followup, I cannot give you an exact percentage. Strictly speaking, it’s 100%. Realistically, it’s a bit open to interpretation.

6. “Heinous” gets thrown around quite a bit, but where is the line? Name me three things that are very close to being heinous but don’t quite cross the line, and then name three things that are heinous, but just barely. That way I can figure out where the line is.
Heinous is a subjective measure, and the weight it carries as a term is justified about the ammount of arguing you’re willing to do for or against it’s use. Sorry, don’t mean to weasel on this, but hey, I think Seinfeld was pretty heinous. How do I justify that to everyone?

7. What exactly is the lowliest wimpiest weapon that fully qualifies as a WMD?
Jerry Lewis?

InkBlot, speaking authoritativly with no authority whatsoever.,
:eek:

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1…a mass murderer?

If it happened in a Catholic church, and your victim was a priest, just one. If the victim was a parishioner, it may depend on how far along the service had gone. Consult your archbishop.

If your victim was a physicist, I’m sorry. I just don’t have the math skills to even tell you the formula you’d need.

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4. Similarly, if one kills the sole surviving member of a race or creed is that genocide? What if it’s an accident?
Then we laugh at the irony of it.

6. “Heinous” gets thrown around quite a bit, but where is the line? Name me three things that are very close to being heinous but don’t quite cross the line, and then name three things that are heinous, but just barely. That way I can figure out where the line is.
Almost heinous: Picking up a goat-felching tube is
Henious: Using it.

Almost heinous: Burning an ant with a magnifying glass.
Henious: Plucking off the ant’s legs, clamping its nipples and tickling it before you burn it.

Almost heinous: Making a quadruple chocolate ice-cream swirl with peanut butter, caramel, thick chocolate toppings, nuts, m&ms, mixed in with chunks of chocolate chips and cookie dough.
Henious: Putting a cherry on top.

7. What exactly is the lowliest wimpiest weapon that fully qualifies as a WMD?
A rock. Did anyone see Armageddon?

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The lines are fuzzy, so don’t forget about the little details that help a lot. Call a press conference and show up late. Ask Diane Sawyer if you can fuck her tits; no, tell her you will sooner or later, because you can read women. Presentation matters. :slight_smile:

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Actually, when I saw “calculus of evil”, I was expecting another kidney stone thread.

18

Being a mass murderer does not depend on *how many * victims you kill, but on *how big * they are. Killing two 500 pound guys is the same as killing ten 100 pounders. Either way, the mass of your victims is 1,000 pounds. If you’re really concerned with the number of victims, you’re more of a discrete unit killer.

I was never good enough to get to the calculus of evil. Nor even to the Trigonometry of Malice. The best I got to was a sadistics course in grad school.

Also, loading explosives into a Pinto is a bit redundant, isn’t it?

19

Well, “Tyrant” stems from the old Greek word for the usurper(or the heir to the usurper) of a city-state’s government. And old Greek city-states had populations of around…10,000—500,000 people, if memory serves? Let’s call it 20,000, to be safe. (You could probably do it with less, though. Like if you’re a Mr. Potter type who effectively takes over a Bedford Falls-type town. With the slight downside that you couldn’t hold proper public executions.)

As for the “Mass Murder”/“Spree Killer” distinction…According to wikipedia, Bureau of Justice Statistics defines a mass murder as: “[involving] the murder of four or more victims at one location, within one event.” The Bureau apparently defines a “spree killer” as “killings at two or more locations with almost no time break between murders.” Which, I suppose, means you could be both at the same time, with a little work.

“What exactly is the lowliest wimpiest weapon that fully qualifies as a WMD?”

Hmmm…

•A Dish Sponge, soaked in VX. (Or Smallpox)
•A Special Atomic Demolition Munition, with the yield set to 10 tons. [sic]
•A cube of Ice-9.
•A “Strangelet” particle. (Actually, from what I remember, someone figured this one wouldn’t really work. Ah, well.)

Hope I could help. ::Walks away whistling “Behold the Lord High Executioner”::

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*The calculus of evil…

the algebra of oooooo being bad!*