Ambrosia Software Web Board: A complete dissertation on good & evil - Ambrosia Software Web Board

[I typed this up a while ago, and as yet I'm not sure whether I'm breaking any new theoritical ground with this theorem (I'm probably not). Just tell me if you think this sounds somewhat accurate and I hope it atleast raises some points.]

Your definition of good and evil depend solely upon what groups you are in, consciously and/or unconsciously. The Nazis believed the extermination of Jews was good. They were in fact committing these acts with the intention of doing good. Those people let us say, are part of the Hitlerian group. The Jews and later, almost the entirety of the human population would agree these acts were evil, extremely evil. Let us say they are of the Life group. This group may coincide with other groups, but to see the holocaust as evil, you must be part of this group.

The holocaust could be just be the destruction of millions of people, it doesn't have to be evil. To an observer, not part of the Life or Hitlerian group, the acts could only be seen as what they factually are. One of the reasons a computer could never see things in terms of good and evil, no matter how advanced, is that it operates in terms of factual evidence. Good and evil are adjectives, like short and tall. What they mean to a human, is a that which may assist my group(s), or which may threaten it.

A criminal who murders many people is a threat to the people of that society, therefore that criminal is evil. The extermination of Jews is evil to those of the Life group, because it represents the annihilation of people on a large scale. It demonstrates this possibility, and possibilities of such nature are a good reason to be concerned. To the Hitlerian group, it is the extermination of something which they deem to be a threat to them and the rest of humanity.

This is a hugely simple example on instinctive groupings. A person can and will view themselves as being part of many different groups, human, male, Australian, macho, football fan and a myriad of others. It is never this easy, and it's always important to remember that only a large scale action can be deemed with such a classification. It is not enough for someone to insult you for them to be evil. And they may have motives (good ones).

Good is, as has often been observed, the opposite of evil. This is quite true, for the act that requires an automatic evil classification, a threat, is not so for what may help you. The World Trade Centre attack demonstrated a definite threat to the America group and to other people who classified themselves in a group which the attack threatened. People witnessing the attack saw as they may have said, the depth of evil, as they knew it, not only on an America grouping, but as civilised people, Westerners, and the Humanity grouping as well (and others). The only grouping that every one shares, to an extent, is this one, not the same as the earlier Nazi example. It generates feelings necessary to the survival of the species (the ability to even feel empathy to other people etc...) Al Qaeda is part of this, even though their need to attack America was greater. So were the US forces who attacked them, whose need to destroy Al Qaeda was greater.

Some heroes out of the attack, were the firefighters who went into the Two Towers and died trying to save others. This is a very powerful kind of good, and even Al Qaeda, who are extremely opposed to the American grouping, would recognise this. It symbolises what the ability of human groupings can achieve in a single individual - to have the individual's will totally subjugated to that of a group so that they are prepared to give up the most valuable thing they can ever have for it. It also represents the saving of Americans and other people from death. To have it from death caused by Al Qaeda's crusade would mollify the perception of good they might have of it. People of such calibre, risking themselves for the group are deemed as heroes, but as in the case of the suicide bombers of Palestine, this is may be nulled or reversed by the extreme threat suicide bombers pose, depending on your group.

The sense of good and evil are like morals, instinctively indicating to people things which are not explained in the indication. Thus the root of good and evil, is merely the ability to view yourself as part of something greater than you as a single individual. (Note, I define 'greater' as more people. People who are less wrapped up in it should be more independant.)

[Note: I apologise if my essay has offended anyone.]

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There are only 3 kinds of people: those who can count, and those who can't.

[This message has been edited by Joveia (edited 05-03-2002).]

I think good and evil, as it is generally used, is entirely subjective and based off of individuals' morals. I don't think there really are any people out there that are wholly good or wholly evil, just varying amounts of both. In my opinion, good/evil is defined as how closely people stick to their morals, and how much thought they put into their morals. This, however, is an especially gray area, and one that I haven't thought of much before, so my definition may well be different sometime later, and I don't consider it to be all that philosophically solid. And "evil" has been so overused in this country for some time now (especially by the president) that I really hesitiate to use it that strongly.

On a related note, I've done some thinking about good vs. evil after, I believe, some sort of patriotic statement in one of the comics in the paper (bah to patriotism getting it's icky claws into entertainment) about how good will triumph in the end. Oddly enough, I think that that statement is most likely correct. Okay, so good vs evil:

Evil is more powerful than good, as good is hindered by more morals than evil. When evil comes to power, however, said morals are quite motivational for good, so good rebels against evil more, when evil is on top, whereas evil only rebels when it sees a good opportunity for promoting itself and its aims.

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"Cleanliness is evil. Embrace the mess!"

Here's a question: What defines good and evil? What is there in the world, or nature, that definitively points out; "This is good" and, "This is evil". There is nothing. The stars in the sky are as indifferent as a cheetah chasing down an antelope for its lunch. There is no evil there, simply instinct. Without some basis for defining it, there is no good and evil. As said before, without a basis for it, the Nazis could have been considered good. However, if they were to have held themselves to some kind of a standard, they themselves could have seen that what they were doing was wrong. Without a moral basis, there is no foundation for society. Anarchy reigns. Stealing would be no different than actually working to buy something, except for the fact that it probably takes less energy. Nothing would be wrong. Why would murder be considered wrong? WOuld it be the consciousness of man, looking deeply inward and examining himself to find what the answer truly is? No. There are thousands of criminals in the U.S.A., and many, many more the world over who would only be glad if moral codes were suddenly removed, it would make what they were doing completely correct. Man would not look inward and correct himself, only war and destruction would ravage the planet. Without a definite basis, nothing is wrong, nothing is right, and chaos rules the day. Morals are an essential part of the world.

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"You will find that your device is highly non-functional...." - Bad Guy

In my opinion, good and evil are not defined by morals. It is rather the opposite: Good and Evil define them.

The collective will deem a person as "good" in order to encourage developing members of the collective to adopt similar morals, and will deem a person as "evil" in order to prevent such morals from appearing in developing members.

The selection of morals that is, at present, deemed most desirable, can be thought of as a prime selection. Unfortunately, there is never anyone who can perfectly contain all of the morals in the prime selection, and thus a collective must compromise; the person who fulfils the greatest portion of the prime selection's morals is the most "good."

However, this chaos can cause gradual shifts of the morals in the prime selection. When a person is deemed to be "good," any of their morals which are in the prime selection will remain there. However, the collective is forced to accept the morals that are not in the prime selection, as the penalty for compromise.

Through this, the entire prime selection can be completely replaced over the course of several generations, or even only one or two. Long shifts in the prime selection occur when the collective is decentralized, and short shifts can occur when it is extrememly centralized; the single leader will compromise more of the prime selection in order to create a set of morals best for himself.

Thus, the most desirable collective is one that has no centralization whatsoever. This creates the slowest shift in the prime selection, and therefore will prevent collectives from becoming estranged from each other by means of morals.

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"Welcome to our Pirate outpost. Please enjoy your stay, and realize that any irregular actions can and will be used against you in the afterlife."

I think Pallas is the only one who has really grapsed on to what my essay is about - you're all obviously very intelligent, but my chief point was collectives.

People cannot have standards of good and evil, aside from everything else, if they are not able to view themselves as a group of people, rather than individuals.

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There are only 3 kinds of people: those who can count, and those who can't.

They grasped the concepts. They just disagreed.

You aren't implying that only people that agree with you are intelligent, are you?

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"Welcome to our Pirate outpost. Please enjoy your stay, and realize that any irregular actions can and will be used against you in the afterlife."

I'm just saying that a group of people cannot define right and wrong without a moral basis, and I think that the world moves progressively further and further away from those, so that the boundaries of right and wrong become more and more blurred. Obviously, a vast majority of programming etc. would not have been acceptable 200 years ago, even the most innocent. Now that may not be bad, but one must come to grips with the fact that society may slip too far from these moral foundations and eventually lose a grip on itself. Though life may have been stricter and more stifling 50 years ago, crime rates were lower and the cities were safer, so it is a good bet to say that man will tend to wander away from a moral base if it suits him, just as the Nazi's did in WWII, it suited their cause to "redefine" right and wrong. I can see what you mean by collective will, it is simply the majority that decide what is correct, and if the whole world had percieved what the Nazis were doing as being correct and right, no one would have intervened, they probably would have aided. But again, when that individual is willing to step away from a moral foundation provided, and go into a completely different one, things like what happened in Germany can occur. The people were swayed by poverty, hunger, and unemployment, so the moral foundation they had, they traded for bread and a new set of ideas, which turned out to be evil. If they had stuck to their guns, then WWII might have never occurred. When you step away from a good moral foundation, as in one that is beneficial to makind, you can step into disaster and evil.

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"You will find that your device is highly non-functional...." - Bad Guy

Shrout, go read my post in philosophical thingies.

What defines this moral basis? Nazis believed what they were doing was benefitting mankind, if they had stepped away from that basis, would they have been evil?

As I've said before, these labels are pointless. There is no true reason to discuss matters in which our definitions are insufficient.

The greater powers in our lives have forced these "morals" on us, and there is little chance to change. So what if these old morals, the morals of today, what if they were wrong? And say I stepped away from it. As you would see it, I was straying from the morals that "benefit mankind". To me, these morals of today help no one but ourselves, and that's how all morals work. There is no way to say that things will "benefit mankind", because mankind is too broad to be benefitted. There are too many contrasting ideas for one idea to be the one that gets all the attention (the "good" set of morals).

And most people, the people you've all described as "good", would see me as "evil" because I don't follow the "standard" set of morals (ie. the "good" set).

And I'll mention something here I didn't mention before.

We are all stuck in this loop. From the moment we are born, we have been force fed the ideas of society, and it's been happening more harshly in the past few years. If one were to keep with the same morals as everyone else, or the ones they were fed to believe, they would be part of a pattern. And as I've said in Philosophical Thingies:

Patterns are Order, and there is no true Order, only Chaos.
Chaos is living, being alive.
Order is being nothing, another "statistic".

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Beware My Big Stick

KahBasha. I seem to be having alot of trouble understanding what you type. Nevertheless...

Morals: There is no chance of a moral slipping away as long as it is useful. Morals come from 'unconscious' agreements between people, or a 'social contract'.

For instance, people who played cards cheated. Sometimes both at once. So they both agreed (without knowing whether the other one would) not to cheat at cards. As long as they need to play cards, that moral will exist.

I don't see how morals can disappear in society if those morals are relevant and pertinent to everyday life.

(You can of course not have morals if you want. But the natural state of things is to develop them.)

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There are only 3 kinds of people: those who can count, and those who can't.

Joveia, I believe the reason why we are not understanding eachother fully is that we are on opposite ends of the spectrum.

You believe (correct me if I'm wrong) that everything has a set path and everything is according to plan (not necessarily what you said, so you should correct me).

I, on the other hand, believe that there is no way that there could be set paths.

And my beliefs point your beliefs to be wrong, just as yours do to mine.

Now we'll begin our pointless debate.

The reason why I think yours are wrong and mine are right are explained in previous posts. Chaos beats Order in any paradoxical situation, because the result of a paradox ends in Chaos, for there is no set answer.
Another point I have against your beliefs within my beliefs is that since your beliefs have an order, and give everything Order (which, according to mine, can't exist), they can't exist because nothing can have a set Order without being an advanced form of Chaos.

Your way of saying there is no Chaos is my way of saying there is no Order. I'm just not sure what points we are debating on due to different life experiences.

If no one got this, I might be able to explain better tomorrow, because Pallas and I are going to be discussing this.

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Beware My Big Stick

I have officially come to the conclusion that good an evil do not, in fact, exist, and that they (the concepts of good and evil) came about due to flawed logic. Everybody is neutral, but different, and various conflicts come about due to said differences, and said conflicts often involve people considering other people evil and considering themselves good. I had thought about this a bit before, although not ever really getting into it too deeply.

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"Cleanliness is evil. Embrace the mess!"

*Calms down a bit*

Kah, I'll try and take alot of time understanding this one...

Now first of all, you say that there is a spectrum of chaos and order, and that you have to be on it to hold an opinion in, I presume life? Order is the ideal that things have a logical basis, chaos illogical and disorderly?

[This way of writing is alot clearer...]

Now, you're finishing trump card, is that I must be wrong, because all of my arguments are wrong, because chaos is always right (and thus I, who champion, order, are wrong!) Now, that may be right. I was arguing merely that good and evil are viewed as a group. This strikes me as linear reasoning.

And btw, I wouldn't be so hard on order. And orderful point of view has done great things for science and almost all cultural fields you could name.

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There are only 3 kinds of people: those who can count, and those who can't.

*Nods and calms down*

Heh, we should have made our own topic for our discussion...

But anyways. You said that science has gotten far because of logical thinking. To me, it seems very strange that it is possible to have a system in which everything works.

I'm calmer now and thinking more clearly, so I'll try hard to understand (pardon my typing, I'm random by nature).

I think my theory isn't a way to explain things but more of a substitute for how things work, a more illogical way of seeing things. I see now, your way makes more sense. But to me, it is still hard to grasp how it can all be so easy.

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Beware My Big Stick

There's an idea out there that some very prominent scientists (Steven Hawkings, for one) hold. It's essentially that there is no way to know what is truly happening, or what actually exists. All we can have is models that will hopefully predict what we see.

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"Vampiric chickens are spiffy. Bak bak bak ARRR!"

I'm not a regular here -- this is my eighth post on this forum -- but CrazyTom pointed out this topic and I couldn't let it pass. Thanks Tom.

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The fact that people consider some things good and some things evil imply that good and evil must exist, at least in some subjective sense. What you can more successfully argue is that good and evil are entirely subjective, with no objective basis at all, which is (I think) what Joveia is trying to say.

Personally, I agree most with what Pallas is saying. Even if there is no objective basis for morality, ideas of good and evil are always going to be at least partly defined by membership in some sort of group. So in a sense, the definitions of good and evil are effectively objective -- that is, they are the same for everyone you are considering -- when looking at groups or groups of groups (power groups?) of people.

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Visit my EVO web site at [url="http://"http://www.evoverride.com"]http://www.evoverride.com[/url]!
"What a piece of work is man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?" -- Hamlet, Hamlet, II.ii

And, in saying that they are objective, one must then find a basis to lay them on. In order for society to function correctly and peacefully, morals need to be implied through it, and applied within it. Morals keep everything smooth. Crime is lower, people are happier, chaos and anarchy are suppressed. Now, since we are talking sooo much about morals, and though you may hate me for it, I've got to drag God into it. What if there is one best set of morals that were designed by this higher being, that, if applied correctly, would only serve to benefit mankind? Would these not be the morals that should be used? And if they were ordained by a creator, wouldn't not following them, or bending them to one's own purposes, only cause them to function incorrectly? Do I got to - got to - got to scream it? (jumps into pulpit) Religion!!! But not extremist violent and harmful, religion; peaceful, productive religion - it would serve to benefit, in my opinion.

Without a code for good and evil, there is no way to define it - nature has no code, but Man does.
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"You will find that your device is highly non-functional...." - Bad Guy

[This message has been edited by Shrout1 (edited 05-07-2002).]

If a god were to create a set of morals for people to function on, I think it would probably be most successful for the society to adopt them. However, knowing when such a god comes up with such a set of morals, and fully understanding the morals would be difficult. And many people would disagree with the morals, or consider said god to be false, so it wouldn't be possible to have everybody in a society accept them. There's also the bit that people may not agree with the morals simply because of their own moral beliefs, that, to them, at least, seem correct.

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"Vampiric chickens are spiffy. Bak bak bak ARRR!"

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No, you're agreeing with what I'm saying, and I think Pallas.

In your example, an i.e., giant hamburger that is as large as the sun and exists in Paris must exist. Why? Because it's a subjective thing, and some nutcase believes it is true.

Good and evil is something that has become highly distorted, and does not mean what it should mean. What it should mean is something threatens my group(s). What 99.999•% of people think it means is some higher standard by which you MUST be right, and they MUST be wrong.

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There are only 3 kinds of people: those who can count, and those who can't.

[This message has been edited by Joveia (edited 05-08-2002).]

Good and evil are only labels to relativists and nihilists and those with little understanding. To others, they are solid concepts.

True, many people have rather skewed ideas of good and evil. Jeffrey Dahmer was a serial killer who killed and then ate the corpses of his victims. I have not seen anything in him that I can bestow the word "morality" on. As far as I can discern, that is someone who is entirely without morals.

"Good" and "evil" are words and words are spoken and used by people and many people have different ideas on many issues. Good and evil is merely one of them, though perhaps one of the most important.

But just because they are used by people does not mean they don't exist independently.

There are some basic standards of good and evil within all of us. Psychologists have long observed that people, in general, has an aversion toward seeing the suffering of others. It is repulsive to us, and many of us strive to relieve the suffering of others. I consider that to be one of the more fundamental things that makes us human, a basic standard for good and evil.

This very discussion is another example. We are all preoccupied with this question at one point or another. Even the Nazis felt compelled to defend themselves. People try to justify their actions, trying to place themselves at the side of angels. This obsession with being depicted as good is another example of the existence of good and evil.

It requires a large amount of artificial conditioning and intellectual gymnastics to completely erase the very concept of good and evil. That simply doesn't happen very often. No matter how( :sigh: ) evil a person's actions may be, he would try to justify his actions. The very fact that he may feel compelled to justify his actions testifies to the existence of good and evil. He tries to create a false picture of his actions so as to fit in with a more common idea of good and evil.

True, words had been abused throughout the centuries. But the concept of good and evil will never die. The question is not whether good and evil exists but what they are.

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The Moderators: Standing Between the Darkness and the Light, between the candle and the Star.
Tolkien on Lord of the Rings: "The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. That is why I have not put in, or have cut out, practically all references to anything like 'religion,' to cults or practices, in the imaginary world. For the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism."

I'm surprised to see that kind of post from you htjyang. You struck me as someone very 'independant.'

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If they exist independantly, I assume you mean they exist without human thought? As if they were outside the mind of the human beings? I eagerly await the discovery of the evillion atom and the goodion atom.

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It's a great survival tactic as well. Without empathy, how on earth could human civilisation survive? I belive I mentioned this in my theory. And anyway, it's not such a great thing good and evil exist independantly and don't need human thought, why, I imagine this standard would evolve naturally!

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I didn't think this up to justify my actions in any way whatsoever... I did it because I was not satisfied and in the course of my thinking arrived at conclusions which satisfied me more than.. well, no conclusion.

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Of course. The concept of good and evil arise from the indication that something threatens the group(s) you place yourself in. This point has been covered many times already. It certainly does testify to the existence of impulses you call good and evil.

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They will never die so long as people associate themselves in groups. But perhaps with proper understanding we can move beyond superstition and discover, along with good and evil, more about the human psyche. In discovering more about the human psyche, perhaps we can cultivate better people (with knowledge) so as to reduce the sort of stuff that ideals of good and evil can often inspire.

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There are only 3 kinds of people: those who can count, and those who can't.

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The giant hamburger does exist as a concept, simply because the nutcase thinks it's there. Similarly, good and evil exist as concepts, and thus they exist. (Though I won't defend this assertion, they probably are more important as concepts because more they exist subjectively for more people.) I think we might be differing on our definition of subjective existence.

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Visit my EVO web site at [url="http://"http://www.evoverride.com"]http://www.evoverride.com[/url]!
"What a piece of work is man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?" -- Hamlet, Hamlet, II.ii

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If I'm interpreting him correctly, he means basically what I said -- that the concept exists objectively as part of the human psyche because every (normal) human being has a sense of morality.

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Visit my EVO web site at [url="http://"http://www.evoverride.com"]http://www.evoverride.com[/url]!
"What a piece of work is man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?" -- Hamlet, Hamlet, II.ii

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Well, htjyang will be the final authority here, but that sounds pretty independant to me.

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There are only 3 kinds of people: those who can count, and those who can't.

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:sigh: You have no idea how many of my friends and acquaintances believes that I'm a solid liberal.

Joveia, I'm of the opinion that the most liberating thing a person can do for himself is to adopt a code of ethics.

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I didn't suggest that everything can be categorized as such. I simply suggest that they have independent existence. What I meant was not that they exist independently out of the existence of people, for they are concepts, rather than physical matter. By "independent existence", I meant that standards of right and wrong exist regardless of whether we choose to recognize their existence.

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One common misperception is that somehow a sense of ethics is detached from self-interest. I reject that view entirely. I believe the very purpose of morality is precisely that: To increase our chances for life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.

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Either way, my point still stands. The point being that you are far from the only person who is concerned about this question.

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Well, Henry David Thoreau borrowed an axe and built a house by Walden Pond and separated himself from society and even refused to pay taxes. But obviously the question of good and evil still concerns him.

If anything, Joveia, a person separated from society leaves him alone with his thoughts, alone with himself. That is precisely the time for introspection, when the voices from one's mind can be heard most loudly. I would suggest that if anything, that will be the time when the question of good and evil will trouble a person like no other time.

Your idea still reflects those of someone who believes that good and evil are artifical constructs and, therefore, by separating oneself from society, one can strip them away. I came to the precisely opposite conclusion.

Yes, I acknowledge the possibility that if a person is alone with himself and starts thinking about these things at length, he might be able to repudiate the very notion of right and wrong. But the very fact that an intellectual exercise is necessary testifies to how personal values of good and evil are to all of us. Young children, long before they can be indoctrinated by notions of right and wrong by adults, already learned when to say "That's not fair!" or "That's wrong!" We may question their judgment, but the sentiment reflected in the use of such phrases and the ideas represented by such phrases are unmistakable.

Individuality is an ideal everyone aspires to. But so few achieve it constantly. It is difficult to be completely original when we stand on the shoulders of giants. You're certainly not the first person to suggest that right and wrong do not exist. Nihilists pre-date you for a long time.

I would suggest that individuality does not mean a rejection of received wisdom. Rather, it means a critical examination of received wisdom. The true individual is one who can think for himself, who does not reject what comes his way but examines each new piece of information with healthy suspicion.

Inherited wisdom is not pure nonsense. It is an accumulation of the results of trial and error throughout millenium. One can call it the most thoroughly, scientifically tested information. It is up to the individual to examine their practicality. A rejection of such wisdom is no more intelligent a toddler who, after being told that a stove is hot, persisted in testing it himself with his hands.

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The Moderators: Standing Between the Darkness and the Light, between the candle and the Star.
Tolkien on Lord of the Rings: "The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. That is why I have not put in, or have cut out, practically all references to anything like 'religion,' to cults or practices, in the imaginary world. For the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism."

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Htjyang, I am going to find it hard to argue with you in my reply, not because you have defeated me in argument, but because you refuse to accept the fundemental tenants on which I build my arguments.

Your post above is essentially identical to the post preceding it. You are essentially expressing the same opinion, but without reacting in a meaningful way to what I have written. If you wish to read a reply to this post, I suggest you read my original answer to your original post. Once, after assimilating the information on that, suggest direct counters to my direct arguments, and we can resume discussion.

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There are only 3 kinds of people: those who can count, and those who can't.