what is the root of all evil

[sushi]

what is evil? how to define it? what makes someone or something evil.

good is always clearly defined in religion and philosophy, but evil is always ambiguous and unknown.

to me evil is closely related to death and suffering.

without it , evil is probably irrelevant.

because there is death , there is evil.

 

[sushi]

if one is to teach a robot or AI how to be evil , how would one do it?

how to differentiated evil and good in situations.

except for murder, what kind of logic and programming will you teach it?

 

[birdsnestfern]

I want to say when something TWISTS from one thing to another? Or, harms another and deceives?

I once had pink amaryllis bulbs on a corner under an oak and someone came and decided they liked them and brought a shovel and dug them out of my yard! Still miss them after a decade, even tried to order through a Dutch bulb catalog, but they were not the same. Stealing can be evil. Its when there is one face and it becomes another face with deceptive intent.

Not disclosing enough information and taking advantage of things because of the lack of clarity.

Twisted Intent.

pink bulb flowers - Google Search

 

[Black Rose]

The value system of any human comes from the limbic system. Children do not know any better when it comes to helping others than most adults but they want what any organism wants. To be out of danger and with the attachment figures. The group is set to be your team in nature so protecting the group is a matter of survival. And then the group must work together to stave off other groups seen as "the others". But then individuals start to make trouble leading to disharmony and the group may die. Those people are excluded and die for the benefit of the group. Those people most likely harmed others excessively for psychological reasons to do with animal urges. Or they just thought thoughts that were not conducive to the beliefs of the group. All in all, people are made, conditioned or just built to survive and so they do what they do, this affects the survival of others so they do what they do also.

Bad people bad because then other people cannot survive.

 

[ZenRaiden]

AI is not experiential.
Humans are not merely reasoning alone.
A computer will never understand pain or suffering or loss or happiness, without experiential data.

Old people can tell about their pains in the knee, but kids will just find it funny.
Same with many other things.
Somethings can be understood only through experience.
You need to experience heat and burn of fire, to avoid it.
Otherwise all you can do is accept someone else tells you.

Same with other things pertaining to evil.
A bible person can tell you not be gay for instance, but they will never understand the real you.
I can tell you about the time I hit the road with my head, but you'll never get it.

We humans have however have empathy that allows us to connect over emotions.
We may not suffer or know evil, but we may sort of theories and understand stuff on some emotional level, extrapolating, and matching our own experiences with what others tell us.

Without emotions and empathy I could really cause a number of evils, and not be bothered or ever figure out they are evil.

Evils as in harm to others.

If we reduce evil to harming things, then we humans have long way to go.
Granted humans grown and learn, so it must be understood that with experience and learning we become more moral.

There is no such thing as some sort of ceiling for morality.

 

[Puffy]

I wonder if it’s the feeling of hatred that is the root of evil, and someone becomes evil when it grows to a point it becomes a primary motivator behind their actions. Also I’d say selfishness and lack of empathy which I suppose comes with hatred.

 

[birdsnestfern]

Are we predisposed to self deception? Is something lacking in our schools that don't teach us about 'trusting' and 'critical thinking'.

Because when we are young, we want to trust the world, but as we learn, find you can't trust everyone or everything. Its a delicate balance. You want to trust yourself, but also know that about half of the world is there to deceive. There is a lot that our schooling doesn't teach about intent and critical thinking with friends/peers/ other people.

 

[Black Rose]

• Care/Harm
• Fairness/Cheating
• Loyalty/Betrayal
• Authority/Subversion
• Sanctity/Degradation
• Liberty/Oppression.

Care and Fairness are important in a city because people can get away with a lot just by being anonymous. But in a small town loyalty and authority are important because you are not anonymous thus you CAN be punished immediately unlike in a city. A city is a dirty place so you will not care if you make it dirtier because you only need to keep your place and body clean, if some place is dirty you avoid it in the city if you can, sometimes people are too busy to keep clean anyway. In the country keeping clean is important because all of it is your communitys area to live in. Liberty happens to be just about independence so people just want to be left alone. Some people want to get together.

 

[Black Rose]

Are we predisposed to self deception? Is something lacking in our schools that don't teach us about 'trusting' and 'critical thinking'.

Because when we are young, we want to trust the world, but as we learn, find you can't trust everyone or everything. Its a delicate balance. You want to trust yourself, but also know that about half of the world is there to deceive. There is a lot that our schooling doesn't teach about intent and critical thinking with friends/peers/ other people.

The per group matters, that is why I posted post #8. If you only have your group it is fine mostly because then you can weed out people who don't get along. But then it may be that because groups got so large people began to start thinking it was ok to do certain things. Whether it is ok or not highly depends on the group dynamic.

Some groups accept others different from themselves but others do not. It is why people can self-select what and who they associate with that is partially why we have the Constitution (in the US). People did not want to associate with others who would say they believed the wrong things and this came from the European religious wars.

The government we have (in the US) is about getting people who do not agree with each other, to live under the same system of laws. That is how it was designed, so it would be antifragile. Dispute is taken care of by the courts to keep revolution to a minimum.

 

[Black Rose]

I wonder if it’s the feeling of hatred that is the root of evil, and someone becomes evil when it grows to a point it becomes a primary motivator behind their actions. Also I’d say selfishness and lack of empathy which I suppose comes with hatred.

It might just be that this is a biological mechanism in the brain.

Under certain conditions this happens to people and in other conditions it can be reversed.

 

[Black Rose]

AI is not experiential.
Humans are not merely reasoning alone.
A computer will never understand pain or suffering or loss or happiness, without experiential data.

Under a reward and punishment metric and with the right underlying structures a.i. can be trained to implement certain actions. This is different than embodiment but what may happen is that a.i. teaches people what not to do by learning from supervision the way new teachers do. But this may only occur in virtual environments.

If we reduce evil to harming things, then we humans have long way to go.
Granted humans grown and learn, so it must be understood that with experience and learning we become more moral.

First comes understanding then comes wisdom. If people know what to do they can avoid actions that lead to bad outcomes. People must understand how people work or things go bad, so it must come first from real adults to the child's mindset. Sometimes people cannot learn what the right thing to do is because it takes a long time. The brain has mechanisms we just do not know how to program yet. people are damaged easily and this is transferred to others.

 

[scorpiomover]

what is evil? how to define it? what makes someone or something evil.

good is always clearly defined in religion and philosophy, but evil is always ambiguous and unknown.

to me evil is closely related to death and suffering.

without it , evil is probably irrelevant.

because there is death , there is evil.

Lots of religious books talk about all this, what's OK, what's not OK, and why.

 

[sushi]

what is evil? how to define it? what makes someone or something evil.

good is always clearly defined in religion and philosophy, but evil is always ambiguous and unknown.

to me evil is closely related to death and suffering.

without it , evil is probably irrelevant.

because there is death , there is evil.

Lots of religious books talk about all this, what's OK, what's not OK, and why.

i dont think they outline evil as much as they emphasize good and what is to avoid.

the only outline i get is seven deadly sins. it is pretty much vague and invisible concept in fiction and in religion.

we are pretty much in the dark in what is evil and human nature.

i think it probably involve a victim every time evil occurs.



the thing about evil is that one can easily confuse intention , action and outcome.

maybe a psychopath is the only one who understand it well because he is used to doing it to other people.

 

[sushi]

i think knowledge is the root of all evil

once we understand and observe the cause and effect of certain things asnd phenonmenon, we will try to replicate the process and results on other people.

like for instance we observe a falling rock will kill a person, we will try to make the same thing happen again


or a certain bacteria will lead to the bubonic plague etc, and try to reproduce that kind of result on a person or victim.