(Last bit, I promise, unless Tim keeps it alive. Refs at the bottom,
tho! ;-)
Tim sez:
> Evil is TO ME [my emphasis -jb]
Exactly. Evil, good, all these things are very vague and abstract
notions that are subject to --- indeed, require --- personal
interpretation. Me, I don't believe in good and evil. I might possibly
believe in "generally benign" and "generally malignant" as close
approximations, but I tend to think all behavior is natural. In most
cases I have a sort of a pessimistic, deterministic view of the
universe: everything can be reduced to biologically- and
genetically-determined and socially-conditioned responses to
environmental stimuli. If you want to argue for a Platonic ideal of
"good" and "evil," you've got to step out of the realm of the observable
and onto shaky metaphysical, mystical ground. And that's a lost cause,
IMHO.
"Evil" behavior in humans can generally be reduced to a few things:
selfish behavior that victimizes others in some sense, short-sighted
behavior that generates non-optimal wins for a single player or group at
the expense of more optimal wins for a larger number of participants, or
behavioral malfunction due to "illness" or other pathological
circumstances. All of these things happen in all living creatures.
When Marty the Forager Ant wigs out because he can't recognize his
fellow mound-mates' pheromone markers and goes beserk, attacking and
killing and eating them, is that "evil?" (Answer: nope, that's
pathology.) When one ant mound attacks another one even though there's
no apparent resource contention (this does happen) --- is that evil?
(Answer: nope, it's about propagating the winners' genes more fully in
the total population.)
Homework for Tim: learn game theory, population theory, and
evolutionary biology. (And when you figure it all out, teach it to me
'cuz I'm a rank amateur. :-) Ponder the Prisoner's Dilemma. Read The
Lucifer Principle (ref. in previous post) and The Selfish Gene (and
other stuff by Dawkins.) Read Order Out of Chaos by Ilya Prigogine.
For contrast, read Pinker --- it's a bit of an excursion, but
applicable. It's --- everything is, that is --- all about evolution,
and group dynamics, and those are all about math at some ultimate
level. There's no mystery here; just a magnificent, dynamic, and
monstrously complex mathematical system. That I can safely say I don't
understand at all. ;-)
jb
[1] Metamagical Themas etc. by Douglas Hofstadter*
[2] The Selfish Gene, The Blind Watchmaker etc. by Richard Dawkins
[3] The Language Instinct etc. by Steven Pinker
[4] Theory of Games and Statistical Decisions by Blackwell and Girshick
[5] Order Out of Chaos by Prigogine and Stengers
[6] Thought Contagion : How Belief Spreads Through Society by Aaron
Lynch
[7] The Origin of Consciousness ... by Julian Jaynes
[8] Evolutionary Games and Population Dynamics by Hofbauer and Sigmund
(and a totally off topic and gratuitous reference, a beautiful book
anyway)
[9] The Tao is Silent by Raymond Smullyan
* and speaking of chickens... "Why did Doug Hofstadter cross the
road?" "To make this joke possible." :-)
jb
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(Last bit, I promise, unless Tim keeps it alive. Refs at the
bottom, tho! ;-)
Tim sez:
> Evil is TO ME [my emphasis -jb]
Exactly. Evil, good, all these things are very vague and abstract notions that are subject to --- indeed, require --- personal interpretation. Me, I don't believe in good and evil. I might possibly believe in "generally benign" and "generally malignant" as close approximations, but I tend to think all behavior is natural. In most cases I have a sort of a pessimistic, deterministic view of the universe: everything can be reduced to biologically- and genetically-determined and socially-conditioned responses to environmental stimuli. If you want to argue for a Platonic ideal of "good" and "evil," you've got to step out of the realm of the observable and onto shaky metaphysical, mystical ground. And that's a lost cause, IMHO.
"Evil" behavior in humans can generally be reduced to a few things: selfish behavior that victimizes others in some sense, short-sighted behavior that generates non-optimal wins for a single player or group at the expense of more optimal wins for a larger number of participants, or behavioral malfunction due to "illness" or other pathological circumstances. All of these things happen in all living creatures. When Marty the Forager Ant wigs out because he can't recognize his fellow mound-mates' pheromone markers and goes beserk, attacking and killing and eating them, is that "evil?" (Answer: nope, that's pathology.) When one ant mound attacks another one even though there's no apparent resource contention (this does happen) --- is that evil? (Answer: nope, it's about propagating the winners' genes more fully in the total population.)
Homework for Tim: learn game theory, population theory, and evolutionary biology. (And when you figure it all out, teach it to me 'cuz I'm a rank amateur. :-) Ponder the Prisoner's Dilemma. Read The Lucifer Principle (ref. in previous post) and The Selfish Gene (and other stuff by Dawkins.) Read Order Out of Chaos by Ilya Prigogine. For contrast, read Pinker --- it's a bit of an excursion, but applicable. It's --- everything is, that is --- all about evolution, and group dynamics, and those are all about math at some ultimate level. There's no mystery here; just a magnificent, dynamic, and monstrously complex mathematical system. That I can safely say I don't understand at all. ;-)
jb
[1] Metamagical
Themas etc. by Douglas Hofstadter*
[2] The
Selfish Gene, The
Blind Watchmaker etc. by Richard Dawkins
[3] The
Language Instinct etc. by Steven Pinker
[4] Theory
of Games and Statistical Decisions by Blackwell and Girshick
[5] Order
Out of Chaos by Prigogine and Stengers
[6] Thought
Contagion : How Belief Spreads Through Society by Aaron Lynch
[7] The
Origin of Consciousness ... by Julian Jaynes
[8] Evolutionary
Games and Population Dynamics by Hofbauer and Sigmund
(and a totally off topic and gratuitous reference, a beautiful book
anyway)
[9] The
Tao is Silent by Raymond Smullyan
* and speaking of chickens... "Why did Doug Hofstadter cross the
road?" "To make this joke possible." :-)
jb
--------------722B1E98C28BB19E91E6C18C--