Episode 240: Evil

[00:00:00] Very Bad Wizards is a podcast with a philosopher, my dad, and psychologist, David Pizarro, having an informal discussion about issues in science and ethics. Please note that the discussion contains bad words that I'm not allowed to say, and knowing my dad, some very inappropriate jokes.

[00:00:17] When you speak up, Felix, it's the devil talking. Ain't that a lovely thing to hear yourself accuse, Toth? The Queen in Oz has thoughts, and with no more brains than you have. Anybody can have a brain? You're a very bad man! I'm a very good man.

[00:01:11] Just a very bad wizard. Welcome to Very Bad Wizards. I'm Tamler Sommers from the University of Houston. Dave, I'm back from Sardinia. Sardinia after a couple of weeks. Anything happened in this country while I was gone?

[00:01:25] First of all, didn't you learn how to pronounce it while you were there? Wait, I did. Sardinia. Sardinia. And you got to do this thing with your fingers. That's most of it. This is like some Italian character on The Simpsons. Listener kind of. That's a spicy sardinia.

[00:01:44] Why, you know, look at my photos from Sardinia. No, nothing happened. Not that I was fangirling. Everything's still good. Our legal system is... You know what? The Constitution is just winning, is all I'm saying. According to people who know.

[00:02:02] Yeah, it was down for a while with liberal justices and power. But now it's back. They've issued the corrections to what the... You know what? What would the Patreon tier have to be for you to start a political block?

[00:02:20] I have so much honor that there's no amount of money. I would literally start in OnlyFans where I jerked off once a week on camera before I did a political block. Well, you're going to do that. You've been talking about it for a while.

[00:02:36] Well, I was going to say two birds, you know? Yeah. I wouldn't have to start doing something new. You could talk about politics while you're jerking off. Like Jeffrey Tubin. Yeah, exactly. So that's not the thing though. The Roe v. Wade, that's horrible.

[00:02:54] We can't talk about that right now, but it's awful obviously. I can't tell whether we're dicks or not talking about it. Well, I don't think I have anything to add. I just don't think it's helpful for us to just say, which I believe this is horrifying.

[00:03:14] I was listening to a podcast that... It's a guy I like. A couple guys I like, it's a tech thing and they're liberals. But he said something like, but let me also encourage you to donate to an abortion whatever, really fun.

[00:03:28] And I was like, no one tunes into your tech podcast to hear that they need to donate to abortion really fun. Stick to tech, you're saying? But there was another kind of scandal that happened on Twitter the other day. That's what I was paying more attention to.

[00:03:48] Do you have the tweet pulled up? This is a tweet, really do I get this angry at tweets? But you haven't pulled up? I'm about to get it up. This is Jonathan Weisberg. I don't think I know him. He's a philosophy professor at University of Toronto.

[00:04:06] I don't know that much about him in his work, but this is what he tweeted. Scorsese, Spielberg, Tarantino, they're master storytellers with the sensibilities of children. Scorsese's obsession with gangsters is 14 year old boys stuff. You can admire their talent without lauding their juvenile material.

[00:04:24] Maybe then we'd get some actual grown-up movies. Oh man. I even just hear it again. What do you think he thinks a grown-up movie is? Is it like Kramer vs Kramer or something like that? Whatever he likes. Like Love Story, Brian's song. Like Awakenings, something like that.

[00:04:48] So like Robin Williams in a beard movie. In his sensitive roles. No, okay look, I'm Jonathan Weisberg. I don't know him either. He can have his own opinion. He can tweet it. I'm not gonna tell him why I hate it. It's the kind of commentary that is bulletproof

[00:05:15] because no matter what anybody says to defend why a Scorsese movie with gangsters might be a good movie and a mature movie and a grown-up movie, he would just accuse you of being juvenile like because you like it. The definition of the mind of a 14-year-old

[00:05:36] as being whatever Jonathan Weisberg has grown out of is just annoying as fuck. And it strikes me as the kind of unnecessary posturing. Just say you don't like it. Why can't you just say you don't like Tarantino Scorsese? There's so many compounded things that are wrong with this.

[00:05:52] First of all, it's the kind of pristiness of it and kind of good deep misunderstanding of art that it would be divided between the juvenile 14-year-old boy stuff and the grown-up stuff. They can talk about over a glass of wine after the viewing. So there's that.

[00:06:13] There's also the Scorsese has done way more movies that have nothing to do with gangsters than any director that Jonathan Weisberg could name his movies. His Scorsese is done. So he has like four or five movies that are primarily about gangsters at most and he's directed like 30 films.

[00:06:34] I believe that even the last temptation of Christ I think he said was essentially like an immature... What did he say about that? It made me think also, like, it's possible this is a bit. Maybe. If so, he trolled me spectacularly.

[00:06:55] You were much madder about it than I was even. Even though I'm the one that tweeted it like a bad word. Like, I was not nearly as mad as you are because there's a lot of these people out there. Yeah, it just reminds me of Rick and Morty

[00:07:09] when Morty says something super woke and Rick says, Ooh, someone's getting late in college. That's kind of the tweet they're writing. But so what is it to have a 14-year-old boy mind? Is it that there's gratuitous violence? Is that some sort of wish fulfillment?

[00:07:25] Like I was talking to you about, you know, and glorious bastards or once upon a time in Hollywood it's like an alternate telling where the thing happens that you really wish would happen. Like Hitler gets killed in an over-determined fashion.

[00:07:38] Is that what is immature or 14-year-oldish about it? Just the violence. I think it's the violence and like the kind of... larger-than-life characters in some of these movies maybe. And you know, the kind of violence that you have in some Termino films like Kill Bill,

[00:07:57] like sure it reminds me of young boys playing, you know, swords or whatever. But the kind of violence that you have in a Scorsese gangster film is like, well, this is like the kind of shit that people did. It's ugly and it's grown up as fuck.

[00:08:13] And does he think that it's glamorizing to think it's a good movie? Yeah, I don't get it. But the whole notion of what a grown-up movie is pisses me off and maybe it's because I'm still the kind of grown-up who likes animated movies.

[00:08:28] I can imagine him thinking like, whoa, when you hit 12th grade and you want to see your movies that aren't drawn then hit me up. Maybe he would let Miyazaki in or something which is out of pure like, you know, I don't really get that pussy.

[00:08:47] It's just, I don't get it. Why take to Twitter to say something like that? It's so stupid and also like, you know, like Jackie Brown, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, they're movies literally about aging. Like 14-year-olds don't like movies about aging and the aging process

[00:09:05] and like being like middle-aged to late middle-aged, feeling like you're the world is sort of has passed you by. You know, I'm not a juvenile stuff. What about Spielberg? I think you were saying of the three Spielbergs might be close to fitting the bill.

[00:09:24] If I had to grant him one. I mean the kind of obvious one to grant would be Tarantino. Scorsese it's just like he shouldn't even be talking about this. It's blasphemous. But yeah, Spielberg, it's a little bit of my personal taste. Like he is like a master craftsman.

[00:09:41] You know, you think something like his love of like 1930s serials that sort of like brought the summer blockbuster into fashion in the 70s and 80s. And Raiders in the Lost Ark. Exactly. That came to be what 14-year-old boys love.

[00:09:58] But I think that the causal arrow might be in the direction of Spielberg making these like kind of cool movies. And then guess what? People who still enjoy things in life. Like to go watch them. Before your philosophy degree. We're so trolled right now.

[00:10:18] We just got fucking played by Jonathan Weisberg from the University of Toronto. Good job, Jonathan Weisberg. He's like living rent-free in our head. He really was for like an entire evening for me. Why am I coming up with counter examples in Tarantino's films of like mature content?

[00:10:39] No, but it is very morally objectionable. Would you call it evil though? Well, if you knew what he was doing was wrong. And he did it just because it was wrong. It might just be. If you couldn't conceive of doing something like that. It's so, it's like unthinkable.

[00:11:03] And that yeah. That's what we're going to talk about in the second segment. Here's one way though to prep to warm ourselves up before we get into. So we picked two articles to talk about evil. But I couldn't help when we started talking about

[00:11:20] the topic of the week to, I couldn't help it but send you this moral alignment test. So some people might know about moral alignment. This comes from Dungeons and Dragons. It's always been kind of like a nifty way I thought of categorizing people on their moral qualities,

[00:11:38] like their moral personality. Like in recent years become me, me. Like you can, you know, there's lots of charts. So you've probably heard about it. But I thought it would be fun to actually take this highly, you know, highly empirically backed

[00:11:55] and, you know, well studied moral alignment tests that we thought we would take online. I mean on air and people can follow along. I took it and I know my score but we're going to check the test. I also have my score right here. I screen shot it.

[00:12:11] It's because we're going to do it again. I say this, I want it to be chaotic good. Like that's how I hoped it would turn out. That's exactly what I wanted as well. That's how I self identify. So I don't care. Me too. Yeah.

[00:12:26] So fuck this quote unquote like measure. Yeah. Okay. So the way that this goes is there's 24 items and you can agree or disagree. So it's like a five point scale. And so let's get to it. These are some of these are tough questions to

[00:12:42] answer like this first one. I often forgive those who have wronged me even if they do not deserve it. Oh, they must be, it must be randomizing. So that's okay though. You just say them. Should we just do mine?

[00:12:57] I often forgive those who have wronged me even if they do not deserve it. It's an interesting one. I feel like they never deserve it but I always forgive them anyway. Yeah, I scored. I answered high on that. I feel like I forgiven this comes easily to

[00:13:13] me as a bit from our 10 year podcast in relationship. Yeah. I think I put it on one agree. The only thing is like, I don't often like just actively forgive somebody as think whatever it's fine. Maybe that counts as forgive. Right. It is kind of a Christian concept.

[00:13:31] Yeah. Yeah. And I like, I don't harbor things. So that's why I often help others without expecting anything in return. This is like also like relative to what here? All these personality tests are tricky. But yeah. I think behaviorally like I, it's always tricky when there's two things.

[00:13:53] One, I don't expect things in return when I help people. That's for sure. Do I always help people? I mean, I feel like I do but of course I remember all the times I do. I don't remember all the times I didn't help. Right.

[00:14:04] And I'd like to just push back against this idea that you don't expect anything in return. I feel like you're, you know, when you do stuff for me, it's very transactional. Like a shooting score. Yeah. Exactly. Okay. So I'm going to put one agree because that's

[00:14:20] what I, like I think I do it but I don't know if I do it like as much as the most person on this scale, you know. Yeah. Yeah. It's tough. I don't remember if I put one or two. I do, I will say I like helping people.

[00:14:33] Yeah. Like I have. That's true actually. All joking aside. I am not as, you do like, like how many people's audio? Two others. Sometimes. Yeah. Do you still do fucking Jesse singles and their audio? No, I only help. Because they make like 50, 50 times as much

[00:14:52] money as we do. I only helped Katie once when she was in a bind. But I did enjoy doing that as she was very grateful. She, her Katie, I just wanted to. Oh yeah. Good. They, yeah, they're both really kind of militant about that.

[00:15:08] When I see others acting carelessly, I think to myself that it is a matter of time before misfortune befalls them. This is a weird question. I was like carelessly, like when they put their, they can't find their keys or something like.

[00:15:22] When they leave their baby in the car. Yeah. I put disagree, I think to that. I think of it because I just can't be bought. Like I don't think anybody, like there's no, I don't believe in any sort of karma.

[00:15:34] I do, but only in like, not in like from the world, just that like eventually all these things do come back to bite you and it's hard to be happy if you're just a bad person. I usually can't be bothered to help those in need.

[00:15:48] This is a tough one because like, again, like how do you define usually like most of the time I don't like help like I spend the vast majority of my time not doing that. I felt like my like honestly I should keep it at neutral

[00:16:04] because I don't like, I feel like I'm making some sort of judgment that's not really what it's asking. Like you say, most of my time I'm not helping people like I'm not out there at soup kitchens or whatever, you know.

[00:16:15] I do what I want and do not feel particularly obliged to anyone. I would say that's like one disagree for me. Yeah. Yeah, probably me too. Cheating isn't justified because it's unfair to others. Like yeah, right? Like almost by definition but like.

[00:16:36] But I saw a funny tweet the other day that said isn't it crazy that until John Rawls people believed that justice was unfairness. I saw that. Yeah, I might have been put lower on this because cheating doesn't bother me that much. Yeah, that's true.

[00:16:52] It bothers me more. Others regard me as good-hearted and well-meaning. Let's say agree to that. Yeah, I think so. We could be we could be so wrong about how people view us but I think I like to think that people think that about me.

[00:17:06] Like that's why we can get away with some of the shit, like a horrible shit that we say. I feel justified in doing whatever I can to succeed. To completely disagree. Yeah. Also not that like motivated to succeed period. Exactly. That's what's driving it. It's not just

[00:17:26] I will do whatever I can to not do a next thing. I am intent on kindness and cooperation. This is just like a meaningless question. What does that mean to be intent on kindness and cooperation? This is like how about if it's asking you

[00:17:44] of your values do you think kindness and cooperation are near the top? I guess kindness. Cooperation if like I'd rather not be on the committee. Yeah, I think I'm too. I think I'm a hard agree on these things. I'm going to be neutral on that.

[00:18:06] I keep track of sensitive information that can be used to hurt people at a later date. This one kind of fucked with me because I don't feel like I do that at all. I don't either. But I do feel like I do have that information.

[00:18:20] I've always felt like I could pull something out that would really hurt someone. I wouldn't want to do it but you know so I don't feel like I'm a collector. I'm not a collector of it but I know how to hurt people's feelings.

[00:18:32] I thought it meant like photos of them like fucking like a teenager or something like I only have pictures of me with teenagers just me Yeah, but I don't think it's like keep track makes it seem like you're storing this thing for like blackmail or something like right.

[00:18:58] I have a good memory. Generally speaking I'd rather buy myself a little something extra than donate to charity. Again this is a tough question because most of the time that's what we do. Being honest with myself I had to do a hard agree on this because just behaviorally

[00:19:14] the amount of things that I buy for myself versus spend on charity like I can't in good conscience say. Yeah, I have an excessive need for stimulation and I'm prone to born death. What is you for this is it? I disagreed like I

[00:19:32] I can get bored but I actually can be easily entertained as probably listeners know. Just throw on Edward. Exactly. I can I trick and con people if it is my interest to do so. No, I don't. I feel like this whole thing is one long

[00:19:50] con that you throw it off on me. I obey those laws and rules that seem sensible to me. No. I mean I do but I also obey. I only obey. Yeah, no, no. Even if I were trying very hard to sell

[00:20:08] something I wouldn't lie to get my way. Yeah, I wouldn't. I would never lie to you. I frighten others to get what I want. I don't think I'm capable of that. I don't either. They would just laugh. I often worry that I might behave inappropriately.

[00:20:26] This was a funny one because it's like I definitely think I might behave inappropriately but I'm not sure I feel worried about it. Yeah, that's a good distinction. I'd put a one agree on that because in my moments of you know, lucidity I can start worrying.

[00:20:44] Is this predictive or are you saying that it like distresses you? I kind of don't care. If I cared that much I wouldn't. So one agree? Yeah, I think so. I think it's good to be worried a little bit. It keeps me from being more inappropriate.

[00:21:00] Yeah, I hope man I want to see that. Helping others out by doing good deeds is its own reward. I mean I'm going to agree in spite of the cliche-ness of it. Yeah, yeah, I agree. I'm often worried that my actions are deserving of criticism.

[00:21:18] I'd say one disagree. I think I'm less worried than a lot of people. That's purely descriptive rather than normative. They might be worried about criticism but yeah, I'm not worried. I'm oblivious to that. I use tricky plans and schemes to get my way. Definitely not. Who wrote this?

[00:21:40] I got a suck eye address from 1945. It's like Oceans 11 or something. You know. Get the blueprints. Why I have a tricky scheme. I hard disagree. I'm not going to come up with tricky plans and schemes. I do not feel guilty when I hurt or offend someone.

[00:21:58] I'm going to do like hard to disagree but I feel like you might be even more disagree. This is the problem with a, you know, 5 point scale. Yeah, yeah. Hard to disagree. Oh God! What did you get? This time, fuck! So last time I was

[00:22:18] right now I'm so clearly in good and lawful. Just very good. Only like 3 things. 72.5% good but 64.2% lawful. I think, and this is why I think it's interesting to take it both together because I was lawful neutral when I took it by myself. I think that something happens

[00:22:38] when we take it together. We either influence each other or we're doing some form of self presentation. Were you lawful neutral before? Let me look. I was less good so that's interesting like you were saying. I was 64.2% good and I was only 26.7% lawful.

[00:23:02] So what are you, true neutral? What was your score last time? I mean what was your category? Oh, neutral good neutral good. That's better. That's what I was. I was neutral good. Not neutral, lawful. This is not reliable. Well this is why you take these privately. Okay neutral

[00:23:26] good archetype from Wikipedia. A neutral good character typically acts altruistically without regard for or against lawful precepts such as rules or tradition. A neutral good character has no problems with cooperating with lawful officials but does not feel beholden to them.

[00:23:40] In the event that doing the right thing requires the bending or breaking of rules they do not suffer the same inner conflict that a lawful good character would. Chaotic good what we wanted to be was chaotic good character does what is necessary

[00:23:52] to bring about change for the better, disdains bureaucratic organizations that get in the way of social improvement. See that's just so me. Places a high value on personal freedom not only for oneself but for others as well. Chaotic good characters usually intend to do

[00:24:04] the right thing but their methods are generally disorganized and not sync with the rest of the society. This is just like as describing me to a T. Then yeah at least we're not evil. So I'm going to read just because we're going to talk about evil let's read

[00:24:20] lawful evil. A lawful evil character sees a well ordered system as being easier to exploit than to necessarily follow. Examples of this alignment include tyrants devils, corrupt officials discriminating mercenary types who have a strict code of conduct and then blue dragons and hobgoblins which is again not the

[00:24:40] those hobgoblins. Any theory of evil must capture the hobgoblin aspect of evil. Chaotic evil character tends to have no respect for rules other people's lives or anything but their own desires which are typically selfish and cruel. They set a high value on personal freedom

[00:25:00] but do not have much regard for the lives or freedom of other people. Chaotic evil characters do not work well in groups because they resent being given orders and usually do not behave themselves unless there is no alternative. I identify like you said as cavemen as good and

[00:25:16] whatever I think I just answered too many questions like I give a shit about rules or something like that. That's really like it's no rules for this. Just take it again until you get the score you want. I play by my own rule

[00:25:34] the stupid chief is trying to like Chaotic good examples of chaotic good include copper dragons many elves and unicorns so there you go Unicorns are chaotic good like I didn't realize they had that kind of personality I'm curious what most people are I'm curious what

[00:25:58] what listeners take this we'll put a link to it listeners can take it and let us know Does anybody come out evil? Probably not but I bet people come out less good than us because they're more probably honest about about the shit they do about collecting things

[00:26:20] in order to get back at people We all have our staff our little safes That's what Twitter is nowadays all it is is a way to go and for other people insert things that they can use against you at a future time. Do you like

[00:26:36] delete your tweets? I don't do that. I did I didn't never used to but like something got into me the other day like a couple months ago and I deleted like most of my tweet not because I think there's anything wrong in there

[00:26:48] I just don't want to be surprised I've deleted all my apps tracking my menstrual cycle okay let's just go to break we'll be right back to talk about evil we laugh to keep from crying even other human beings in your life the amount of energy

[00:27:31] and time that you might spend making sure that all of those things are okay sometimes is disproportionate to the amount of time that you spend taking care of yourself and your mental health is something that you really should put just as much effort into I know for

[00:27:47] a fact that better help online therapy is a great way to get that process started if you don't know by now better help it's an online therapy service that provides therapy over video chats phone calls even text or chat only therapy sessions

[00:28:05] you don't have to see anybody on camera you don't have to be physically present to get the therapy it's much more affordable than in person therapy and really what you do when you sign up is you just tell them a bit about yourself and why you're looking

[00:28:19] for therapy and they'll match you with a therapist importantly unlike say traditional therapy where you find one therapist in your town and you are kind of stuck with them for a while if you don't like the therapist that's been assigned to you you can ask them to switch

[00:28:37] they're really there to provide help for you as best as they can if you're considering doing some form of therapy may we suggest that you give better help online therapy a try and if you're a listener of Very Bad Wizards you'll get 10% off your first month

[00:28:55] at betterhelp.com slash VBW that's better help B-E-T-T-E-R-H-E-L-P dot com slash VBW our thanks to Better Help Online Therapy for sponsoring this episode of Very Bad Wizards Welcome back to Very Bad Wizards this is that time of the show where we love to talk to you personally

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[00:35:38] are at right now it means the world to us thank you we are now going to turn our attention to evil it's a topic that you have been sort of spearheading and I have been I don't know a little hesitant about because

[00:35:56] of just the vastness of it and I think also because I am very emotionally troubled by reading accounts of what people call evil but it's we have a couple of essays that have some interesting stuff in it what was it about this topic though that you found so

[00:36:16] interesting what is it about evil that attracts me yeah what is it about evil that attracts me well I think that part of it is that I was raised with a kind of religious world view where evil is personified and it is existent and it is

[00:36:36] part of what humans have to overcome and in some way like bad things that happen to the world are attributed to the presence of evil and it's the people that are fighting the evil the reason for it is to also it's to also to also

[00:37:00] fight for the evil the reason for it is the evil if you want to fight for the evil if you want to fight for the evil It's kind of funny to think that there is somebody who's saying, like, no God, evil is the right answer.

[00:37:21] It's like a comic book villain being like that. And I guess which themselves are built on old myths, including biblical myths. So I guess it makes sense. Yeah, right. And then there's just the question of whether we had ever talked about evil on this podcast

[00:37:39] and we realized we hadn't. I was like, this just seems like something we should do. Now, it might go terribly because as you say like this is there's a lot. It's heavy on conceptual analysis, the articles that we chose to read.

[00:37:50] But it does seem like it's something that we should talk about. But how like how do you is evil a concept that you ever gave any thought to? Like, do you is it something that you think is something that exists or is it just like a handy way

[00:38:06] of saying really bad? Yeah, no, I do think like I'm on the side of the view that there is something a little categorically different about evil people or evil actions. You know, I'd never given it a lot of thought

[00:38:21] and I had never struggled with the existence of evil as such as opposed to just the existence of all these horrific evil actions and people. But I do think that, you know, just purely, intuitively there's something about an evil character. There's a kind of sadism.

[00:38:42] Their intentions are set up in a way and the things they do are just beyond anything I could conceive of myself as doing. You can't get into the headspace of how somebody could do these things. Never mind like take pleasure in doing them.

[00:39:01] So like that always seemed to me to be like if evil as opposed to just something that's really wrong. And definitely also not something I would do but something I can at least like I feel like we're the same species, you know? Yeah, yeah.

[00:39:19] Like there's like I'm capable of plenty bad but usually it's because I have a weakness of will or something like that or ignorance or right. You know part of what also has always bugged me is that the social psychology tradition

[00:39:32] that I kind of came up in is very fond of and we've talked plenty about this situation as critique of character is always very fond of saying, well, you know, it's a huge mistake to attribute evil to anybody because it really isn't their fault

[00:39:50] which we can talk about whether culpability has anything to do with evil. But it's like the idea has always been it's very easy for you to make the kind of dispositional attributions to other people for actions that you yourself would realize if you committed them

[00:40:10] we're just due to the situation, right? Or whatever. Like the Milgram kind of case. Yeah, but they're like doing something like, shocking a person to death is because a scientist tells you to it's still categorically different than some of the things that people do

[00:40:25] that we get described in vivid detail in these papers. Oh my God, yeah, one of the papers. So we read a paper by a philosopher named Marcus Singer called The Concept of Evil, which we'll also link to. And then one by Daniel Habron called Moral Monsters and Saints.

[00:40:41] The Singer paper I had to just skip over. Like I was like, I don't need any more examples. Yeah, it's just a litany of like one more grusiatingly, like shockingly awful out in the last. The Milgram stuff ties into

[00:40:59] one of the things that you put in our Slack which was an article on Hannah Arendt. Is that how you pronounce it? I think so, yeah. Hannah Arendt. The banality of evil because that's what social psychology was sort of taking itself to argue, which was,

[00:41:16] no, you think evil exists. And of course, Hitler in Nazi Germany feels like the ultimate evil. But what's even more disheartening is that no, those were all just regular people like you that there was no evil to be found, which I think is maybe a misreading, at least.

[00:41:34] Of Hannah Arendt. Of Hannah Arendt, yeah. Because I don't think she was saying we would all be Eichmann. Like I think her point is he's a very boring kind of person. Like he's not very smart. He was just ambitious and wanted to do his duty

[00:41:48] in a way that would result in like his success. He wasn't like a complete sociopath. He didn't take pleasure in it. She says, and there's debate about this, that he didn't have anything like especially against Jews, like he didn't have some special hatred for Jews. It's just-

[00:42:06] He's a pencil pusher. He was a pencil pusher, yeah. And like a lot of people aren't pencil pushers in this way and they, so like I don't think that she was doing something with the situationist. We're saying exactly, but both of them are deflating

[00:42:20] like what it means to be an evil person and like, you know, how much we're all complicit in it too. Right. And here's the thing that seems motivating to people who want to talk about, to like defend this notion

[00:42:32] of evil which is it seems as if we should have a category for that kind of person. Why? Like I'm not sure. Yeah, right. But like I guess we can start talking about some of the arguments in these papers. So Daniel Habron says one of the things

[00:42:52] we alluded to before which was that he says it's a natural, intuitive and he thinks defensible thing to say that sure there are bad things. There are immoral people in actions. He's focused on people like evil people and character. Says, but no matter how many very, very,

[00:43:13] varies you add in front of the word bad, there is something about an evil character that seems qualitatively different. And so he wants to defend this notion of evil as being different than just being extra wrong because as he says, if it's just very bad

[00:43:31] then our current theories about what it means to be bad are fine. Like all you need to do is add some sort of like severity and you can just say, all right, like the Hitler was just really, really bad. Pol Pot was really, really bad.

[00:43:42] And then that intuition there again is what I found undermined by the end of these two articles for me. But I take it that people do want, like there's something disrespectful about not calling Hitler evil. Well, yeah, if not disrespectful,

[00:43:58] like, I mean, maybe a lot of people think that and they get upset if you don't call like what the Nazis did evil. Like I'd struggle to figure out what this debate turns on. Like what are the stakes of it? What are the truth makers of it?

[00:44:16] Both of them say we need to have this concept of evil that's categorically different than, you know, like the spectrum of morally wrong and morally right. But what determines whether their accounts of what evil is successful? Like, cause sometimes they're like,

[00:44:32] well it has to accord with common usage. But then in the paper you're talking about is like, well, this doesn't accord with common usage but it does like upon reflection. It's like, what exactly is going on here? Like what are exactly are we debating? Are we just-

[00:44:48] Yeah, in some ways this was a microcosm of a general problem that arises for any paper on conceptual analysis, which is, okay. So there's this late concept of evil. And just like you say, if you say evil is something and that something has nothing to do

[00:45:04] with how people use the term evil, then clearly like, well, you're just not like that's a completely different concept like who knows what you're talking about. You want it to preserve some of the ways in which we use the term evil.

[00:45:17] But then you would think, well, why not then just ask people what they think evil is? Right, just like Josh Knob, handout. Yeah. And so I take it. And so I got in a discussion with Nikki about this and like the whole reflective equilibrium

[00:45:30] where I think like let's take Hebron. So he says, okay here are the theories that people have proposed for what it might mean to be an evil person. Roughly you have harm based theories that say, okay, people who bring about a lot of harm, those are evil people.

[00:45:48] And he, I think there's good reason he dismisses that he says no, because there are all kinds of ways in which somebody could bring about harm accidentally or for good reasons that we wouldn't want to call evil. So he thinks this is like a non-starter.

[00:46:03] So when he says we wouldn't want to, it's like, like it could mean a bunch of different things. It could mean we wouldn't want to because we have some sort of moral goal in mind. It could mean we wouldn't want to just cause it sounds kind of counterintuitive

[00:46:16] or he could mean we wouldn't want to because that's not really the nature of evil. And it's like always a little unclear to me like which of those they're doing. It's a little bit from Colomé, a little bit from Compe. So here's one way of thinking

[00:46:31] about what he's saying there. Go and ask people what are examples of evil people and then go and ask them about people like imagine Joe pressed a button by mistake and killed a million people is Joe evil. And there I think he thinks that people are deploying

[00:46:48] an intuitive concept of evil that they might not have a theory about but our theory should at least- They almost definitely don't. Yeah, they don't have a theory about it's pre theoretical for them but nonetheless there is structure to what they say

[00:47:04] and what we want to do is uncover that structure and that structure he thinks can't be that evil corresponds to just doing harm because people would- Which is totally true. It's just enough to say it's just unintuitive to call every person who does harm is evil.

[00:47:22] Is like evil, right? And that matches with my intuition. Yeah, for sure. And he says okay then some people say well the evil person is the person who has evil motives like someone who is prone to do evil acts.

[00:47:36] So motivated to do evil, which like I'm not sure. You've been like what does that mean? I don't know. So this is where I start getting a bit confused because don't we now need a theory of evil acts

[00:47:56] in order to say that a person is prone to do it? Charitably let's say what he means is somebody who walks around wanting to do the harmful things that they either do or don't end up doing. So you might take harm as like, well there's something to it

[00:48:15] like evil people do harmful things. So if you walk around trying to cause harm to people who don't deserve it then you're an evil person. Again, that could be like the first one in terms of it would capture way too much.

[00:48:28] Like it's not that you wanna do harm to people for some other gain to you, right? It has to be that you want to do harm to people because it'll cause them harm or otherwise it's the same problem as the last one.

[00:48:40] Yeah, well Singer has like a little typology of this. Like, yeah, we can get to that with Singer. This is why I like Singer's approach better because A, even though maybe it was hard to stomach some of his examples, they were being at least tied

[00:48:55] in some ways to what we're talking about. And I think it's fair to say, I think this is in the back of their mind the whole time which is maybe reserving the term evil for certain kinds of people is actually a useful thing for society.

[00:49:12] Like there's maybe this is a concept that we don't wanna abandon just cause it's hard to find the whatever necessary sufficient conditions to. But like there's a, you know when you see it and we don't wanna abandon it just because it's hard to like define.

[00:49:25] Figure out like, yeah, to come up with necessary and sufficient conditions. So we're talking about for the motive one to have like an evil will in contrast to the Kantian goodwill who likes to do good for the sake of good. I think in this case,

[00:49:38] and he hasn't defined what evil, you know, like what it is to do an evil act. But the point is if he delights in performing a harmful act that has a certain moral gravity to that and if the person is not animated by understandable considerations.

[00:49:52] This gets to the like, and I don't know if the paper agrees with this but this gets to something that I think is what, you know, kind of closer to my understanding of evil. Like how I categorize it is they're not doing it for like some greater good

[00:50:09] even if they're on, even in their own perverted like mind they don't think this is a good thing. You know, like there are people who who might do something just purely out of just like they think it's right but they're a sense of what's right and wrong

[00:50:22] has been so perverted but they're really doing it because they think it's a good outcome. And then whereas an evil person is actually delighted by the fact that what they're doing is wrong. Yeah, yeah. And what then the term delight here

[00:50:38] is something that ends up I think being better described as his affective theory where there is both to want to do things because they're wrong and maybe just cause they're wrong or at least not caring that they're wrong.

[00:50:55] And then there is the emotion that you have about doing it. And so he ends up coming to this sort of like this high what he calls them like a hybrid affective motivational view which seems pretty straightforward to me

[00:51:10] which is that if you want to do a bad thing and you like it then we can call you evil and distinguish you from merely bad. And one thing he also but this other aspect of it also that you're not animated by understandable considerations is important.

[00:51:28] And then also it does seem like he has this like I guess one of the more interesting parts of this idea is it's like you can't have other parts of your character that are good. So he talks about Tony Soprano here who's like maybe done some evil things

[00:51:45] maybe delighted in doing some really bad things but also has a really good side with his family, he loves Meadow. He has like a conscience in a lot of aspects even in the mob side of it. And so like that's why he's not evil.

[00:52:00] Yeah, it's a good little passage. So I'm gonna read it. There's no reason to suppose that the typical Nazi war criminal for instance could not also have been a true friend and loving companion to some. Insofar as that is true then those individuals were not evil

[00:52:13] they truly had a good side. Our inclination to call them evil depends on the fact that that side of their characters is neither apparent nor particularly salient from our usual perspective. Were we fully appraised not only of their worst acts

[00:52:25] but also their best if we knew about them what their loved ones know it is unlikely that we would continue to feel comfortable in calling them evil. This I have argued is what makes the lead character of the television series of the Sopranos Tony Soprano so confounding.

[00:52:39] Ordinarily we might see no difficulty in totally condemning such a mobster but the show which focuses on his home life reveals too much of a complex character to permit us that comfort. There's a descriptive question as to then whether anybody is truly evil

[00:52:52] and there's the conceptual question about well does it matter whether or not it obtains but like somebody, somebody. Yeah. But very plausibly like this account wouldn't include like most people who were complicit say in the genocide of really anybody they talk about Rwanda too

[00:53:13] and there were plenty of people that I'm sure just had these other lives where they were caring, good fathers, all of that. And it's like so then they're not evil but then see at this point it's like the more you know about them

[00:53:28] the less comfortable you are calling them evil. It's like well I don't know if they go to work in a concentration camp and are just like torturing and humiliating children. It's like even if they are like really good husbands the other time I'd still say they're evil.

[00:53:47] There is this, this is another part of the stuff that started getting to me about the conceptual analysis is the use of terms like to be evil is on my view to be consistently vicious in the following sense. One is not aligned with the good

[00:54:06] to a morally significant extent. And it's like now you're just baking it into what significant is. But don't you need to explain what significant is? I think I like put in the margin what are you talking about 3%? The whole point of this is to like make more precise

[00:54:21] our understanding of evil and this is like the exact opposite of that. It's it couldn't be a more vague definition. I have by the way in the Stanford Encyclopedia article there is a sentence that got me so angry or a couple sentences that got me so angry

[00:54:38] that I felt like you when I came to analytic philosophy. Okay, yeah here it is. Okay, watch Eve Gerard and Luke Russell also point out that even if the concept of evil cannot provide a complete explanation for the performance of an action it can provide a partial explanation.

[00:54:55] So as an aside they're talking about whether evil is useful as a causal theory. Like to say it's an evil to virtue. So it says for instance Gerard argues that evil actions result from a particular kind of motivation call this an E motivation.

[00:55:11] Thus to say that an action is evil is to say that it has resulted from an E motivation. This provides a partial explanation for why the action was performed. But how is that? That is like the snake oil. They're selling a snake oil.

[00:55:27] They're saying words that have the guys of adding explanation. This is our version of P hacking. Let's call this E hacking. It has the allure of adding something to the debate. I will say like the other paper I don't think

[00:55:45] is as bad when it comes to some of this stuff. Like it has other issues. It's extremely, extremely long winded. It really is. So let's talk about it. Today's episode is brought to you by 80,000 hours. Look hopefully after listening to this episode

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[00:58:01] To get started planning that career, sign up now, 80,000 hours.org slash wizards. Once again, 80,000 hours.org slash wizards thanks to 80,000 hours for sponsoring this episode. I wanted to ask you, I was thinking about the term evil and as I think we always should ask ourselves,

[00:58:24] is this just a language game? And I was thinking of it in the context of the word for evil in other languages. And I thought to myself in Spanish, what would I say for evil? And it's just bad. It's mal. And I think in French it's the same.

[00:58:44] Yeah, they don't have like a different word as far as I know. As far as I could find, and I also asked Nikki, and it seems like there are words that you can have for like a person with bad character. But is it a Protestant concept then?

[00:59:04] Well, I don't know. Yeah, I'm very curious as to say in biblical Hebrew if this is a fleshed out word that's different from morally bad. It is weird because it starts, the Hey, Bron paper starts with this like, well here's what's motivating me.

[00:59:24] We want, we're sure right that there is, no matter how many varies you add before bad, there is a separate category of evil. And I was like, well, are we sure? Like what is the downside of saying if another is just like real, real bad shit?

[00:59:40] This is where the terms of this debate and what's at stake are confusing to me. I think sometimes it seems like people are just saying, look, we do have that like in ordinary language when we talk amongst each other, like when we call things evil,

[00:59:55] we mean something that is different than just really, really, really fucking bad. And so like in thinking about it, reflecting on it, we should try to figure out what is that cluster of things that we're referring to? And then there's other people who might think

[01:00:10] it's actually like morally wrong for us to not have this separate category because maybe we're more motivated to prevent evil or something. Or if we don't call the Nazis evil, then we're like, I don't know, condoning it to some extent or we're not going to fight against it

[01:00:31] as strongly next time or something like that. So I think both of those things are at play here. And then there are some people who just think, no, this is an actual thing and we just need to uncover what that is.

[01:00:42] So they have a more platonic kind of conception. Yeah, and then even if you have a supernatural, like if you think that sort of evil has gotten into you because it's actual the influence like the influence of supernatural powers that are making you do evil.

[01:00:58] Yeah, I found the whole like, well, we don't want to abandon it because then we might be extra vigilant for like these kinds of really bad actions. Like I don't think we need any extra vigilance to be honest. But it was funny to read the encyclopedia

[01:01:15] that Stanford encyclopedia has the first section where it talks about evil skepticism versus evil revivalism. And I like the idea of being in like a tent. Like, challenging. So I mean, here's something that I think is behind. So something like the Rwandan genocide, which everybody, you know,

[01:01:34] this is something Singer talks about a lot. It's like something that everybody knew about and just kind of watching it happen. And it was as brutal and horrific and just cruel and devastating as the other big genocides. And we watched it happen.

[01:01:52] And so it's like, well, is that because we don't have a strong enough understanding of what evil is? And so we let it happen. We allowed it to take place. And I just think that would be a very naive view of why countries intervene and why they don't.

[01:02:09] I don't think that's really what is driving those kinds of decisions. In spite of the rhetoric that's all, you know, axis of evil and all of that, like, I think that's just rhetoric. Yeah, that's evidence for some evil skeptics who want to say, well, no, like,

[01:02:24] if we keep holding onto this concept what it does is just makes it easy to vilify whoever it is we want to by calling them evil. Yeah, I mean, but again, I would think that's also naive on the other side.

[01:02:37] Like, I don't think it will, it matters either way. You know, like, you know. Calling them the axis of evil helped garner support for. I think probably like material and other economic considerations were definitely a lot more have caused. Well, from the decision makers for sure,

[01:02:57] but maybe for a must letting it happen. I mean, maybe like who knows? Like that's an empirical question, you know, probably there's probably times where it does matter either way, you know. Yeah, okay, I'm going to read the singer that I found out.

[01:03:09] The term evil is the worst term of a program that can be applied to human being. And the concept in my conception of it applies primarily to persons and organizations, secondarily to conduct and practices. Evil deeds must flow from evil motives, the volition to do something evil

[01:03:25] by which I mean something horrendously bad. It's another part where I was like, kept saying what I mean by that is something horrendously bad. And I was like, well, what does that mean? But that's the action, I think. That's just like one aspect of the action.

[01:03:38] It has to be horrendously bad. And then there's all these other aspects too that it needs to have. One cannot do something evil by accident or through thoughtlessness. Through accident or misadventure, one can do something wrong or bad, even terrible, but not something evil.

[01:03:50] So when we say someone did something evil, we are saying something about that person, that person's motives, and consequently about that person's character. To me, when I introspect on the times that I wanna reserve the term evil and why it would be so hard to say it

[01:04:05] about somebody I knew, is because I'm fine reserving the term for people who seem to be devoid of any moral sense, like a psychopath who is completely callous to the suffering of others. But that's about it. So I guess I would reserve it for people.

[01:04:27] I guess I disagree. So let's look at his actual definition, which he gives, I think on page 13. An evil action is one so bad, so awful, so horrendous that no ordinary decent reasonable human being can conceive of himself or herself doing such a thing.

[01:04:44] And an evil person or organization is one who knowingly performs wills or orders such actions or remains indifferent to them when performed by another in a situation where one could do something to stop. Here's where I think all his litany of just terrible examples is illustrative

[01:05:03] at the very least because, so let me just read a couple of them. On October 1978, a man named Lawrence Singleton offered to take a 15-year-old girl, Mary Vincent from Berkeley to Los Angeles. On the way she fell asleep and after she fell asleep,

[01:05:18] he took her to a canyon in Nevada where he beat her through or in the back of the pickup truck, ripped off her clothes, tied her hands, raped her several times, later dragged her from the chuck, held their hands down and chopped them off with his hatchet.

[01:05:29] He chopped it three times, the blood was spurting all over. She was tossed over a guardrail, stuffed into a culvert and left for dead, but somehow she didn't die. And then he talks about like the James Bird horrible, like 1998 where they dragged him face down

[01:05:45] on the rear of a truck just cause he was black. It was a very famous case at that time. And then I'll also talk about the rape of Nann King. What this suggests to me, is I think all these things,

[01:05:57] like those are people I would definitely say are evil. It gets to the kind of A, like I could not in a million years conceive of myself as doing something like that. Like it's so beyond what I would be capable of that it really does seem like

[01:06:13] this has to be another kind of like species of person. And I guess these are kind of the same thing, but they seem to like that about it. They love how horrible it is. Yeah, but isn't that what I was saying? Well, because I guess,

[01:06:30] but maybe some of these people also like have like normal familial affections and even will perform obligations or something like that. So they're not fully sociopathic. I mean, I guess it's- Oh, I see what you were saying. Yeah, I meant the sociopath is like a paradigm example

[01:06:48] of somebody who is not who, in fact, the psychopath might not even fit it always because they might be motivated by purely pragmatic reasons and never actually harm somebody or they might not be sadistic. I guess I met people who truly take delight

[01:07:05] in doing the thing for like for the sake of harm. And then yeah, so that maybe we completely agree. Yeah. I do like that singer seems willing to say, so he over and over again in this paper uses these like almost hyperbolic language of horrendous and terrible

[01:07:22] and you couldn't even imagine engaging in it. I don't know that that's doing like a rigorous conceptual work, but it is at least giving us that sort of deep emotional sense of what kind of person this is, which I'm fine with.

[01:07:40] And he's fine with saying, so by evil, I mean somebody who's so far on the continuum of bad that we're now calling them evil. So and that's something that Heybron doesn't seem to want to be able to, he doesn't want to say,

[01:07:55] he wants to reserve it as categorically different. I think that makes less sense than just saying, like there are some people who are so bad and by so bad it's probably because they seem to take delight in a way that most human beings can't imagine.

[01:08:09] And also the things they do are so horrific. You know, like I remember recently being in Romania and going to the Elie Wiesel museum and seeing the pictures of the concentration camp he came out of and the way these like Nazis

[01:08:23] are just standing by while all these people are tortured and suffering and obviously killed by the hundreds every day. And it's like maybe they didn't delight in doing it. Maybe they didn't rub their hands together and take like a sick thrill out of it,

[01:08:38] but it's still the scope of what they're doing is still unimaginable, like that you can go to work and you can live with yourself like that way. That just seems also evil. Even if they might have had a little qualm about it.

[01:08:52] Now, of course, this opens the door for like the fact that we're doing this about factory farms or just complicit in all the horrible things that the US has done in the last, you know? Yeah. But it's not like one of the things America is very good at

[01:09:07] is keeping it out of our sight. Yeah. And to the extent that I guess I don't have so much of a problem saying, yeah, those Nazis who were just standing there posing in front of like piles of bodies were evil.

[01:09:24] So what if they went home and loved their kids? And so what if they donated to charities? I'm okay calling those people evil. And I think when Habron brings up the example of Tony Soprano, I think he's wrong about why it's difficult to call Tony Soprano evil.

[01:09:42] I think it's difficult because in some measure we develop affection for him. Not because I somehow have a problem saying that he's a monster, it's just that the only problem I have is one of like an interpersonal relationship that you've made me develop with him.

[01:10:01] So if you were to just say, okay, feelings aside, is Tony Soprano an evil person? I'd be like, yeah, it's pretty fucking evil. And that's the reason that that show is compelling is you've made me kind of like an evil person. Yeah, I would read a little differently.

[01:10:19] I think he's not evil because the things that he does aren't at the threshold of what I would call evil. He doesn't seem to delight in doing wrong just cause it's wrong or even like, but he will just do what it takes for himself

[01:10:34] to and his family and his group to succeed and make money. So he's selfish and he will cause violence and suffering to achieve those ends. But that to me seems like not quite evil. And yes, everything else that you're saying is true. You develop an affection for him

[01:10:52] because I think he has these vulnerabilities and he has this really good side and he's loyal. And he's not like Ralphie or somebody. But you know what I mean? Like that guy is more evil than Tony. So this depends on I guess the reading of the show

[01:11:11] or the character, but there is one thing that makes me always like snaps me back. And that is that throughout the series the times when Tony is smiling the most is when he's beating the shit out of somebody. Sure, he's like, you know, the opening scene

[01:11:27] when they're driving, they're trying to collect money from the guy and they're driving a car and they run him over. Sure, it's an end. It's a means to an end of collecting money from somebody who owes him money,

[01:11:40] but he has this grin on his face when he's in... It's like it's his flow. Like his flow is when he's doing that. And that's what makes me, snaps me back to remembering like just cause he's nice to meadow doesn't mean that if you're at the receiving end

[01:11:57] of those blows that you wouldn't see a monster in front of you. No, totally. It's rare though that he does it to like a civilian. Yeah, yeah. Like a pure innocent person. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting like with like Deadwood

[01:12:11] cause we're about to think we're gonna have Matt Zoller-Size who's just came out with a book called The Deadwood Bible that we're both very excited about. We think we're gonna have him on next. Like Deadwood, you know, someone like Al is, he's pretty, does some pretty bad things

[01:12:28] in the early episodes, but you just not only would you not call him evil, I think I might call him fundamentally or at least, you know, like ultimately good to some extent. Al is an interesting case where I also agree with you.

[01:12:41] He has the interests of the camp in mind and he is doing a lot of this for the sake of the opportunities for other people, the community. And that really separates him from Psy, Tolliver who is introduced kind of as his foil.

[01:13:00] I think third, is the third or fourth episode who doesn't seem to care about anybody other than himself. And yet I wouldn't call him an evil character. He's definitely like a bad, like a really bad guy. But I wouldn't call him evil.

[01:13:18] I would say there's two potentially evil characters. But do you disagree with me about Psy? My reason isn't that interesting. I just don't, he's too small a time to be evil in the way. His wrongs are more kind of violent, sorted, definitely horrible, but I don't know.

[01:13:36] Like it doesn't seem to cross the evil threshold. Right, so I think what you're getting at when you say that is like there's something about magnitude that matters. I think a lot, you know. It doesn't have to be like total harm,

[01:13:50] but it has to be like some combination of just like how horrific what they're doing is and how much some total of harm is being done. I think Psy is morally more callous than most any other character, except for the ones you're probably thinking of on the show.

[01:14:12] And I think that if we were to see all of the things that he's done in particular, I'm thinking of when he kills the, remember the two kids? One of them is a post-prime. Oh God, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Kristen Bell. Yeah, Kristen Bell and her whatever brother.

[01:14:30] There is where his, what I thought of is like his most evil side comes out. His sadism comes out. Cause other, yeah. That like normally he's just, you know, doing it for his selfish. And he's also like whooped by Joni so much

[01:14:45] that sometimes he's like, he's just pitiful. Right, right. There's a kind of like if you're, and this is Tony has this to some extent like he's emotionally vulnerable. You know, like if you have that kind of vulnerability, it almost makes you less evil in some sense. Right. So.

[01:15:02] Cause it puts you more in the realm of the human, I guess. Yeah. And the moment we start seeing ourselves, and this is I think what Singer gets right, if it's truly unimaginable, then it's, I think that's a good criterion for calling it evil.

[01:15:18] So if it's a moral bad that you can't even see yourself doing. And I'm sort of okay saying, yeah, sometimes people do that, whether or not a person is evil, you might just mean do they do that enough for it to cross your threshold?

[01:15:29] But it seems like a magnitude matters here. Yeah, the rape of Nanking description, I'm not gonna read it cause it's just. I recently, I had heard of it before, but I recently came across like a blog post about it and I hadn't realized how bad it was.

[01:15:46] And unfortunately I saw pictures. When you see the pictures and then you just see the people, that's where it becomes in this sort of unimaginable. And yeah, maybe you put me in that situation and even if the situationists are right about, most people just will be turned into

[01:16:05] that kind of moral monster under their right circumstances. Still morally monstrous and they still are moral monsters. Yeah, I feel like if someone called me morally evil after doing that, I'd be like, how could you disagree? I don't know. Yeah, I mean, I was reading actually

[01:16:26] speaking of the rape of Nanking about a Murakami book right now, The Wind Up Birds Chronicle and there's a description of, like a lot of what the Japanese did to the Chinese but then also what the Mongolian, there's this just vivid description

[01:16:42] of this Mongolian torture that just skins a man alive and they all are just taking so much delight in doing that. And even though there is a purpose for it, they're not doing it for the purpose. Like the person in charge of them

[01:16:59] has a purpose getting information or whatever but they're just doing it for the love of doing it. That just crosses the line into evil for me. But like somebody who's not like that but I would call evil in Deadwood is Hearst. Because there's such a like pitiless ruthlessness

[01:17:14] and this maybe gets back to the Habern thing. There is just nothing good and human about him. He is just a vessel for just making money and like acquiring property and wealth and power with just zero regard for like the suffering that that causes.

[01:17:36] And maybe there's a good time to read what Singer has this section where he talks about the kinds of evils that he calls it gradations. Of evil. So the first is knowing somebody who does something knowing it to be evil and because it is evil. Which is-

[01:17:55] Right, that's the yeah. That's probably the rarest. That's that real like sociopathic personality that just gets off on how horrific what they're doing. And so like even if it behooves you to have a torture on your side because it's instrumental for you.

[01:18:15] That person if they're getting off on it, like I was like yeah, I know I hired you but you suck. You're a terrible, terrible person. The second is doing something knowing it to be evil but not caring. And that's right. Third is judging it to be evil.

[01:18:32] Doing something, judging it to be evil if inflicted on them or on people they're concerned about such as those who worship the same God or are members of the same tribe but not regarding it as evil if it is inflicted on others or inflicted by themselves.

[01:18:44] So like double standard or like fourth, doing something knowing it to be evil but for other reasons such as their own convenience. So I think that and then Singer has two other kinds but he says those aren't really evil but I'll read them anyway.

[01:19:01] That might be Sopranos right? Like Tony Sopranos with D. Yeah, cause the thing about Tony is he doesn't have to be in that business. But it is, yeah, it's the easy way. Like he's taken kind of an easy way out of life. He's not working.

[01:19:18] What I would say about that is that one is only I would call that an evil person depending on how horrendously bad what they're doing is. It's one thing to do something morally wrong knowing it to be morally wrong

[01:19:31] but just you can't be bothered not to do it. But if it's like, you know, like torturing somebody or raping and killing and dismembering and dragging someone around just cause they're black or whatever. Like then if it gets like the more horrific

[01:19:47] than the fact that they're letting their own convenience Trump that like is starting to be evil to me. Yeah. And there's a case where I think you could make a case that there would be people in that category who are morally culpable. Then people who don't care

[01:20:07] cause they might, you know, cause it's I don't think we'll have time to get into it but it's an interesting question whether the psychopath who's broken in a particular like emotional kind of way should be considered morally blame worthy. But they are evil. Like maybe for that reason

[01:20:22] that sort of characterological description I think. Yeah, it's funny like I don't get the sense that that's what's at play here. Like I could think that some people would not be morally responsible for being evil. And in fact, like you almost suspect that some of the

[01:20:38] like because they're so deformed morally like, you know, it's not something that you like a series of choices like that you made like a normal reasonable person makes. Right. Now there are real, I think I don't know if these are empirically true cases like accurate descriptions

[01:20:58] but there are the people who engage in something we've talked about with Paul which is like perverse actions. People who seem like if somebody can out of the blue for no reason, even though they know that something is wrong and horrendous, they're just like, yeah, let's do it.

[01:21:14] Like in the movie Rope, you know those two guys. Yeah, exactly. Those are scary. Or I just saw funny games today. I suggested it to you but I just saw it like a Michael Haneke movie like a home invasion. I take it as not funny.

[01:21:29] It's not, it's really like I am not, I really struggle. Like I had a hard time watching it and I didn't like there are times where I just like fast forward even though I often rewound but like it's definitely a movie that it's like your

[01:21:44] Sorry, that sentence cracked me up. There are times when I fast forwarded although there were times when I rewound well because I couldn't watch what was gonna happen but then I was like, okay but I should see what happened and then I would go back

[01:21:56] but like I really like I don't, you know the movie is kind of about like, you know how the audience is complicit and we all take like a vicarious thrill about it and it breaks the fourth wall and all sorts of different ways.

[01:22:07] It's a really well made, you know good movie and I think Haneke is totally, you know I think Cache is one of my favorite movies of the last 25 years or whatever but it's like, I am not in that like I kind of resented being told

[01:22:19] you actually love this because I don't watch those home invasion movies. I can't them. I can't stomach them. And the only reason I was watching this is cause like I respect him as a director and here I am being like accused

[01:22:33] of wanting to watch this thing that I find like I didn't enjoy watching it at all. Okay, the last, sorry. No, no, that's fine. The last two categories that singer concludes aren't actual evil are doing something, knowing it to be quote unquote evil or at least bad

[01:22:54] but in the light of a fair and full consideration of all the factors reasonably knowable for the sake of some greater good to be achieved. That's I think Al Swarovski. Like I think he knows that. Yeah, although he's often right. I think this kind of person might

[01:23:10] be totally misguided about that. Yes, right. And this would just depend on your intelligence I guess because Al is very sharp. Al is doing things strategically that I think he even thinks are bad but he thinks that not doing them is worse.

[01:23:31] So for instance, his sacrifice of the Reverend is I don't think he doesn't delight in that at all. Not at all in fact like that's one of the things that you admire about him is he does that cause nobody else will get their hands dirty

[01:23:44] even though they think it's the right thing to do. It's one of the best character building sort of moments. Oh, now your dog is gone. I know. Our dogs are like get the fuck off the computer and feed me. No.

[01:23:58] I don't know what's evil like starving your dogs. That's what's fucking evil. So we'll wrap it up suit. Finally is the not believing it to be evil but judging it to be good. Which again, you could be wrong and criminal

[01:24:11] and culpable and all that but that wouldn't be evil. Yes. You know, and it's an interesting question about you know, I think he even brings this up or he alludes to it like 9-11 terrorists or something like that who are, you know, arguably

[01:24:27] I don't know, I haven't like, I haven't read up on the details of who they were and what their motivations were but you could imagine that some of them were very thought like this is the right thing to do. Yeah. I'd be surprised if they didn't, right?

[01:24:39] Yeah, you'd be surprised. It's again, it's a hard thing. This is why the concept is wrought because people, I feel like it's enough to say that those are very, very, very bad people because they were wrong but not necessarily evil. And they also like, you know,

[01:24:55] they were willing to sacrifice their lives for it. Even if it's the most misguided, like that's a question where the action might be separated from the person. From the person's character, yeah. And it's, and it's, cause it's kind of unimaginable

[01:25:07] that you could get yourself to do something like that but at the same time. Right, it could be, maybe they are the third category judging it to be evil if inflicted on them or on people they're concerned about but not regarding it as evil

[01:25:21] if it inflicted on others. Here's one question I wanted to ask. It seems as if at least Habron wants to, I think be able to say that people who never do harm but are this sadistic lawyers, like imagine you spend your time on the internet

[01:25:40] looking up like snuff film. I think he wants to say those people are evil. Right. And you know, this is just again a question of this. I don't know that there's a right answer but does that mesh with your sense of what it means to be evil?

[01:25:56] Like if you, so what have been said? I would say they're just sick, sick son of a bitch. You know, like that's like my theory of six son of a bitch is like maybe we'll have to save for another episode. You're at an op-ed.

[01:26:09] The distinction between evil and six son of a bitch, some of bitches. I don't know, what do you think? That's my thing is that that, no you have to actually do something. I think so too. I think if you're gonna reserve the term

[01:26:19] for something, you should reserve it for people who actually act. And that means that, I mean because maybe both of these authors want to make this character illogical, like really about character and they say, well what if you're disabled, right? Like say you're quadriplegic

[01:26:35] and you can never actually do anything bad but you really want to or say you wanted to detonate a bomb but it didn't work. That one's a little trickier but I think that because you actually went through with the action. And so there may be your evil

[01:26:53] but if you're just twisted, then I don't know that I would call you evil. And also this is where like these kinds of marginal cases is where I'm unclear like what? A, what could possibly determine like who's right about that and B, why it matters.

[01:27:13] I think some people would call that person evil. Like they have an evil sensibility, fine. I wouldn't but like I don't think there's a fact of the matter about it. Like can I don't feel like, well, what I really need to do is compare it

[01:27:27] to all these other cases of people where I call, and if I find an inconsistency, I don't think that's how like concepts work obviously if you've listened to this podcast. So like for those marginal cases, I lose the thread of like what the debate even means.

[01:27:44] How do I even understand? Yeah, that's why I ended reading these papers with less of a curiosity about the concept of evil because I think that I was convinced that we don't lose anything. Like it's rhetorical mostly to me to say evil

[01:28:06] because it's a handy word to indicate the things that we just indicated because often you want to communicate that this person is bad. But when I say bad, I don't just mean that they were dumb and did something that hurt others.

[01:28:18] I mean, like this is a son of a bitch who also carried out something really terrible. So it's kind of a handy word to have. I don't know that morally as a concept it's that necessary. I would be surprised if it's a concept

[01:28:33] that is persists across languages and cultures. Yeah, I'm curious about that. That's something I'm curious about too. Like do the French really not have a word that distinguishes? Is mal really what it is? Or does that in certain contexts signify something else?

[01:28:51] My knowledge of French isn't good enough to know the answer to that. In Spanish, I think you might say diabolical. You might make reference to that in a way that even a secular person would understand what you mean. And I suppose that it's an empirical question

[01:29:08] as to whether or not if you gave people a bunch of descriptions of people, whether they would lump them together even if they don't have the word, they would just be like, oh, this person is mild but really, really mild in this way.

[01:29:21] Yeah, they just supplemented it with these other conditions which is kind of what we're talking about. Yeah, I mean my feeling is different from you maybe that I did really think that there is a concept that people use in a more or less consistent way

[01:29:41] in terms of how they understand it. It's definitely not to the standards of any kind of conceptual systematic account but like, you know, it does pick something out that is different than just saying really, really bad. And I think like I still feel that way

[01:29:56] after reading these papers. All right, oh my God, just chill for two minutes when we wrap this up. While we stop being so evil. Killing a dog, that's an evil thing. Feeding the pigs by Tewu, that's a good thing then, you know.

[01:30:12] So that owl is contributing so much to the well-being of the pigs by dumping bodies. Especially given what we're going to do to pigs like in the subsequent like 150 years they deserve to have like certainly like we have it coming. Yeah, all right. All right, well.

[01:30:31] Thank you for indulging me in this conceptual analysis. Well one last thing about just the long windedness of the Marcus Singer paper, it's unbelievable. Here's just an example where he's talking about the overgeneralized usage of evil like people and he's saying like, you know, Hastings,

[01:30:49] Rashedals, Treaty, The Theory of Good and Evil, a thoroughly illuminating work on standard topics and ethics has absolutely nothing to say about evil as such in the title as used merely as a euphonious surrogate for the opposite of good. Then he goes through another one that he says

[01:31:05] like, you know, another philosopher, Richard Taylor and Philip there. And then he just throws in John Berent's Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil uses evil in this same overgeneralized way and despite its readability and also despite its catchy title

[01:31:19] provides no insight into the concept of evil, evil as such. It's like, don't just, like don't devote like 200 words to like taking a pot shot at a fucking novel. A novel. That's like it's a title. It's goal wasn't to shed light on evil as such.

[01:31:37] You know, like that's not like... I just noted that too. I was like, did you just do like a search on the word evil and look up books and then like be like, wait, were you reading? Just trash them. Were you reading that book

[01:31:49] to find their analysis of evil? And it goes on like there's just a ton of the more examples of, is there an editor at this fucking journal? Okay, so two things I wanted to also, because I forgot to bring this one out too.

[01:32:01] There was a part near the beginning where he's talking about his method. So he says, people are not always careful about what they say and often use the term evil instead of wrong or bad. Emotively for emphasis or to express strong feelings of revulsion and disapproval.

[01:32:15] Thus, ordinary usage is a poor guide here and frequency studies useless. So we must search for clear cases, cases, uncontentious and clear beyond any reasonable doubt. Cases such as those I am about to depict. If there are no clear cases. Boy will he depict.

[01:32:30] If there are no clear cases of evil there can be no concept of evil and no theory of evil. And a little bit down he says, someone else might disagree with some of my examples. That is not of my present concern. Did he just say that like,

[01:32:44] it's just unambiguous. I know, I know. You could just, what a way to reply to reviewers, can you imagine? That is not my present concern. It's really like we can just get away with it. It's evil, really. The banality. All right.

[01:33:04] Join us next time on Very Bad Wizard.