By your definition, it seems like a gun or knife could be inherently bad, rather than its’ wielder? Or scissors even, though most people would say that the context matters more: e.g. scissors are fine and quite useful tools, depending on the context i.e. in the hands of a child who is running with them they can be “bad”, yet that hardly makes scissors “evil”. ✂️
I would agree with a differently phrased version of that though: people cannot be TRULY good (or evil) unless they have a certain minimum amount of “character”. Like if a cat or dog looked at you grumpily, you may joke about it, but who cares really? (unless it’s a BIG cat like a lion, but even then, while its status may be important to us, we would hardly call it truly “good” or truly “evil”?)
And the same with a computer: like AI may end up killing us all, but do we blame it really, or rather should we blame ourselves for telling it which 1-0 bits to flip, while for itself it really has no clue what it’s even doing… or more importantly, why?
You can’t be truly good unless you at least have a certain capacity to be evil, and vice versa, maybe? So like (as several examples here pointed out) if you return the cart to the cart return area of the store, in the rain, and as people who did not do that drive by you and look abashed/ashamed - they themselves knew that they could have done the same, and they feel the guilt inside their own minds (regardless of external expression of such or not) bc they KNOW that they could have made the same choice, yet decided to do the opposite instead. Perhaps you yourself don’t even judge them harshly… but that doesn’t (fully) matter, as they actually judge themselves that way, and find their own standard of behavior wanting, i.e. they do not live up to what they wished that they would do, and that others would likewise do.
So like scissors, if a dumb person hurts you, then yeah it causes pain, but would we call that truly “evil”, or the reverse of that “good”? Perhaps the jury is still out on that one.
By your definition, it seems like a gun or knife could be inherently bad, rather than its’ wielder? Or scissors even, though most people would say that the context matters more: e.g. scissors are fine and quite useful tools, depending on the context i.e. in the hands of a child who is running with them they can be “bad”, yet that hardly makes scissors “evil”. ✂️
I would agree with a differently phrased version of that though: people cannot be TRULY good (or evil) unless they have a certain minimum amount of “character”. Like if a cat or dog looked at you grumpily, you may joke about it, but who cares really? (unless it’s a BIG cat like a lion, but even then, while its status may be important to us, we would hardly call it truly “good” or truly “evil”?)
And the same with a computer: like AI may end up killing us all, but do we blame it really, or rather should we blame ourselves for telling it which 1-0 bits to flip, while for itself it really has no clue what it’s even doing… or more importantly, why?
You can’t be truly good unless you at least have a certain capacity to be evil, and vice versa, maybe? So like (as several examples here pointed out) if you return the cart to the cart return area of the store, in the rain, and as people who did not do that drive by you and look abashed/ashamed - they themselves knew that they could have done the same, and they feel the guilt inside their own minds (regardless of external expression of such or not) bc they KNOW that they could have made the same choice, yet decided to do the opposite instead. Perhaps you yourself don’t even judge them harshly… but that doesn’t (fully) matter, as they actually judge themselves that way, and find their own standard of behavior wanting, i.e. they do not live up to what they wished that they would do, and that others would likewise do.
So like scissors, if a dumb person hurts you, then yeah it causes pain, but would we call that truly “evil”, or the reverse of that “good”? Perhaps the jury is still out on that one.