Are Your Enemies Innately Evil?

An interesting (and in my opinion daring) point, Eliezer, although I'm not sure if it's true or not, because I'm not sure about the degree to which genetics, etc. plays a role in creating "evil mutants". After all, people who commit 9/11 type acts ARE rare. The 9/11 participants in my understanding included people with masters degrees and people with long periods of exposure to the West, and that even enjoyed Western comforts immediately prior to their act. I'm not sure if they're representative of "muslim males" as much as they're representative of people that belong to death cults. Just because they're widely admired in some parts of the world doesn't mean that they'd have many imitators. It defies most forms of "selfish gene" logic to kill onesself prior to procreating, particularly if one is a young healthy male. I do think it's possible that the actual 9/11 participants were deviant in all sorts of ways, rather than representatives of people that grow up culturally non-western and muslim rather than culturally western (muslim or not). However, I think you still make great points about the not-always-utilitarian human bias of picking a side and then supporting all of its arguments, rather than focusing on what mix of policy is actually best.

I agree; there may very well be the rare innately evil person, but promoting or implementing an ideology that is based on false premises that turns out to have evil consequences does not require "innate" evil. The 9/11 hijackers might very well be described as "neurologically intact people with beliefs that have utterly destroyed their sanity" but, if the beliefs they had about the state of the world were actually true (which they weren't!) then many value systems would endorse their actions.

If there were a diety that condemns unbelievers to Hell and cannot be caused to do otherwise, it's not hard to argue that it it is morally necessary to kill people who try to persuade people to become unbelievers. Given the existence of such a diety, a utilitarian perspective might easily reduce to something like "Do whatever it takes to minimize the number of souls in Hell."

"Everyone is the hero of their own story." is a popular claim, and may well be true, but I don't know if any evidence for it has been carefully collected.

"The Enemy's story, as seen by the Enemy, is not going to make the Enemy look bad." Some cultures fairly reliably create people who think rap sounds bad, others fairly reliably create people who think rap sounds good. Some cultures fairly reliably create people who think sushi tastes bad, others fairly reliably create people who think sushi tastes good. Some cultures fairly reliably create people who think saying that the best thing in life is "To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women" is bad, others fairly reliably create people who think this, or suttee, or gladiatorial combat, or mortification of the flesh of various types, or honor murder, or military heirarchy, or pederasty or... make people look good.

"If it took a mutant to do monstrous things, the history of the human species would look very different." but if "violence [was] a typically human response" to the global situation as seen by some cultural groups prior to 9/11 then recent history would also look very different. In fact, the number of terrorists in the world is quite small, which I take to be a really really good reason for not killing random Muslims who kind-of-sort-of look the same. Terrorists are much much rarer than Scientologists or Jesus Camp victims, and for this reason one might think them much more likely to "send shivers of serious horror down your spine".

You know that most cops never kill anyone, right?

"in another world, if they had been raised in a different environment" seems like a weird exculpatory justification. One with weirdly much in common with calling a foetus a potential human being, as if almost every human cell did also not contain a recipe for a potential human being and as if every large lump of organic matter didn't have the potential to be one if processed correctly. I mean really, surely we could, if we wanted to, find tissue samples from every victim of violence who we identified and clone them, but would we then rightly feel that the tragedy of them being raised in the wrong environment had been corrected?

A great post, and one of the reasons I promote emotivism. I attribute a recent dissagreement (in which I admit I acted like a dick) to just this. The funny thing is that usually two people argue with each other, convinced the other is evil. In this case I am arguing with someone over just how scary some other people that we both don't care for are.

It appears counterproductive to use the word mutants to describe how people think of enemies. Most people can easily deny that they've done that, and therefore conclude they don't need to learn from your advice. I think if you were really trying to understand those who accept misleading stereotypes of suicide bombers, you'd see that their stereotype is more like "people who are gullible enough to be brainwashed by the Koran". People using such stereotypes should be encouraged to think about how many people believe themselves to be better than average at overcoming brainwashing.

And for those who think suicide bombers are unusual deviants, I suggest reading Robert Pape's book Dying to Win.

This post starts off talking about school shooters, but I think it could be applied to terrorists as well, although they have a movement and ideology behind them.

It is interesting that you talk about the "nineteen [who] hijacked four jet airliners in a deliberately suicidal effort to hurt the United States of America". Your article starting in this vain gave me hope. Alas, it was not to be. I have not read all of your posts nor followed all of your links so I realize I have missed many of your thoughts and probably have an incomplete picture, so take what I'll say and put it in that context. If not, then your lack of expansion of this idea to its logical conclusion that these individuals did not typify [virtually any] Muslims and in fact were, in 2001, an incredibly small minority of the Muslim population, is a disappointment. Clearly this is the case. It is also true that the extreme reaction, and in fact what was simply a justification for an already-desired action at the time, of the U.S. has resulted in a far more rapid growth in militants than could have been achieved by any approach except perhaps one explicitly designed to achieve such aims. This is sad. It is sad that a powerful nation takes on a weak one - ruled my a madman but populated by you's and I's - crushes it, breaks it, botches putting it back together and then blames the people of this same nation for their 'lack of support'. Blames... actually I'm not sure who is being blamed... for the rise of a new breed of militant. No that's innaccurate - actually the picture that is being painted is one in which all of the current militants/maniacs(and they are) were already there! Hey, I'm all for revenge - go and blast Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and kill a significant number of innocent civilians (can we agree that even one innocent dead child is significant). I can understand this. I am fairly certain that if someone killed just one of my children I would want revenge - and may even, temporarily, willingly, lose my mind in emotion and rage - though I consider myself a highly civilized being. No one should understand US' actions towards Iraq. All of us should pray that Iran isn't next. I grew up in the 70s and early eighties when the cold war was still going strong and total annihilation seemed a damn good possibility. I thought all of that was over and done with and the world was free to spread its wings and explore as-yet unexplored avenues of humanity. We just might be seeing the creation of a new war, not as cold as the last, and not as predictable or stable. I hope not.

Forgive my minor rant. Someone with a name like mine rarely dares to speak up in this way. While I agreed with the sentiment of your article what remained unsaid screamed at me and I could not, this time, shut it out.

As long as war is profitable there will be war. End profit. End War.

Some Dude, since when is war profitable? It can be extremely expensive, and you can't really have both sides win, yet it is often the case that both sides are eager for it.

An accurate estimate of anyone else’s psychology is a dubious benefit in strategic interactions that depend solely on being able to predict the actions of friend and foe.

In Proposition XXXVII of Part IV of the Ethics, Benedict Spinoza asserts that the good that every man who follows after virtue wants for himself, he also desires for other men; and this Desire is greater as his knowledge of God is greater. After proving his claim, Spinoza observes that the law against killing animals is based more on vain superstition and womanish pity than on sound reason (legem illam de non mactandis brutis magis vana superstitione et muliebri misericordia quam sana ratione fundatam esse). He continues:

The rational principle of seeking our own advantage teaches us the necessity of joining with men, but not with beasts, or with things whose nature is different from human nature; we have the same rights against them as they have against us. Indeed, because the right of each one is defined by his virtue, or power, men have a far greater right against beasts than beasts have against men. Not that I deny that beasts feel. But I do deny that we are therefore not permitted to consider our own advantage, use them at our pleasure, and treat them as is most convenient for us. For they do not agree in nature with us, and their affects are different in nature from human affects.

What do you mean by "evil"?

I've come to think that way years ago, and am happy to read such a clear exposition on the point.

What's ironic is that the first time the issue actually called my attention was while reading the famous How to Win Friends and Influence People. Now, the book is about winning, not truth, and the point of the chapter was saying to people "If I were in your position, I would have done the same thing" as a strategy to win their sympathy. Functional and teleological friend-winning strategy, sure. But when afterward Carnegie made the point that saying this wasn't a lie — since if you were born in the same conditions and had had the same life as the other, you'd be just like him —, I couldn't argue against it. So, surprisingly, the winning strategy did have some philosophical depth to back it up.

The kinda cheap, new age self-help book The Four Agreements also got it right with his "Don't Take Anything Personally: Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream."

Don't read the book, though: the twisted reasoning(?) that got the author to this rather sensible conclusion would make you want to scream. Of course, this reaction wouldn't make much sense, 'cause y'know, if you were a 57-year-old Mexican shaman with his exact same genetics and life experiences...'

It seems to me that us readers and commenters of such a blog as this one might in fact have genuinely evil mutants as enemies.

This interview with notorious lawyer Jacques Verges in Spiegel deals with the question of evil in a very thought provoking way.

SPIEGEL: Mr. Verges, are you attracted to evil?

Jacques Verges: Nature is wild, unpredictable and senselessly gruesome. What distinguishes human beings from animals is the ability to speak on behalf of evil. Crime is a symbol of our freedom.

SPIEGEL: That's a cynical worldview.

Verges: A realistic one.

SPIEGEL: You have defended some of the worst mass murderers in recent history, and you have been called the "devil's advocate." Why do you feel so drawn to clients like Carlos and Klaus Barbie?

Verges: I believe that everyone, no matter what he may have done, has the right to a fair trial. The public is always quick to assign the label of "monster." But monsters do not exist, just as there is no such thing as absolute evil. My clients are human beings, people with two eyes, two hands, a gender and emotions. That's what makes them so sinister.

SPIEGEL: What do you mean?

Verges: What was so shocking about Hitler the "monster" was that he loved his dog so much and kissed the hands of his secretaries -- as we know from the literature of the Third Reich and the film "Der Untergang" ("Downfall"). The interesting thing about my clients is discovering what brings them to do these horrific things. My ambition is to illuminate the path that led them to commit these acts. A good trial is like a Shakespeare play, a work of art.

Another problem with seeing enemies as innately evil is that it lets us off the hook as to our own capacity for evil (so elegantly demonstrated by the Milgram experiments, although I hope I would do better).

I've lost count of how many times I've heard that Hitler or Stalin or whoever was "just evil," or that the holocaust was the result of some essentially German negative personality trait, or that child abusers of various kinds are "just monsters."

To the extent that these statements mean only "Boo Stalin!" or "Boo paedophiles!" I guess they're not so bad, but I think people actually believe them as propositions to some extent. Certainly, if movies are any guide, the bad guys are usually pure evil - for no readily apparent reason, they just love pain and want to blow up the world.

Which is a big problem, because it leads you to be naive about your own propensity. An acquaintance of mine knew a rapist, through work. This rapist was not a slavering beast, he was an ordinary guy (maybe with some nasty explicit or implicit beliefs about women) until he got drunk and raped somebody. I really don't want to say "it could have been me," and I honestly don't think it could have. But I doubt he thought, say a year before, that it could have been him.

Eliezer, terrorists may not be evil mutants, but I'm pretty sure they do hate freedom. Islam translates to "submission to God", and if you look at the history of radical Islam, you'll see that their main opposition has been to freedom and liberalism all along. It all got started with a Muslim university student in the fifties who got disgusted with American immorality, and decided that Islam needed to stand against it, so he tried to overthrow the Egyptian government and establish an Islamic state. It failed, and he and his followers came to believe that it failed because Islam was being corrupted by Western freedoms and immorality.

They might not be evil, but their value structure is incompatible with ours.

I agree with the post; and I think it would be more applicable to us here on LW if we extend it to cover "stupid" as well as "evil". We see "stupid" and "evil" as not being very different; and we get the same shot of righteous adrenaline from putting down a stupid comment as from putting down an evildoer.

People who work with Steve Jobs said in the 1990s that he assigned everyone a "bozo bit"; and if they disagreed with him a few times, he set their bozo bit to 1, and ignored or derided everything they said from that day onward. That's functionally very similar to deciding someone is evil. Someone may be more likely to be stupid than to be evil; but that doesn't make having an irrational and emotional response to it any better.

Nor are we very good at determining who is stupid and who isn't! I've had many, many disagreements with Eliezer and with Vladimir Nesov. I know neither of them are stupid. But too many of us "solve" these recurring disagreements by setting a bozo bit and ignoring that person in the future.

Thank you so much! I really like this thread, because I've been arguing with people for years about it, and people just don't get it. ;) It's a really interesting topic, as well, trying to think from the bad guy's perspective. Thank you, again.

Quote: "If someone has to die, it may as well be the initiator of force, to discourage future violence and thereby minimize the total sum of death. "If the Enemy has an average disposition, and is acting from beliefs about their situation that would make violence a typically human response, then that doesn't mean their beliefs are factually accurate. It doesn't mean they're justified. It means you'll have to shoot down someone who is the hero of their own story, and in their novel the protagonist will die on page 80. That is a tragedy, but it is better than the alternative tragedy. It is the choice that every police officer makes, every day, to keep our neat little worlds from dissolving into chaos."

On the one hand, you believe that the initiator of force is the one who deserves to die. On the other hand, you seem to have a love affair with police officers. Which is it? Are initiators of force heroes when they wear blue clothing? Or do they deserve to die too, when they initiate force? (which is about 95% of their job lately)

Typical. Ask a pointed question, and don't get answers but knee-jerk negativity. Does anyone here READ any of the blog posts on this site, which tend to be about such perceptive bias? Is initiating force something that's always wrong, or is it OK when wearing blue and done as an agent of a third party? What if the 9-11 hijackers had been wearing blue? What if they had been Saudi cops? Would they be heroes? If not, why not? Is your title/livelihood the important deciding factor in whether you are doing good or evil, or is it something based on WHAT you DO regardless of who you are? If you can't think of a smart rebuttal, then thumbsdowning just makes you look deliberately ignorant. On the other hand, it may be good practice for the IQ test many police departments require: score too high and they'll discard your application!

When IS it justifiable to initiate force? (Answer or don't, but a simple "dislike" is the most slovenly thing a mind can do.)

To me, it simply comes down to one thing: belief.

If you absolutely believe something, then no matter how implausible it may seem to others with other beliefs, to you, in your mind, it is evident truth, and that therefore is your reality, and anyone who thinks otherwise will often be irritatingly stupid to you.

People with absolute beliefs that just require faith can pretty much rationalise anything to fit them, and are amazingly good at ignoring obvious flaws in their beliefs, and at seeing any, even tiny, counter argument, as being 'evil' and taking the other side, they can seem, and often are, a bit of a threat to those of us with a little more rational.

That's actually OK if that's as far as it goes, or if the 'war' is fought with words or posturing, but when people with absolute beliefs decide to make others conform to those beliefs through force, that's when you start getting the problems that lead to wars and terrorism.

As a general world view of when differing people try to 'police' the others (and not counting direct threat and the need to defend yourself), I believe those who try to enforce their belief upon others through force and threat we can call the bad guys, and those who try to do it through wordy persuasion and their own example that it works, without feeling the need to try to directly enforce it upon others, essentially presenting a counter choice and giving them it as a choice, we can call the good guys, because THAT really works, just a really persuasive argument or excellent proposition or compromise can completely change your perception of others and your particular reality in relation to them, and as such, everyones behaviour, forever! Thinking 'they're too stupid/corrupted to think like us so we'll just have to use force to get what we want' is when you lose (think of the whole IRA terrorist affair as a good example).

Think of it as the difference between teaching your dog to behave because he wants to because he likes you and believes in you as a good and respectable alpha, or teaching it to behave by pure punishment, like taking away it's food then smacking him on the nose with a newspaper whenever he jumps up on the kitchen table looking for scraps, the latter may work while you're about, but the moment you stop directly enforcing these punishments for misbehaviour, that dog will jump on the table anyway, probably with unbridled joy that he now has the freedom to!

I personally can't see that anyone in the whole 'War Against Terror' are particularly blame free, and I include pretty much all that got involved in it in that statement, and I think there was and is too much stereotyping and meddling in others affairs in the world by the super powers, using too much stick and not enough carrot, and using threat and force to try and make other far away people conform to your personal reality rarely ends well, and frankly, it p*sses people off, and all your really doing is creating the 'they'll only behave for as long as you can control them' scenario as set out above, eventually something bad is going to happen when your back is turned, or one day you get too weak to keep a firm grip on that newspaper!

As an aside, on the subject of 'evil wrongdoers' in history and how we decide who was really 'the bad guys' when we review it through our contemporary eyes, I can't help but notice they very often carry a 'good book' and an agenda to use it to qualify their actions, though...

I agree with most of the points in this article, but yet it underestimates a fundamental difference between two ways of disagreeing.

Take the typical political debate about "raising taxes on the wealthy to give social help to the poor" vs "giving tax cuts and reducing social help". People can disagree on that topic for two completely different set of reasons.

People can disagree on that topic because, even if they share a more-or-less common utility function, in which having people dying of cold in the street is valued very negatively, they have different expectations about what each policy will do. Some will say that raising taxes on the wealthy and giving the money to the poor will improve the living conditions of the poor, without hurting much the wealthy, and will be good for the economy since it'll increase the demand in construction/good factory/... which is the true motor of economy. Some will say that raising the taxes on the wealthy and giving the money to the poor will lower the incentive for the rich to invest in the economy, and for the poor to find themselves a job, and will at the end damage the whole economy and makes everyone poorer on the long run. I've my own opinion on that (and I may very well be reflected by the way I formulated the two hypothesis, but that's really not my goal here, so please accept my apologizes if it's too obvious). That disagreement is not easy to settle (or it would have been settled since long), but can be argued rationally, looking at history, at different countries, making prediction on what will happen when a country changes it's welfare/tax policy and checking the prediction later on, ... Labeling "evil" someone who share a similar utility function but disagree on the ways to maximize it is indeed a catastrophic mistake.

But people can also disagree on that topic because they have different utility functions. Some do think that homeless are people who deserve to be homeless because they were too lazy and stupid, and give a positive value to the fact that lazy/stupid people are punished. Some others do not include any significant term in their utility function for the homeless, considering they are only a tiny part of the population and not worth considering. Some others do think that having rich people is in itself unfair, and that taxing them highly, even if it doesn't reduce poverty, increases fairness and is therefore valued positively. Disagreements between people having different utility functions like that will be much, much harder to settle. And labeling "evil" someone who has a broadly different utility function than yourself is much more understandable. If we don't for that, well, for what is the word "evil" ?

And it gets even more complicated, because you can have people who claim they share your utility function, while in fact they don't. And you don't always even know for sure if they are or not. And because it's often a bit of both - people who favor high taxes/social help and those who favor tax cuts/no social help usually have both different pondering in their utility function and different expected outcomes for the two policies.

The Jesus Camp link is broken. Does anyone have an alternative? I don't know what Eliezer is referencing there.

This post needs to be air-dropped over the world's ten largest metropolitan areas. Actually, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality needs to be air-dropped, with translations where necessary, because it contains the same truths but is more entertaining. I think the same arguements apply to labeling your enemies as insane mutants, which is a somewhat gentler, more politically correct way of demonizing them. We tend to assume that the enemy is insane because we could not imagine doing such a thing, and are therefore Surprised by Reality. It might make sense to update our idea of "sanity."

Ever since I read this post, I've been trying to be as charitable as possible to my opponents, but it's been an uphill battle because emotions flare up quickly.

I recently discovered a nice psychological trick that happens to work on me, which helps me argue more sanely. As soon as I get angry or emotional, I catch myself, look straight at the other person, and repeat in my mind, I want you to prosper. I want you to be happy. I want you to live a fulfilling life. (This is true, for any and all people who disagree with me.)

Personally, I find it easier than trying to fight negativity with more negativity ("You're a Bad Person for thinking your opponent is a bad person; why is this such a horrible argument?"). Explicitly reminding myself that I'm on Team Humanity, not Team Political Party, explicitly reminding myself that the point of this arguing is to find a better way to help people, is usually enough to help me zoom out and erase negative feelings.

This hasn't been extensively tested, but it seems like it would fit the mindset of many people here. It worked on an Objectivist who said he would rather have people in Rwanda and Somalia starve to death than live like "parasites" on private charity. As I type this, I don't have nearly as much of a negative reaction to this person as I would have otherwise. I want this person to have a good life.

Edit: This is probably due to the Ben Franklin effect. I wonder if it would be strengthened by finding something to verbally compliment them on.

I will just pop in here to say that I used to be this huge snob who would look down at people my age who said that Ender's Game is one of their favorite books. I was like "Clearly, they have not read any fancy literature since middle school. Silly noobs!"

And then I read the book again and I realized that actually that book is super-important because it basically captures the contents of this article in a book for children when most books for children are all about taking out the evil bad guy and sorta imply that violence is no big deal.

"On September 11th, 2001, nineteen Muslim males hijacked four jet airliners in a deliberately suicidal effort to hurt the United States of America. Now why do you suppose they might have done that? Because they saw the USA as a beacon of freedom to the world, but were born with a mutant disposition that made them hate freedom?"

YES! That's exactly what I think. Because I've looked at the evidence, and that's what the evidence says. The United States is renowned as a beacon of freedom. Some people think that's a good thing, some people think that's a bad thing, but they mostly agree it's a beacon of freedom. And a lot of people don't like freedom. And those people clearly have different genes than we do (including personality genes). And people's desire or dislike of freedom tends to relate to personality differences (such as self-control, accepting responsibility for one's own actions, etc).

You must have noticed genetic personality differences between Muslim countries and non-Muslim countries. And those differences were originally caused by mutations.

As I've previously discussed in my comment on your last page, I think your accusations of "correspondence bias" are mistaken and in reality the opposite bias is more of a problem.

Great post of course.

If it took a mutant to do monstrous things, the history of the human species would look very different. Mutants would be rare.

Maybe I'm missing something, but shouldn't it read: "Mutants would not be rare." ? Many monstrous things happened in human history, so if only mutants could do evil deeds, there would have to be a lot of them. Furthermore, mutants are rare, so no need for the subjunctive "would".

Realistically, most people don't construct their life stories with themselves as the villains. Everyone is the hero of their own story. The Enemy's story, as seen by the Enemy, is not going to make the Enemy look bad. If you try to construe motivations that would make the Enemy look bad, you'll end up flat wrong about what actually goes on in the Enemy's mind.

Well only at the uppermost level. i.e. most evil people are unaware that they are evil. They misconstrue their own motivations. So if you construe motivations which make the Enemy look bad, there's actually a good chance that you are correct. Of course there is also a good chance you are a hypocrite, i.e. you are misconstruing your own motivations too.

Eliezer, you are awesome!

Does anyone know of any psychological studies showing it is actually the case that people regard their enemies as evil, rather than misguided?

I think this post is a better way to write it, but just something I had in my head:

You're given an oppourtunity to kill a person. You can, but not have to, understand his views. It won't be easy - but assume that this will be met, eventually. Naturally, you've been dealt injustice. Or whatever misfortune happened between you and that person, something made you want to kill him. But if you kill him without understanding his reasons and his motives, are you any better than them? And if you continue pondering this, will you end up like Kiritsugu?

Agreed that the 9/11 hijackers see themselves as the heroes of their own story. But about “hating freedom”, they very likely thought that:

1. Western influence on their cultures, regarding women’s right to dress, drive, work etc., is destructive.
2. It is wrong that the legislatures can make laws that violate those given to them by the Prophet. (Even the alleged moderate Imam Rauf of the Ground Zero Mosque proposes that a bench of religious scholars be instituted to review decisions of the US courts).
3. Christians and Jews must live within the limits prescribed for people of the Book; and harsher restrictions must apply to the rest.
4. Science that contradicts religion must not be taught.

Further, that it is legitimate to kill over differences like the above ( while we think political polarization is an overreaction to such differences.)

So, “hate freedom” - very much so!

I'm glad this is a hypothetical example otherwise I'd feel compelled to call you out for supporting the official conspiracy theory rather than the facts of the matter. My opinion is that the people who orchestrated this event are in fact, evil, and the '19' are somewhat clueless patsies.

Realistically, most people don’t construct their life stories with themselves as the villains. Everyone is the hero of their own story.

At tonight's sequences-reading meetup [? · GW], I argued that while it is a mistake to think that people typically see themselves as villains, it is also a mistake to think that they typically view themselves as heroes. Most people don't have especially grand narratives, nor do they view themselves as very strongly moral in either direction (even though I believe there's a trend toward positive self-image).

To get a little data [LW · GW] on this question, resident Queen-of-Polls Aella polled over 2,000 people on the following question:

do you feel a sense of heroism - like righteous grand goodness - when it comes to your behavior or advocacy around politics, religion, or cultural opinions?

1. Yes very much
2. Sometimes/partially
3. Not really 

Here are the (spoilered) results, after being up for a little over 2 hours and getting over 2,000 responses. Write down your predictions now if you want to actually test your models.

My comments on the results: