[SEQ RERUN] Are Your Enemies Innately Evil?

Tyrrell_McAllister

Today's post, Are Your Enemies Innately Evil?, was originally published on 26 June 2007. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

People want to think that the Enemy is an innately evil mutant. But, usually, the Enemy is acting as you might in their circumstances. They think that they are the hero in their story and that their motives are just. That doesn't mean that they are right. Killing them may be the best option available. But it is still a tragedy.

Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).

This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, in which we're going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order, so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was Correspondence Bias, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.

Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day's sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.

Today's post, Are Your Enemies Innately Evil?, was originally published on 26 June 2007. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

People want to think that the Enemy is an innately evil mutant. But, usually, the Enemy is acting as you might in their circumstances. They think that they are the hero in their story and that their motives are just. That doesn't mean that they are right. Killing them may be the best option available. But it is still a tragedy.

Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).

There's a sequence post for that as well.

Its basically the same thing that JoshuaZ says, but longer.

What I mean is that "I" indeed want to be moral, as somehting internal to me and not imposed from outside. However, I have a rather abstract and indirect understanding of what it means (things like "Maximize utility according to the coherent extrapolated volition of humanity" rather than things like "Killing is yucky, don't do it!"), and more importantly unless this brain had not encountered just the right lesswrong writings at just the right time, it would have become the kind of agent "restrained from being a serial killer only out of a cold, calculated fear of punishment" instead of becoming me.