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Multiheaded comments on Human Evil and Muddled Thinking - Less Wrong
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Comments (138)
Clear thinking is a necessary but insufficient condition for avoiding evil. Eichmann is a paradigmatic case of local rationality in the pursuit of evil ends. And right here on this blog, we see proudly rational thinkers advocating what most normal people would think of as evil, namely the employment of torture as a judicial punishment. I've argued against them, but perhaps my arguments aren't any good. Maybe it is more rational to apply shocks to the genitals or waterboarding than to lock someone in a cell. Maybe we don't have anything better than instinctive revulsion to keep us from evil. In which case, we should not be overcoming our biases, but listening closely to them.
Ah, it's good to see that even in OB's early days there were people who saw the ugliness of naive utilitarianism and "rationality"-worship, who plainly spoke out against this blight.
Just look at how in-your-face this crap used to be. It's subtler now, of course... I'd say that the community has progressed in ethics and spirit, yet this proportion of people that I fear has not been wasting time either, probably.