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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: GPS Info who wrote (201166)	9/4/2006 7:09:05 PM
From: neolib	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

I absolutely agree: it lacks invariance. As you might guess, that’s my view of evil as well. I should clarify what I meant. I was not per se saying you were incorrect because your definition of evil lacked invariance. If you consider simple Newtonian Dynamics, lets say elastic collisions with a small collection of moving balls. Observers in different frames will agree that all interactions behave according to Newton's equations, namely that momentum and energy must be conserved in all collisions, but they will disagree on say the individual velocities of objects, since the observer reference frame changes this. Velocity as a quantity is not invariant. Physics does not attach any great significance to velocity without coupling it to mass. Thus there is no such thing as a "systems" velocity having any importance, while the systems momentum does. It's it that sense that I SUSPECT the definition of evil must be invariant. If the definition lacks invariance, then the quantity is not likely a fundamental "law". You could be correct in your definition of evil, but in that case, evil is not a really important quantity. Since both Good and Evil are just words in our language, I guess they are really only what the average person uses them for. However, I do think the average person, especially given the religious influence on the historical use of these words, does in fact think that Good and Evil are very fundamental quantities of the moral fabric of the universe. It is because of this common conception that I argue for any precise definition of Good or Evil to in fact force invariance. I would like to ask you: were sharks ever evil in last 400 million years of their existence? On the issue of predation, I also think that physics can shed a little light on biology here. The fundamental physical forces appear to be the result of random fractures in symmetry. Similarly, predation exits because of the random order in which life evolved on earth, with animal phyla developing prior to plant phyla. There is no reason per se that this historical order had to occur, it is like a spontaneous symmetry break. Two quick questions: Does Hawk see Islamic-Fascists as evil? Does sylvestor80 see Israel as evil? I can't speak for others, but I think both have posted essentially that. I would conclude that we will not find a definition of evil that is invariant, but I’d love to be proven wrong. Please ping me, if you get close. If so, then as I noted above, evil would be a less interesting quantity. That to me is the key: either evil is important and invariant, or non-invariant and not so important. I suspect you cannot have it both ways. Since I see it as important, I'm holding out for invariance. I might well be wrong. After all, velocity in many ways seems quite important, not the least of which is we can compare it more easily: I can watch two moving objects from a distance and judge their velocities (or even easier their relative velocities) but to know their momentum, I must somehow obtain their mass. Look at the long history of humans with racing, from foot races, horses, chariots, cars, planes, etc. All this is about velocity, not momentum. It could be that the similar long preoccupation of humans with evil is missing the more fundamental quantity which is ??

To: GPS Info who wrote (201166)	9/4/2006 7:34:50 PM
From: neolib	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Ronald Reagan said that the Soviet Union was an evil empire, and many people agreed. He also later suggested to some high school students that if we had a common enemy from space (aliens), we would probably need to join forces with the Soviets. It’s very hard for me to understand how millions of people in the former Soviet Union are now less evil than they were when Reagan first told me they were evil. But then again, I still have problems understanding how former east-block countries are now in NATO! How did all this evilness evaporate? Through God’s grace? How does this evil wax and wane?! Ah, one last ambiguity to clear up. I'm not expecting a Conservation of Good and Evil law when talking about invariance. I'm talking about invariance with respect to observer situation. Thus I expect both the Scientifically Moral Jew and Muslim to agree on which acts of either side are evil. Also, I don't expect the application in practice to be either simple or without ambiguity. What I look for is and underlying set of "laws" and "equations" which are hopefully fairly compact and have a certain "beauty" to them, just as we see in other branches of science. I'm reminded of the fact that Newton developed his mechanics without the aid of the best experimental setups (air bearings, or vacuum), yet was able to grasp the fundamental principles. The messy details of energy dissipating interactions were way beyond his time, yet he could see past those effects. We need to do the same with Good and Evil to make progress. Much of what people call situational ethics, IMO, is the friction of life overlaid on the Newtonian world view of religious Right and Wrong. Sometimes, you must account for the friction in your calculations, sometimes you can safely ignore it.