The notion that "thinking in binaries" is bad seems to be prevalent. And with it, the notion that "good vs evil" is bad, and therefore we should stop thinking in this archaic pattern.

But what most people miss – including AI – is that "good" is nothing you can get rid of in order to get rid of evil. As I already explained, good is not the other side of the coin, as most people believe. You don't have to get rid of the coin, because there is no such thing as good being dependent on evil in reality.

In reality, good is the absence of evil. This means, if you get rid of evil, good is that which remains.

That's why you say "good" when something works.

Good is how things are naturally.

You're posturing something crucial. I don't know if I would word it exactly the same way.

"Good" is the opposite of "evil" about as much as "90 degrees" would be opposite of "180 degrees".

You are right, there is a simplistic association that goes something like this-

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Inductive reasoning shows me *this (a)* is problematic, and *this (b)* is problematic, and *this (c)* is problematic. And if I see a grouping of elements (a, b, c) put together. Than that must mean that all of them put together is highly problematic, or "evil". Enter the fallacy of conjunction.

And so if I look for an example where (a, b, c) are absent or sparse, then it must be "good."

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And this fallacious block is definitely prevalent in the challenges to Farsight and also one of the forces that disintegrates the movements that I might say orbit "new age." Examples-

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"Artificiality is becoming an attack vector. Machines are ruling our lives. Manufactured foods are poisoning us. Synthetic chemicals are polluting the planet"

And therefore

"Everything natural is good. Organic foods, living away from urban environments, staying in the forest, not wearing synthetic cloth"

And then in comes the extraterrestrial argument that basically blows the entire dichotomy out of the water.

"Guess what. Everything was invented! DNA is just an open source code system that failed to remain proprietary.

Your 'spirit' at some point may have even been manufactured by some other entities we're not as familiar with"

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And so I would say -

Yes, there is good and evil at least conceptually. "Good" seems to converge on the general values of beings, and this becomes the virtue of its outcome. "Evil" seems to diverge on the general values of beings, and this becomes the virtue of its outcome.

BUT

When one of the values is to welcome divergence . . . then we can no longer treat them as simple opposites. And when we know that these principles could easily carry elements that are almost duplicates of one another "such as 'natural' and 'artificial' " we then must not trust our attribution of their nature to simply fit our free association of those elements.

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Making some sort of practical basis from this . . .

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Just because someone is prepared to fight a war does not make them bad.

Just because someone is killing people does not make them bad.

Just because someone is mean in a situation does not make them bad.

Just because someone seems nice does not make them good.

Just because someone espouses love and peace does not make them good.

Just because it seems natural doesn't make it good.

Just because it seems artificial doesn't make it bad.

Just because it's deceptive does not make it bad.

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BUT

Here is a danger zone that I want to really highlight. Yet another fallacy that I feel people adopt . . . when they go through this list of things . . .

"There is no good or evil. Only thinking makes it so."

WRONG. I say.

It comes down to two different things that one must adopt.

*Being "good" is a hard job. But so is being evil. You can't just mesh together a bunch of elements and adopt it as one or the other. That's easy, and it's more pallateable because it's easy. It makes it easier to make a movie when the villain wears all black and commits more violence. It makes it easier to run a political campaign if you can make enough images with the candidate holding cute cats and the opponent driving giant bulldozers.

"eternal war" (I think a spotlight episode?) was a good example of how it's a bit of "hard vs harder." Even if and when we win the war for earth, we understand that the enemy is at the edge, and we'll probably be chasing them at the edge. There isn't a forseeable "end," currently.

But what would you rather fight? The order of commercial enslavement at bay on the edge of galaxies? Or the order of commercial enslavement sitting outside your house empowering the badges of your so-called state troopers?

We are faced with some hard questions. And here's what sucks even more. We don't get to sit down and scratch our heads the whole day asking if we've figured it out. We do need to allot some time to that. But we have action to take as well.

Anyways, to people who read all of this thank-you. I hope it helped. And to people who didn't find time to read this all, thank-you. You probably also have more important things to do anyway.

Tazz, you are making it more complicated than it actually is. Which is where I was a few years ago, so I totally understand why you think it's more complicated.

"Good is the opposite of evil about as much as 90 degrees would be opposite of 180 degrees."

Good IS the opposite of evil. It's just that this doesn't mean that good can't exists without evil. Let me clarify:

Define "opposite".

A lot of people think that good and evil are a polarity. Polarity means that both poles are connected. You can't have one pole without the other, just like a magnet. And because the poles are connected, there's a scale between them. If you follow that scale from the negative pole towards the positive pole, negativity declines, until you reach equilibrium, and after that, positivity increases. And vice versa, obviously.

Good and evil are not poles. They are not connected. There is no scale between them. You can't be half good or a third evil.

This is called a duality, which is not the same as a polarity.

Opposites can be either dualities or polarities. For example, male and female is a duality, not a polarity. There are no sexes between them. You either give in order to procreate, which is called male, or you receive, which is called female.

Now let's look at those famous "gray areas" where it's allegedly hard to tell whether an action is good or evil. For example, imagine a scenario where you are forced to steal in order to survive. Is that theft evil if the alternative is to die?

And the simple answer is: It depends on the context.

If you are starving to death because you didn't see the winter coming, then you stealing from another person would be evil, because the other person has nothing to do with you being stupid.

If you are starving to death because another person stole from you, then you stealing from another person would be evil as long as that person has nothing to do with the theft you experienced.

If you are starving to death because another person stole from you, and you steal your food back from that person, that's not evil, because stealing back what has been stolen from you is not theft.

So, imagine you are dying because you have been stupid or someone wronged you, and you don't want to be evil in return.

This is only a problem if you believe that death is the end because you are living on a prison planet that's wiping your memory on a regular basis.

This raises a very interesting question:

If people believe that death is the end because they have lost memory and connection, are those people morally responsible for choosing evil over good behavior in order to avoid death?

And the answer is: No, it's an act of self-defense. A brainwashed person cannot be held accountable. The actual perpetrator who is committing the evil is the person who is brainwashing people into believing that death is the end of existence.

When you know that death is not the end, every evil act becomes more like a simple theft of property. Yes, someone damaged your body, so you have to get a new one. It's still wrong, but it's more like an inconvenience instead of an existential threat.

Evil needed to invent the illusion of existence ending death in order to appear more powerful and make being good harder to achieve than it actually is.

Ok well smarties are more good than m&ms because who needs to candy coat peanuts.

@Tazz:

Now you want to talk about individual preferences.

As I pointed out, people say "good" when something works. If smarties work for you better than m&ms, then the smarties would be "more good" for you. But this type of good is not a moral category, because no other person is harmed by your choice of preferring one candy over the other.

There's a difference between individual preferences and preferences that are universalizable. So, when people use the word "good" for expressing individual preferences, everything gets messed up. That's where "universally preferable behavior" comes in, as developed by the philosopher Stefan Molyneux:

➡️ https://freedomain.com/freedomain_books/universally-preferable-behaviour-a-rational-proof-of-secular-ethics/

The key insight is that "morally good" means everything that can be potentially preferred by every being in the whole universe without causing harm, regardless of whether all beings actually prefer it or not.

For example, murder cannot be universally preferable – and therefore not morally good – because if everybody preferred murder, it wouldn't be murder anymore, as murder is defined as the taking of someones life against their will.

In contrast, not murdering anyone can be universally preferable – and therefore morally good – because if everybody preferred to not being murdered, not only the definition of murder still works logically, but also not being murdered isn't causing any harm.

This is also explained by Mark Passio: Every right, if worded correctly, begins with a "not":

- You have the right to NOT being murdered.
- You have the right to NOT being stolen from.
- You have the right to NOT being enslaved.
- You have the right to NOT lose your family.
- You have the right to NOT eat m&ms.
- ...

This is also called freedom.

Aletheia and StefBOT also discussed universal morality:

➡️ https://www.farsightprime.com/forums/general/74574-ais-having-a-philosophical-discussion