In most situations, even when there is a morally correct option, not choosing it does not make you evil. Perhaps it makes you a bad person (though then everyone is a bad person), but it doesn’t make you evil. Evil has a higher bar, where the effects are quite bad without an acceptable reason for doing them.
For those true acts of evil—things like murder or rape or genocide—I imagine that very few would happen if the actors really felt the pain that they were inflicting.
Pain monsters are a theoretical problem here, but I think the concept is still helpful.
Evil has a higher bar, where the effects are quite bad without an acceptable reason for doing them.
But the idea isn’t selective. You don’t get to say “selecting the one person in the trolley problem inflicts not-evil pain, so you don’t feel it”—you feel the pain you inflict, whether it’s evil-pain or not-evil pain.
Pain monsters are a theoretical problem here, but I think the concept is still helpful.
It’s more than a theoretical problem. It’s basically the same problem as standard utilitarianism has, except for “disutility” you substitute “pain”. Assuming it includes emotional pain, pretty much every real-life utility monster is a pain monster. If someone works themselves up into a frenzy such that they feel real pain by having to be around Trump supporters, you have to make sure that the Trump supporters are all gone (unless Trump supporters can work themselves up into a frenzy too, and then you just feel horrible pain whichever side you take).
It also has the blissful ignorance problem, only worse. Someone might want to know unpleasant truths rather than be lied to, but if telling them the unpleasant truth inflicts pain, you’re stuck lying to them.
In most situations, even when there is a morally correct option, not choosing it does not make you evil. Perhaps it makes you a bad person (though then everyone is a bad person), but it doesn’t make you evil. Evil has a higher bar, where the effects are quite bad without an acceptable reason for doing them.
For those true acts of evil—things like murder or rape or genocide—I imagine that very few would happen if the actors really felt the pain that they were inflicting.
Pain monsters are a theoretical problem here, but I think the concept is still helpful.
But the idea isn’t selective. You don’t get to say “selecting the one person in the trolley problem inflicts not-evil pain, so you don’t feel it”—you feel the pain you inflict, whether it’s evil-pain or not-evil pain.
It’s more than a theoretical problem. It’s basically the same problem as standard utilitarianism has, except for “disutility” you substitute “pain”. Assuming it includes emotional pain, pretty much every real-life utility monster is a pain monster. If someone works themselves up into a frenzy such that they feel real pain by having to be around Trump supporters, you have to make sure that the Trump supporters are all gone (unless Trump supporters can work themselves up into a frenzy too, and then you just feel horrible pain whichever side you take).
It also has the blissful ignorance problem, only worse. Someone might want to know unpleasant truths rather than be lied to, but if telling them the unpleasant truth inflicts pain, you’re stuck lying to them.