So why do some people choose to do good while others choose to do evil?
Intentions depend on beliefs, i.e. the views a person holds, their model of reality. A bad choice follows from a lack of understanding: confusion, delusion, or ignorance about the causal laws of this world.
A “choice to do evil” in the extreme could be understood as a choice stemming from a worldview such as harm leads to happiness. (In reality, harm leads to suffering.)
How could someone become so deluded? They succumbed to evolved default behaviors like anger, instead of using their freedom of thought to cultivate more accurate beliefs about what does and does not lead to suffering.
People like Hitler made a long series of such errors, causing massive suffering. They failed to use innumerable opportunities, moment by moment, to allow their model to investigate itself and strive to learn the truth. Not because they were externally compelled, but because they chose wrongly.
I think there’s lots of specific internal reasons why people make bad choices: sometimes it’s just pure selfishness of sadism.
But as for why some people are delusional, selfish, sadistic. As for why some people “succumb to evolved default behaviors like anger, instead of using their freedom of thought.” I’m not really seeing an alternate explanation here other than some people where unlucky enough to have genes and environment that built a brain that followed the laws of physics until it they did something bad. And from an internal perspective, maybe the people who did good things had a self modification step where the environment that is their brain modified their brain to have better intentions. But that doesn’t really matter from the perspective of judging someone because all the factors that made a brain that would do self-modification in the first place were outside of that persons control.
And that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t punish people where it will change their behaviour or act as a deterrent, or keep others safe.
But does mean that there is no justice in retributive punishment. And it means theirs no point in hating people and wanting them to suffer. And it means that if you have infinite energy and resurrect Hitler then you should give him paradise rather than punishment.
Intentions depend on beliefs, i.e. the views a person holds, their model of reality. A bad choice follows from a lack of understanding: confusion, delusion, or ignorance about the causal laws of this world.
A “choice to do evil” in the extreme could be understood as a choice stemming from a worldview such as harm leads to happiness. (In reality, harm leads to suffering.)
How could someone become so deluded? They succumbed to evolved default behaviors like anger, instead of using their freedom of thought to cultivate more accurate beliefs about what does and does not lead to suffering.
People like Hitler made a long series of such errors, causing massive suffering. They failed to use innumerable opportunities, moment by moment, to allow their model to investigate itself and strive to learn the truth. Not because they were externally compelled, but because they chose wrongly.
I think there’s lots of specific internal reasons why people make bad choices: sometimes it’s just pure selfishness of sadism.
But as for why some people are delusional, selfish, sadistic. As for why some people “succumb to evolved default behaviors like anger, instead of using their freedom of thought.” I’m not really seeing an alternate explanation here other than some people where unlucky enough to have genes and environment that built a brain that followed the laws of physics until it they did something bad. And from an internal perspective, maybe the people who did good things had a self modification step where the environment that is their brain modified their brain to have better intentions. But that doesn’t really matter from the perspective of judging someone because all the factors that made a brain that would do self-modification in the first place were outside of that persons control.
And that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t punish people where it will change their behaviour or act as a deterrent, or keep others safe.
But does mean that there is no justice in retributive punishment. And it means theirs no point in hating people and wanting them to suffer. And it means that if you have infinite energy and resurrect Hitler then you should give him paradise rather than punishment.