Evil happens when you are separated from the pain you inflict upon other people.
I think this is true, and close to my deepest concern about the EA movement. I would like someone to articulate this clearly and with concrete detail, in EA’s own term.
I intend to write that post myself, but if someone else beat me too it, or wrote a better one, I would be grateful.
I find this sentence really aesthetic, but the more I think about it the more it seems incorrect. I see at least as much evil caused by people being too reactive to the pain as I do being too distant. This is not exactly the exact opposite of the original sentence but it’s closer to the opposite than the original.
I interpret lsusr as saying something closer to “What type of evil should you look out for in systems wherein people are separated from the pain they inflict on others? Evil that is manifested ex nihilo. If you have distance from the pain you cause, then the evil you cause will appear to you to have come from nowhere at all.”
I didn’t see him as claiming “The root cause of all evil is the distance between pain inflicter and pain receiver”, although I think there is a case there if you take an expansive view of “distance” (such as emotional distance in the form of a lack of empathy qualifying as “distance”).
Evil happens when you are separated from the pain you inflict upon other people.
I think this is true, and close to my deepest concern about the EA movement. I would like someone to articulate this clearly and with concrete detail, in EA’s own term.
I intend to write that post myself, but if someone else beat me too it, or wrote a better one, I would be grateful.
I find this sentence really aesthetic, but the more I think about it the more it seems incorrect. I see at least as much evil caused by people being too reactive to the pain as I do being too distant. This is not exactly the exact opposite of the original sentence but it’s closer to the opposite than the original.
I interpret lsusr as saying something closer to “What type of evil should you look out for in systems wherein people are separated from the pain they inflict on others? Evil that is manifested ex nihilo. If you have distance from the pain you cause, then the evil you cause will appear to you to have come from nowhere at all.”
I didn’t see him as claiming “The root cause of all evil is the distance between pain inflicter and pain receiver”, although I think there is a case there if you take an expansive view of “distance” (such as emotional distance in the form of a lack of empathy qualifying as “distance”).
I agree with you, and encourage you to write this post.