So your utility decreases when theirs increases. Say that your love or hate for the adult is L1, and your love or hate for the kid is L2. Utility change for each as a result of the adult hitting the kid is U1 for him and U2 for the kid.
If your utility decreases when he hits the kid, then all we’ve established is that -L2U2 > L1U1. You may love them both equally, but think that hitting the kid messes him up more than it makes the adult happy, you’d still be unhappy when the guy hits a kid. But we haven’t established that you hate the adult.
If the only thing that makes Person X happy is hitting kids, and you somehow find out that his utility function has increased directly, then you can infer from that that he’s hit a kid, and that makes you sad. However, this can happen even if you have a positive multiplier for his utility function in yours.
So I think your mistake is saying “I hate Person X, because I know they like to hit kids.” You might hate them, but the given definitions don’t force you to hate them just because they hit kids.
Put another way, you might not be happy if you heard that they had horrible back pain. You can care for someone, but not like what they’re doing.
(Your comment still deserves commendation for presenting an argument in that form.)
I am actually using James’ definition of hate, which is “When their utility function goes up, mine goes down.”
I suppose that, trivially, this is not entirely accurate of me and Person X. If Person X eats a sandwich and enjoys it, I don’t have a problem with that.
But if “hate” is unilateral in that fashion, no one loves or hates anyone: I have yet to encounter any individual who would, for instance, feel worse because someone else is enjoying a tasty sandwich. So instead, I used a more loosely defined variation on their definition, where “hate” can be allowed to occur on one axis of a person’s life and not another.
Under this variation, I can hate this person for hitting kids and not along other aspects of their life, which is normal. But hating that person isn’t evil, which is part of what I was getting at. I don’t feel happier if Person X gets utility from hitting kids, even if I would otherwise value Person X. And I don’t think it is evil to hate someone who gets their utility in a really messed-up way.
What might make this more difficult is that I am using a colloquial version of ‘evil’ but James’ particular formulation of ‘hate,’ which may make things confusing since I don’t think James’ definition of hate maps onto what we normally refer to as hate.
You’re confusing a few different issues here.
So your utility decreases when theirs increases. Say that your love or hate for the adult is L1, and your love or hate for the kid is L2. Utility change for each as a result of the adult hitting the kid is U1 for him and U2 for the kid.
If your utility decreases when he hits the kid, then all we’ve established is that -L2U2 > L1U1. You may love them both equally, but think that hitting the kid messes him up more than it makes the adult happy, you’d still be unhappy when the guy hits a kid. But we haven’t established that you hate the adult.
If the only thing that makes Person X happy is hitting kids, and you somehow find out that his utility function has increased directly, then you can infer from that that he’s hit a kid, and that makes you sad. However, this can happen even if you have a positive multiplier for his utility function in yours.
So I think your mistake is saying “I hate Person X, because I know they like to hit kids.” You might hate them, but the given definitions don’t force you to hate them just because they hit kids.
Put another way, you might not be happy if you heard that they had horrible back pain. You can care for someone, but not like what they’re doing.
(Your comment still deserves commendation for presenting an argument in that form.)
I am actually using James’ definition of hate, which is “When their utility function goes up, mine goes down.”
I suppose that, trivially, this is not entirely accurate of me and Person X. If Person X eats a sandwich and enjoys it, I don’t have a problem with that.
But if “hate” is unilateral in that fashion, no one loves or hates anyone: I have yet to encounter any individual who would, for instance, feel worse because someone else is enjoying a tasty sandwich. So instead, I used a more loosely defined variation on their definition, where “hate” can be allowed to occur on one axis of a person’s life and not another.
Under this variation, I can hate this person for hitting kids and not along other aspects of their life, which is normal. But hating that person isn’t evil, which is part of what I was getting at. I don’t feel happier if Person X gets utility from hitting kids, even if I would otherwise value Person X. And I don’t think it is evil to hate someone who gets their utility in a really messed-up way.
What might make this more difficult is that I am using a colloquial version of ‘evil’ but James’ particular formulation of ‘hate,’ which may make things confusing since I don’t think James’ definition of hate maps onto what we normally refer to as hate.