(8) Experiments III/Puzzles II

[cramschoolgod]

[Sasaki's a little restless thanks to excessive prom talk, and not enough progress with her projects. Well, why not take a break tonight? She decides to make a little call.]

A.) [Phone, standard filter:] I'm curious-- how many of you believe in such a thing as good and evil? And specifically, a natural inclination towards it. Do you think humans

Comments

[cramschoolgod]

Would you believe the prom?

Interesting, Araragi. So, how do you explain the state of the world? It often is claimed to be fairly poor. That is, filled with evils.

[cramschoolgod]

Ah, it's not particularly important, but as a result of all the discussion about it, it seemed to me that humans had a natural inclination towards stupidity, and that this could explain why the world was in a poor state whether or not one presumed humans were naturally good or evil. Also, there was some discussion of someone threatening to shoot people, I think.

That isn't a falsifiable belief. It's essentially proclaiming optimism, but without any particular reason for it, then? It isn't invalid, precisely, but it's more interesting to me to try to keep speculations based on what empirical evidence exists, without having a preset opinion.

[cramschoolgod]

Yes. There was

[cramschoolgod]

That's why I suggested using a proxy. Perhaps the majority of actions have no moral value or a confused and unentanglable moral value; however, for those actions whose value we can determine, we can examine. And the result is: actions that alleviate suffering are by and large temporary, and require suffering to exist in the first place, so they at best come out even. Actions that create happiness are notoriously rare and unpredictable from moment to moment in their outcomes. On the other hand, a person can be made miserable or anguished almost without the chance of error. Would you agree, for another example, that it's very easy to unintentionally hurt someone, after all, but harder to unintentionally help them

[cramschoolgod]

I believe you'd find some examples of both cases. To be honest, the question only has meaning on a certain general level. Only when you ask about humanity in the aggregate does it make sense, because at the individual level, I think we can agree, we are recursively shaped by the actions and conditions around us.

So I wouldn't like to ask the question about individuals being 'better' than their environment. It actually doesn't bear upon the universal.