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Comment by billybuckwheat | Hacker News Reader

Isn't the whole idea behind a secret society that the general public doesn't know about it? I thought that's what secret meant.

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Membership, what goes on there, and specific processes/rituals/documentation being secret is more important than the existence and purpose.

Believe it or not, a "secret" society refers to the secrets they hold, not that the society itself is secret. The Masons are public about their existence (if quiet) but their inner "rites and rituals" are secret.

While I’m sure that used to the case, that is no longer really the case with the Masons. You can find out and read through all the different ceremonies and rites online.

Not by their intention, but by an accumulation of opsec failures over the last 700 years.

Masons [have been known to] occasionally change certain things to keep known secrets to stay secret: 'letter and begin', for example.

Duncans Ceremonies is the most famous revelation of Masonic secrets, but no dues-card and not being 'in the book', ultimately counts for nothing, as you won't even be able to properly converse with a mason, nor enter a lodge, without either.

IIRC Freemasons describe themselves as a society with secrets, rather than a secret society.

However, there are secret societies within Freemasonry, such as the Jesters, which is an unofficial offshoot from the Shriners.

The Jesters are less a secret society and more a group for Shriners with clout who don't think the rest of the Shriners party nearly hard enough.

One of the most fundamental characteristics of evil is that the evil person cannot help but desire to gain fame for their crimes. (Just look up how many criminals have been arrested by their social media posts.)

A Secret Society might be completely secretive, and yet be unable to resist helping themselves to claiming some credit. Kind of like the Anonymous hacker group in their day. Or Ross Ulbricht adopting the name "Dread Pirate Roberts" on all of his work which really hurt him when he was caught.

It's a real jump to go from "secret society" to "evil criminals".

it's a real jump to go from "criminal" to "evil"

Someone didn't read before commenting.

That's very interesting. Makes you wonder how many criminals escaped justice because they had a willpower to resist temptation of fame.

I’ve heard multiple people who would know say that if someone plans a crime well and singly, there’s often a very good chance they’ll never be caught.

It’s repeat action that gets them.

This is almost a paraphrase of the definition of survivorship bias. You would expect a preponderance of bigmouths amongst people who are widely known to have been caught for crimes. It would be bad to assume that this is because people who do crimes love to talk about them, rather than that people who talk about crimes get caught.

There’s no such thing as evil. It therefore has no fundamental traits.

You’d be hard pressed to find anyone who thinks of himself as evil. Everyone is the hero of his own story.

Take “the dread pirate roberts” you know it’s a reference to The Princess Bride right? The hero of The Princess Bride?

Now Ross ram a high drug site on the dark web. Was Ross evil? He certainly didn’t think so. He philosophically disagreed with drug laws. The Silk Road didn’t trade in things Ross thought were evil (I seem to recall from the write up in wires that he banned human trafficking etc). He simply thought everyone should have the right to choose for themselves. I bet he thought he was providing a service.

Was he evil? Not in his own mind. Did he seek fame with his name? Err, no? He was choosing a handle to specifically mask his name (he always planned to play the “it was the other dread pirate roberts the whole time” card)

I don’t think you can point to a single person who thinks of themselves as evil. (Even psychopaths don’t think of themselves as evil, they just don’t think other people are worthy of consideration. —I seem to recall that hitler was a vegetarian. If you asked him he’d say he was a hero of his people.)

And as for criminals seeking fame… probably no more or less than any human seeks fame. Or maybe to say it another way, everyone probably seeks recognition of skill.

Evil exists. You’re rationalizing pure logic. If I stalked you, terrorized you, did the most irrationally consistently irrational things to anything in your world and those near you, you’d be hard pressed to call me anything other than driven by evil.

There is meticulous, introspective, malicious, terrible intent that reads its head. Luckily it seems rare but sadly I’ve come across it.

3 kinds of evil:

1. Greed: You desire something that someone else has so you steal it, or cheat to get it etc. and thus cause harm to those who lose what you gain.

2. Jealousy: You love/want somebody but they give their love to someone else, you hate that someone else - because you think it prevents you from getting love. Then you do bad things to those people who you are jealous of to make them look bad etc., or even do things to make them disappear from the scene etc.

3. Envy: You see that some people have what you don't and therefore you hate them and want to destroy their happiness.

The last one is the worst kind of evil. In 1. you get something by stealing. You benefit from that. In 2. you (try to) prevent someone from directing love away from you. But you still do it for love, to get love, and maybe you do. In 3. you are just pure evil because nobody benefits, not even you, from destroying the happiness of others.

Envy is the worst kind of Evil. You try to prevent others from having something you can not have.

Damn I knew someone with traits of all three and I tell you, it was a frightening experience. It really forced me to contemplate nature and behavior.

Yes there are people like that even as leaders of nations I think. Sometimes they are called sociopaths, sometimes psychopaths. There's even serial killers. Naturally they don't advertise their character.

I think you make a good point that maybe "Evil" does not exist but "Evil People" do. We need to recognize them and condemns them, and avoid getting killed by them.

> One of the most fundamental characteristics of evil is that the evil person cannot help but desire to gain fame for their crimes. (Just look up how many criminals have been arrested by their social media posts.)

Selection bias, no? You're drawing a conclusion about the whole from the subset who seek fame and get caught.

" Isn't the whole idea behind a secret society that the general public doesn't know about it? I thought that's what secret meant. "

Nope. It's to recruit. They want to recruit people that can help make them more money (or friendships).

I can't tell you that until you demonstrate that you know the secret handshake.

In Switzerland there was a court case in which the court ruled that even Opus Dei can be called a secret society, because they have principles of keeping member names, internal writings structure structure secret.

"Secret" means there is less supply of information. And when there is less supply but same demand, it means the price goes up. Isn't that a bit like Non-Fungible Tokens?

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