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Comment by japhyr | Hacker News Reader

I cringe every time I hear perpetrators of mass shootings described as "evil". Evil implies a presence of something bad. It's an easy label that allows people to hate the perpetrator.

It's much more accurate to describe the perpetrators as cold, empty, detached. That is frightening, because there is no hope of reasoning or bargaining with someone who is truly detached from emotion.

There is no such thing as evil. I appreciate this reporter for offering a more accurate picture of who these perpetrators really are.

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> It's much more accurate to describe the perpetrators as cold, empty, detached.

The article states that, according to the Secret Service, 78% of these school shooters are NOT cold, empty, detached (which would describe socio/psychopaths). Instead, they are severely depressed individuals.

If you haven't ever been severely depressed (I have) it's probably quite difficult to understand, but these are people whose minds are completely, utterly, passionately and absolutely wound up inside, anxious and stressed about perceived incurable flaws in their character and the apparently unresolvable frustration, despair, resentment and anger those beliefs generate towards themselves - and in these very sad cases, towards others.

On the outside they can appear completely normal and even happy (I went to great lengths to hide my inner turmoil during my depression); don't mistake that for what is going on on the inside. "Depression", sadly, is a dirty word in society.

Unfortunately this feeds into and reinforces the exact set of dysfunctional beliefs that drive the severely depressed individual towards, and sometimes over, the edge. Imagine feeling like a broken human, only to have society reinforce that depression means you're broken; it creates a secondary, even more powerful disturbance in your mind. This causes the depressed to withdraw even further, which is even worse for a depressed individual (notice how all of these people withdraw from normal activities before the shootings), and pretty much guarantees a horrible end.

If anything, they seem less detached than many "normal" murderers who are for some reason less often seen as "evil". There are many people in the US who have killed multiple people, but in separate individual killings, which requires being able to treat killing as something you're able to do repeatedly, perhaps even over the course of years. Particularly common in organized crime or in drug gangs; just becomes part of the job. That's a bit scarier to me than someone snapping in a single incident. (Scarier both in psychology of the killer, and in a fear-for-personal-safety sense: I am much more likely to be shot by a gang member than in a Columbine-style incident.)

> "There is no such thing as evil."

Surely that depends on your definition of the word, and by most if not all definitions it definitely is possible to be evil.

Maybe nobody can be pure evil, as in nothing but evil, but if you let that rule out calling them evil then you can equally say there's no such thing as nice, mean, clever, stupid, etc. etc.

  Evil (adj)

  1
  a : morally reprehensible : sinful, wicked 
  b : arising from actual or imputed bad character or conduct
  
  2
  a archaic : inferior 
  b : causing discomfort or repulsion : offensive c : disagreeable
  
  3
  a : causing harm : pernicious
  b : marked by misfortune : unlucky 

  (Merriam-Webster)

Nice, mean, clever, stupid, etc. have no religious connotations. "Evil" and "sin" have heavily religious connotations, even if their etymologies are not entirely rooted in religious traditions. President Obama, who used the word "evil" this week, also said this was a time for "prayer and reflection". It's hard to be elected president without making these kinds of religious references.

Denying the presence of evil, as the term is often used, has nothing to do with words such as stupid, clever, etc.

As an atheist I don't base my use of words around what is believed in religions, I go by dictionaries.

> That is frightening, because there is no hope of reasoning or bargaining with someone who is truly detached from emotion.

This position is strange, you think the only position from which you can reason or bargain with another person is if they are emotionally attached?

I purposely try as hard as I can to live a life completely free of emotional entanglement, I think emotion is largely useless. By this measure I suppose I would be cold, empty, detached. I choose to be this way because appeals to emotion are usually weak and lacking in actual reason as support.

I can't understand why anyone would look at a wrathful, violence laden action like mass murder and think that the problem is that the offender is not emotional enough.

Why do you believe emotion is useless? I cannot think of any aspects of our psychology that are useless (they evolved for a reason).

Negative emotions are fundamentally indicators of a cognitive dissonance and are absolutely invaluable in maintaining a healthy system of introspection. Your profile shows you're also a programmer so here's an analogy I use internally: negative emotions are part of a monitoring system built into our brains that inform us when an assumption in our set of operating beliefs (our personality source code) has been violated. (You get angry when your beliefs about 'fairness' are violated, you feel disappointment when your beliefs about e.g. 'relationships' are violated, etc.)

Positive emotions fulfil a similar role, in the opposite direction by reinforcing the value of the beliefs you've created, although negative emotions are more interesting because your response to the emotion can be extrospective ("I feel angry because that guy cut me off on the road and that violates my beliefs about fairness; I'm getting out my tire iron and teaching him the right way to do things") or they can be introspectively rational, controlled and empowering ("Should I revisit my beliefs about fairness to be more in tune with reality, where people make mistakes?"). People with dysfunctional belief systems and rigid attitudes towards their beliefs are prone to depression (i.e. their belief systems do not serve them well given reality, either through distortion or inadapation).

From an evolutionary perspective, I suspect extrospective analysis was more useful ("I'm angry because the other ape has stolen my lunch, and resources are scarce, so I'm going to punch him in the face"), which explains our default, instinctive "emotional" response to emotions, but as civilization develops and the rules change, introspective responses (which encourage co-operation) are more useful (but more fraught with dangers such as depression, which is a kind of reinforcement feedback loop of negative emotional states, beliefs and poor assumptions). Nevertheless, the high value of emotions remains present.

If anybody reading this finds this personal philosophy interesting, I highly recommend reading David Burns' "Feeling Good" for an exhaustive listing/discussion of emotional states and responses, and constructive ways of dealing with these experiences.

I believe emotion is useless because it is largely a distraction. By this I mean that if there are reasons other than emotional to take a course of action, the positive enforcement of emotion to push you in that direction is unnecessary. However, if there are no reasons other than emotional in order to undertake an action, that's a good indicator that the action is not a good path to take.

This doesn't mean that an action which we are compelled to undertake for emotional reasons is necessarily bad, merely that the emotional justification alone is not enough. Same with when we are compelled not to and negative emotions.

Emotion just serves to muddy the waters. I certainly agree with your position that it had an evolutionary advantage at one stage, however I think that has run its course. Frequently human society appears to be little more than an orgy of unthinking, emotionally charged activity. People think less and feel more, and they are guided by these emotions more than by their rational thoughts, to the extent that normal people even think at all.

I think that this is a bad thing. Look at our politics and advertisements, or more generally our levers of compulsion, what largely are the appeals in these arenas designed to target? Our emotions, because this is an extremely effective path for manipulation, the vast majority of humankind is enormously weak to this kind of thing. I believe there is value in making a conscious effort to reject this paradigm.

You may be very different from the typical person, but most people do not exhaustively record their actions, observe consequences, compare with goals, reflect, plan new actions, etc. This is because we already have a good part of this built into our hardware, so to speak.

We build a set of beliefs and act them out. Emotions are the feedback mechanism we use to determine whether the beliefs are serving us well enough to reach our goals. Many people stop there, I agree.

Higher-level individuals capable of greater introspection are aware that their initial belief system, as a child, was largely programmed by parents, relatives, friends, etc. These people monitor their beliefs and adjust them appropriately (e.g. getting angry about somebody not acting the way I'd like them to is pointless, so I'm going to change my belief), or they adjust the world (e.g. scientists researching medicines, engineers building things or software etc.)

EDIT To do so without taking advantage of our emotional processing subsystems would be very exhausting and tiring. I think it's also impossible to escape this characteristic of your humanity; you can learn to suppress your emotions but then you run the risk of not dealing with the cognitive dissonance that caused them in the first place, and this is very dangerous because in effect you are suppressing reality and disconnecting yourself from the world (I'm guessing this is a similar process to how people like the Unabomber create their dangerous belief systems - by ignoring reality they don't like).

I think the problem is not emotions -- the problem is the lack of awareness people have for the role emotions play in our lives, and their options for responding to the emotions (emotions are not facts because beliefs are not facts, yet the vast majority of people act on the basis of their emotions being facts about reality).

Actually no.

Emotions help us by allowing quick shortcuts in decision. Without them a person loses ability to think within normal limits. Remember last time you wrote your signature on a contract. Imagine taking half an hour to write your signature ? Impossible, well without emotion you will completely rationally debate whether or not to use blue, red or black pen, which ink color is better, etc.

Here is a quote:

For 30 minutes the patient enumerated reasons for and against each of the two dates: previous engagements, possible meteorological conditions, virtually anything that one could reasonably think about. "He was now walking us through a tiresome cost-benefit analysis, an endless outlining and fruitless comparison of options and possible consequences. It took enormous discipline to listen to all of this without pounding on the table and telling him to stop," Damasio wrote.

http://www.smh.com.au/national/feeling-our-way-to-decision-2...

Knowing when to keep your emotions in check is another thing.

I wish that went more in depth. It seems like a metareasoning reminder that taking time to decide is inefficient would turn into a quick choice. Unless someone without emotions is somehow incapable of picking random numbers.

> " Unless someone without emotions is somehow incapable of picking random numbers."

My wife once suffered from a mental illness that nerfed her emotions. I noticed her once, standing immobile in the kitchen. She'd been there for about 5 minutes. She wanted to make a peanut butter sandwich, but couldn't decide whether to get the knife or the bread first.

Someone without emotions is incapable of caring enough to make the decision. They might get stuck on the decision as to which color pen to use, and random numbers wouldn't help -- they wouldn't care enough to decide "I should just use an RNG because this decision is arbitrary". Someone with normal emotions would recognize that pen color doesn't matter while signing the contract matters; it is the emotion of caring that makes you capable of deciding that one decision isn't worth the effort while another is.

As NY Times columnist David Brooks once wrote, "People without emotions cannot make sensible decisions because they don’t know how much anything is worth."

This is legitimately interesting but in the end it's very much away from the original point. Okay, caring/having motivation matters immensely. Even if you practice and learn logical prioritizing you still need to care enough to implement it. You won't get anything done if you see no problem with sitting still for hours on end.

But almost all other emotions can be ignored. When people talk about making decisions without emotion they mean without fear, anger, sadness, joy, disgust, trust, anticipation, surprise. You don't need any of those to arrive at a solid decision. Having a goal is something else. As far as wikipedia is concerned "Motivation is related to, but distinct from, emotion."

> "When people talk about making decisions without emotion they mean [list]"

This is exactly the kind of point-missing people engage in when they talk about decisions or rational thought without emotion. They recognize how some emotions can be distracting, without recognizing how some emotions (even the same ones) can be extremely useful. They say things like "almost all other emotions can be ignored" because they don't have a good grasp of what "almost all other emotions" are or the role they take in cognition.

Emotions like surprise, curiosity, and frustration are incredibly useful for rational thought -- they help you realize that some particular line of inquiry is worth pursuing. Emotions make you care about getting something right, or finding a hidden answer, or solving a mystery. Emotions can positively or negatively affect your level of attentiveness, as well as memory formation. Even supposedly bad emotions like anger can serve to focus your attention on "high value" problems (problems often get solved because people are angry or annoyed enough to direct their energy to solving them.)

You actually do need emotions to arrive at a solid decision -- some in making value judgments at the point of decision, others during the analytical processes leading up to the decision. The key is to have a healthy level of emotion contributing to your rational process.

> "I believe emotion is useless"

Some time ago, my wife suffered from an illness that nerfed her emotions. It was surprising just how much her ability to reason degraded.

Reasoning depends heavily upon emotional responses like feeling uncomfortable, surprised, curious, or frustrated by the data / facts / information. One with reduced emotions becomes disinterested; they simply stop caring about understanding. They stop caring enough to work through difficult problems. They don't care enough to search for better data or better ideas.

I would agree that it's unhealthy to be guided by emotion in the sense of "I feel this is true" or "I believe this because I want to". This sort of emotion is mostly a distraction from rationality. But it's entirely healthy to be guided by emotion in the sense of "I care about getting this right" or "I'm bothered by these details not fitting". Without that sort of emotion to push you into rationality, you end up settling for weak, halfhearted, and ultimately irrational explanations.

> there are reasons other than emotional to take a course of action

Which reasons? Why would you choose one action over another if no emotions are associated with any outcome?

That may not be possible. A good case can be made that emotions are vital to human cognition. E.g.:

http://www.amazon.com/Descartes-Error-Emotion-Reason-Human/d...

What you could instead be doing is not noticing your subtler emotions. Until I took up meditation, I thought I was very rational. But after years of paying attention to the flows of my thought, I've become aware just how much emotion is part of cognition.

That process has left me behaving more rationally, in that before I couldn't control things I wasn't aware of. Or things I refused to be aware of because I didn't like to think I was anything other than logical.

Thanks for sharing that, I'll put it on my to-read list, your description of your personal experience is certainly enough to make me think how it relates to my own.

> I purposely try as hard as I can to live a life completely free of emotional entanglement, I think emotion is largely useless.

Wow, your kids are going to have more issues than Playboy.

On a more serious note, you realize this means that you're purposely trying as hard you can to live a life free from happiness, empathy and contentment?

>Wow, your kids are going to have more issues than Playboy.

My useless comment of the week - hahaha!

As another commenter pointed out it may not be possible, but it certainly is "more useful" in most everyday situations. System 1 type thinking vs System 2 type thinking(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_process_theory) is relevant here.

You cannot appeal rationally to that which has no utility function.

You think you can't have a utility function without emotional justification, I assume?

A big part of your utility function is what you care about. Caring is an emotion. There are no separate "rational" and "emotional" parts in brain; parts of your utility function manifest through what you feel.

All justification/utility is ultimately either emotional, instinctual, or cultured.

Cold, emptiness, and detachment is also characteristic of snowmen. Snowmen usually don't commit mass murders. There has to be some other factor, and usually that other factor is aggression of a type where you stick pins into a voodoo doll and derive pleasure from doing that. That is what Christians call evil (deriving pleasure/release from inflicting pain), and it is a pretty specific concept actually. You don't have to be Christian or even believe in supernatural to understand it.

I noticed that people who claim that evil doesn't exist simply have a completely messed up (I suppose, by schooling) moral compass, and they have no idea how common that aspect of human personality is (and that it nearly always has negative consequences both for the bearer and for society at large).

You are reading far too much into the mindset of someone whose history we don't know. In fact, this whole thread has devolved well below the minimum standards for rational discussion, relying instead upon knee-jerk reactions and cargo cult assumptions.

I wasn't reading into someone's mindset so much as trying to show that there exists a concept of evil on which most people can agree on. I like your support for standards and rational discussion, however, so peace be with you.

"There is no such thing as evil."

It's worth pointing out that one of the standard definitions of evil in the Christian tradition (since at least St. Augustine) is as a sort of privation, or lack. That is, evil isn't considered to be a thing that exists, but the lack of some good which should exist . It's somewhat analogous to a hole in a shirt. The hole is the absence of something that should be there.

I find that this actually dovetails nicely with your description of the perpetrators as cold, empty and detached. (Whether this was actually the psychological state of the killers is an open question.)

My issue with the word "evil" is that its popular use serves to distance the perpetrator from everyone else, as if he's been infected by the Devil. No doubt he's infected with something, perhaps even something that could be cured or mitigated with therapy, but it's not supernatural or part of God's mysterious plan.

Similarly, I don't like the use of the word "miracle," which was used a lot during that Hudson River plane crash a few years ago. God did not intervene, as many suggested. Rather, a well-trained pilot did his job to perfection, and all thanks should go to him and the institutions that provided him with that training.

Perpetrators of mass killings seem to be very much emotional, filled with anger, resentment and bitterness. I don't think you would go through the trouble of killing other people if you are detached from emotion. Why would you?

To clarify a bit, I appreciate most that this reporter is not over-simplifying these cases. In his own words, "Perpetrators of mass murder...are complicated." I don't speak in absolutes about emotion. I know most of these perpetrators have led very emotional lives. The pain they have felt is probably greater than almost everyone else's pain. But it seems to me that once they have begun to carry out their plans, they are well beyond making an emotional connection with anyone else. They have nothing left to lose, and you can't bargain with someone who has nothing left to lose.

Nonsense. Don't be fooled. Evil is the intentional causation of calamity and this incident is exactly that. No serious person is claiming "evil" has extension in and of itself. I don't see why under your view "evil" is any less a phenomenon than "cold" or "detached." I suspect it is just more in vogue to have that view.

Can we use the term 'defect', then?

As in "the computer was defect, so I put in the junk heap"?

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