Are there evil people or only evil acts?

“I can guarantee that someone in the world thinks you are evil. Do you eat meat? Do you work in banking? Do you have a child out of wedlock? You will find that things that seem normal to you don't seem normal to others, and might even be utterly reprehensible. Perhaps we are all evil. Or, perhaps none of us are.”

– Julia Shaw, Evil: The Science Behind Humanity's Dark Side

Earlier this month, Science magazine and Fondation Ipsen co-sponsored a webinar on Impulses, intent, and the science of evil. “Can research into humankind’s most destructive inclinations help us become better people?”

It's freely available on demand. Let the controversy commence...


Are There Evil People or Only Evil Acts?

Moderator (Sean Sanders, Ph.D. Science/AAAS):  “... How do we define evil? ... Are there evil people or only evil acts?”

In brief, Dr. Abigail Marsh said no, there are absolutely not evil people; Dr. David Brucato mostly agreed with that; and Dr. Michael Stone gave an elaborate example using an offensive term ("gay pedophile" – as if anyone would refer to a pedophile who targets little girls as a "straight pedophile").

Dr. Marsh was not amused...

More detail below.


Michael Stone, M.D. Columbia University:  [I'm skipping his first response on etymology and religion.]

Abigail Marsh, Ph.D. Georgetown University:  “... I don't think it's ever appropriate to refer to a person as evil. Actions are certainly evil and some people are highly predisposed to keep committing evil actions, but evil does has this very supernatural connotation.

Um, and like so many uh supernatural ideas, I think the concept of evil is pulled in whenever we have trouble understanding why someone would do such a thing, right, we talk about evil spirits or forces because it's so difficult to understand, um, for most people why anybody would be driven to do something to cause people pain and suffering for no reason. Um... but there is an explanation, we may not know what it is yet, but there is an explanation for these behaviors, and so uh... but the use of the word 'evil' doesn't get us any closer to understanding that. It leaves us in this supernatural rut rather than thinking of these behaviors as things that do have unfortunately human motivations .. but that are not the totality of the person. Evil is a very essentialist term as well. It assumes this sort of homogeneity within the person which is not usually true.” [I'm biased in this direction.]

Gary Brucato, Ph.D. Columbia University:  [after the moderator has implied that Stone & Brucato's book suggests that although rare, there are truly evil people.]  “...... What we have to clarify is that rarely, even in the most egregious repeat offenders, do you see somebody that from dusk to dawn is committing acts that are considered evil.  ... [I'll note here that Dr. Marsh is subtly nodding her head.]

Dr. Stone:   “Therefore there are a very very small number of people ... who do evil things as it were from the minute they wake up in the morning until they go to sleep at night. The one who comes closest to mind is the one I interviewed for the Discovery channel program some years ago and that was uh David Paul Brown his real name, who then changed his name when he was in prison the first time to Benjamin Nathaniel Bar-Jonah [actually, it was Nathaniel Benjamin Levi Bar-Jonah] who was a gay pedophile [sic] who would seduce boys coming out of a theater and then try to capture them if he could and kill them and so on. Some of them escaped and managed to identify him.¹ [He was imprisoned and then released] ... OK. So. Out in Montana, he dressed as a policeman with a fake badge... and would seduce little boys ... coming out of a school ... he would ... kill them, eat part of the boy ... [more details about cannibalism] ... He had thousands of pictures of boys and on the walls making up very bad comments and puns as if uh uh some young kid as if that were a Chinese menu item, on a menu, some young kid.” [other sources say girls were among the victims]. He could be counted on, one of the few people I know of, who was evil day in and day out. That's very rare...”

Dr. Stone seems amused...

Dr. Marsh looks dejected

Labels Don't Get Us Anywhere

Moderator:  “... I feel this disgust and you know repulsion uh thinking about this. And so I'm assuming that this is what drives people to label someone as evil. Um and I wonder if that label is useful. You know if we look at maybe the children that you Abby are doing your research with um if you see these inclinations is it helpful to put labels on them and where does that get us you know scientifically and and in terms of treatment?”


Dr. Marsh:  “I don't think it gets us anywhere, it's one of the many reasons I wouldn't ever refer to that term uh to call a human being evil. Um... the children I work with didn't make a choice to have the personalities they do or to have the life experiences that have led them to the place that they are and instead we know that psychopathy — again this condition of having very low levels of remorse and caring and compassion for other people has all the hallmarks of a mental illness — has a strong heritability component, having negative life experiences causes the prognosis to get worse, there are very clear characteristic brain and cognitive changes. It looks like any other psychological disorder in these key ways and so calling people who are affected by this condition evil is not helping us to develop treatments to try to improve their prognosis and to try to improve the odds that they won't go on to do things that affect the rest of us negatively. Um because what I what it does is calling someone evil robs us of the ability to view someone compassionately.”


It's Nearly Impossible to Predict...

Moderator: Do we all have the propensity to do evil deeds?

Dr. Marsh:  “...[regarding] 'horrible and unpredicted' acts, shooting up dozens of innocent people ... I think that when acts like that are so unpredictable, it often leads us to draw the incorrect conclusion, I guess anybody is capable of an act of evil so serious because if we can't predict who it can be, I guess it can be anybody. Um it is true that it is very hard to predict accurately who will engage in acts of significant violence like that especially when dealing with young men in whom various psychological disorders may be emerging for the first time that contribute to those actions. But it's absolutely not the case that everybody is capable of actions like that...”


Prevention, Not Prediction

This brings us to my previous post on a proposal to predict mass shootings via Apple Watches, Fitbits, Amazon Echo, Google Home and AI, and how this effort would be futile (not to mention horribly intrusive and stigmatizing). But we wouldn't want to anger the NRA, now would we?

An FBI study on pre-attack behaviors of 63 active shooters in the US found that only 25% had ever been diagnosed with a mental illness (only three of whom were diagnosed with a psychotic disorder).

A Department of Defense report on Predicting Violent Behavior says:

There is no panacea for stopping all targeted violence. Attempting to balance risks, benefits, and costs, the Task Force found that prevention as opposed to prediction should be the Department's goal. Good options exist in the near term for mitigating violence by intervening in the progression of violent ideation to violent behavior.

It should seem obvious that...

Dr. Stone: “...it's much more easy to get rid of the weaponry that allows these things to happen than it is to do psychotherapy, particularly on people with psychopathic tendencies who are not very amenable to psychotherapy anyway...”

Most Americans favor stricter gun control, and many of us think that our lax gun control laws are the greatest insanity, as are the politicians who refuse to do anything about it.


Further Reading

Aggression Detectors: The Unproven, Invasive Surveillance Technology Schools Are Using to Monitor Students

Trump's claims and what experts say about mental illness and mass shootings

Ivanka Trump to Head New Agency of Precrime


Predicting Mass Shootings via Intrusive Surveillance and Scapegoating of the Mentally Ill

No news from the hypothetical HARPA organization (Health Advanced Research Projects Agency) or the Suzanne Wright Foundation since the initial Washington Post report on their joint proposal for project SAFE HOME — “Stopping Aberrant Fatal Events by Helping Overcome Mental Extremes.”


Footnote

¹ I had initially included more of the gory details, then decided a truncated version was better.

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