Why You Should Be Good and Not Evil According to Occam's Razor

Ms. Tamara Moskal's Synopsis

Occam's razor is a principle explaining that the simplest solution is logically the best. Executing evil requires a mastermind and collaboration, making an evil plan less preferable than a moral one.

Following this logic, the best revenge is a great success, and an evil person has a greater chance of being betrayed and living in paranoia. Knowing ourselves better allows us to understand our represented ambitions and needs, which can otherwise lead to regrettable actions. Being good can spare us the trouble of planning cunning schemes and make us perceive others as more friendly. We should similarly approach our goals.

For example, we may value and love others first to receive back their contribution and love. Evil, however, requires intellect and accuracy to achieve goals that can be accomplished morally with less effort, agony, risk, and opposition. The author chooses to build an empire of good and work as a philosopher without making enemies and distractions.

"The greatness of evil lies in its awful accuracy. Without that deadly talent for being in the right place at the right time, evil must suffer defeat. For unlike its opposite, good, evil is allowed no human failings, no miscalculations." -- Control Voice, The Outer Limits.

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Introduction

I have spoken much on evil in the form of Philosocom's subcategory on evil. To execute evil, or malice, in the most optimal way, one ought to be a profound mind. The profound mind becomes a mastermind when it realizes it cannot execute their plans entirely on their own. As such, they would require agents, flying monkeys, and any kind of people to become assets for their plans.

When the mastermind views individual lives as expendable, they would treat their own assets as pawns to be sacrificed when they've outlived their current usefulness, or when sacrificing them is a beneficial move in their own heartless eyes. However, the fallacy of evil arrives in the form of Occam's Razor.

According to Chris Simms:

If you have two competing ideas to explain the same phenomenon, you should prefer the simpler one.

Occam's Razor logic can explain how good is preferable over evil in many ways. Allow me to give several examples on the top of my head:

• One of the reasons that the best revenge is a great success is because attaining revenge through criminal ways, like murder, kidnapping and extortion, requires much planning that wouldn't be necessary if we just accomplish our vengeful tendencies in ways that help people. When you turn your vengeance to something beneficial, you'll have a lot less enemies. That includes not only individual people who might come after you, but also entire organizations, like the police, like actual criminals and so on.

• You'll become a lot less paranoid like many tyrants were over the course of history. People who choose good over evil can accomplish their aims with far less threats on their mental state and over their lives in general. According to John Hopkins Psychiatry Guide: "Paranoid individuals may have trouble maintaining social connections due to doubting the loyalty and trustworthiness of others." Obviously, this will put you in a constant state of very poor psychological safety.

• People are more likely to betray you when you're evil. Being evil may require you to associate with the morally depraved, those who lack integrity, and as such may be selfish and greedy, viewing you as a means to an end, rather than an inspiring, respectful leader. In "Breaking Bad", Heisenberg associated with Jack Welker's Gang, who became his enforcers. These Neo-Nazis, who are only loyal to themselves, eventually betrayed their kingpin, thus marking the fall of Heisenberg's Empire. Such decisions can help us question Heisenberg's intellect at least to a degree.

The Underlying Motive Behind Our Actions

We need to understand ourselves in order to know what we want to get in life. Knowing ourselves better also allows us to know how to get what we desire/need. We might be surprised to realize that we operate under an underlying motive that we're not even aware of. For example, our childhood is a determining period in our lives, which shapes who we become as adults.

To quote the Kathmandu Post:

Childhood is a crucial stage in a person’s life. It is a formative period that lays the foundation for our future selves. It is a delicate period where being unable to meet a child’s needs can have long-lasting effects on their adult life. We often assume that children don’t fully grasp what’s happening around them because they are young. However, this is a misconception. Even at a young age, children can comprehend and understand their surroundings. The experiences faced as a child, from the nurturing environment provided by caregivers to the quality of relationships established, play a crucial role in shaping who we become.

If we repress our memories or deny our true motives, it might negatively affect our decision making, increasing the probability of us making regrettable mistakes just to get what we really want.

Deep inside, our ambitions might be more basic and universal than we might be brave enough to admit. For example, the need to be loved, the need to be recognized and so on. Like a destination has several ways to reach it, there are several ways to get what we really want.

The Possible Solutions

We might realize that, being good to others can spare us a lot of headaches, caused by elaborate, cunning schemes. Being nice to others can make them nice to us as well. Changing our perception of ourselves allow ourselves to see others in similar ways, and vice versa. In psychology this is known as the Assumed Similarity Effect.

Thus, it could be possible that much of what it takes to get what we want or need from others, lies in the examination and application of our perception in our behavior and actions. If we want others to contribute to us, we need to add additional value to their lives. If we want to be loved, we need to show others genuine love in the first place.

And perhaps, if we want power, maybe ruining the rights of others isn't necessary when others can lend us their power not through force but through genuine will to cooperate and work with us. Maybe, we don't need to become authoritarian dictators when we can become good and honest altruists instead, helping others in their time of need and donating for worthwhile causes.

And doing so can spare us much agony, fear and antagonism from individuals and organizations who can either not meddle with us, or even cooperate with us. That is while evil requires much accuracy to be executed successfully with as little risk as possible. That is why evil requires much intellect, even though the intellect can realize he or she doesn't have to be or do evil.

Personal Conclusions

Thus I find it better to spare myself the trouble and do good instead, which can bring me benefit regardless of its accuracy.

I want to build an empire of good, and that is exactly what I'm doing and intend to keep doing. This will allow me to have more energy to actually philosophize over being distracted over things whose existence I can either reduce or eliminate completely from my life. I've no need or desire to make enemies because many unnecessary interactions can easily prevent me from working as a philosopher, as I would invest much more worry over dispute than philosophy.

And I live to philosophize. My underlying motive is to work. Work, as a means to mentally survive in a world I find vain and absurd without the presence and promotion of philosophy. And one of the points of philosophy is to give a rational explanation and purpose to existence, thus liberating us from irrationality.

Hail Philosocom.

Feedback from the one known as "St. Javelin's Pretext Seeking Missile"

In essence, it seems two-three observations overcome the notion that one might ought to seek to serve themselves at the expense of others:

Firstly, nature is the only unavoidable authority, and she declares that overall might will determine the victor in any contest in which overall might is deployed. Any party to a conflict can escalate to this point, hence, the capacity for might is the only mechanicism that can prevent ones conquest.

Second, those organisms and organizations which cooperate are mightier than those which compete exclusively. History seems to rebut this conclusion, yet it remains present, that cooperation prevails. In addition to Darwin's findings, we also see this in the tit-for-tat strategy to game theory.

Lastly, we can observe people engaged in hierarchies waste energy on maintaining or advancing their own positions within the hierarchy rather than advancing the organization itself. This waste of energy is not made up for in any respect.

Therefore, for any organization to reach it's fullest potential in terms of energy management, all forms of coercion and general hierarchy (as opposed to electing a fire chief to manage a house fire) must be abolished.

People are ends unto themselves. Treating each other such is the theory of a stable society, as the Blackfoot tribe Abraham Maslow stole from and misinterpreted a little: It was not ever about individual's self actualisation, that's the bottom of the pyramid, then community actualization is the middle, and community perpetuity is the top.

In essence, "being good" allows not only a person, but a community to achieve its potential. Or, perhaps rather, the general acceptance and observation of the golden rule is one necessary condition for a person to be healthy and for a community to be healthy.