11. Good and Evil

A conversation with Aaron Taylor. We discuss Aaron's background in college and as a science teacher, being a carpenter, political canvassing, teaching people, ignorance as the root of all evil, natural evils, what is evil, good suffering and evil joy, selfishness and selflessness, being wisely selfish, fairness and wealth inequality, charity and mutual aid, effective altruism, reciprocal altruism and selflessness (doves) or selfishness (hawks) in evolutionary biology, whether it's good to kill bad people, consequentialism vs deontology, what is happiness and how do we create it, fairness, democracy and majority rule, whether most people are smart or good, The Good Place, scientific materialism, whether psychopaths are evil, determinism and the necessary illusion of free will, multiple worlds theory, whether evil is exclusive to humans, moral nihilism, whether freedom is good, whether it's worth it to destroy the environment, considering the well-being of non-human animals, why Aaron isn't vegan, reduced meat diets, lab grown meat, hunting, the rareness of intelligent life, dimensions of goodness and the ability to do bad while remaining a good person overall, moral relativism, cultural relativism and Islam, criticizing people, Ben Shapiro and Sam Harris, Buddhism, Aaron's notion of an afterlife, fractals and infinity, burdens and chaos, whether people have enough free time to make good decisions, religion and ignorance, decision paralysis and having too much choice, and Aaron's book recommendations. Effective Altruism: https://www.effectivealtruism.org/