[slg]

That isn't evil. You wouldn't call a hurricane or a fire evil. You wouldn't call a person who kills someone in a no fault car accident evil. Evil isn't about results. It is about intent and motive.

You can call Facebook a number of things from amoral to negligent or even criminal, but once you start talking about evilness you have to start judging their intentions and motives.

[tkxxx7]

> That isn't evil. You wouldn't call a hurricane or a fire evil. You wouldn't call a person who kills someone in a no fault car accident evil.

All of these things are no one's fault.

> Evil isn't about results. It is about intent and motive.

Exactly. Prioritizing profit at the cost of customers' well-being is a deliberate decision; if not, seeing that customers are harmed by your own, continued actions and doing nothing to change it is, to me, actively being evil. Your intent may not be exactly to harm, but you have no problem harming people to get there. There is no difference.

[slg]

I think that is just too broad of a definition for evil. According to that, everyone who isn't carbon neutral would be evil. We are worsening climate change through our "own, continued actions and doing nothing to change it". And if we are all evil then evilness has no real meaning.

[tkxxx7]

> According to that, everyone who isn't carbon neutral would be evil.

While I agree that it's useful to maintain some nuance in our perspectives, generally I think it's better to recognize and realign our actions, not definitions. It's the difference between accidentally hitting someone, and accidentally hitting someone and proceeding to run them over.

And to your example, I think we know most people aren't really aware of what is going on. Another group of people don't believe it at all, a combination of ignorance and poor government. We're all human; that means something.

[RHSeeger]

Lets say Mark gets in a waterballoon fight, but with the balloons full of gasoline. Lets say this happens in hospital. Mark is aware that his behavior is likely to result in great harm, many deaths. He doesn't _want_ people to die, it's not his goal, he just doesn't care that he's putting them in danger. He wants to have fun with his balloons, and that's all that matters to him.

Mark isn't trying to kill people. Mark _is_ evil, because he chooses to take actions that are likely to cause great harm.

[pdonis]

> You wouldn't call a hurricane or a fire evil.

No, but you would call it evil if someone repeatedly built rickety buildings in a hurricane zone or built structures out of dry wood and paper next to a forest at high risk for a forest fire, and then acted like they had no responsibility when the buildings repeatedly got destroyed by fires and hurricanes and people's personal property got lost forever or looted in the resulting disorder.

[tomc1985]

> You wouldn't call a hurricane or a fire evil.

That's ridiculous, neither hurricanes nor fire possess free will. I bet you would call someone who intentionally starts those things evil, though

[mpweiher]

Hurricanes and fire aren't "actively, happily ignoring the evil"...

Unless you're an animist, I guess.