Choosing the Lesser Evil: Forecasting Presidential Elections in Peru

The Peruvian political landscape is dominated by the weakness of party organizations, the continuous rotation of political personalities, and, in turn, high electoral volatility and uncertainty. Nevertheless, we observe patterns of electoral competition that suggest candidates learn to capture the political center and compete over the continuation of an economic model that has sustained growth. We use this information to record the vote intention for the candidate viewed as the lesser evil. Our forecasting results predict a good share of the variation in political support for this candidate. The out-of-sample prediction also comes fairly close to the real electoral results. These findings provide some degree of electoral certainty in an area that, to date, remains understudied.

Blurred Borders Between Good and Evil in Today's “Lesser Evil World”

The series of The Witcher discussed in this study stems from book series written by Andrzej Sapkowski. It started as a set of short stories in the 1980s. As short stories became very popular, full-length books were published in 1993. The most heard of The Witcher series was the digital game adaptations that was released since 2007 and lastly as TV series on Netflix in 2019. The story of The Witcher series is about a witcher named Geralt of Rivia. Geralt on the journey of evil hunting is narrated to the audience in a fantastic way. Although Geralt is an anti-hero fighting evil in the series, he himself stands on a very fine line between good and evil. This situation is noticeable not only in the main character of the series, but also in other prominent characters and reflects “the lesser evil” phenomenon throughout the series. From this point of view, The Witcher series, which conveys how the boundary between good and evil, can be transitive and relative and has been discussed through the concept of lesser evil.

Perspectives on Ethics of AI

This chapter describes a computational view of the function of ethics in human society and discusses its application to three diverse examples. First, autonomous vehicles are individually embodied intelligent systems that act as members of society. The ethical knowledge needed by such an agent is not how to choose the lesser evil when confronted by a Deadly Dilemma, but how to recognize the upstream decision point that makes it possible to avoid the Deadly Dilemma entirely. Second, disembodied distributed intelligent systems like Google and Facebook provide valuable services while collecting, aggregating, and correlating vast amounts of information about individual users. With inadequate controls, these corporate systems can invade privacy and do substantial damage through either correct or incorrect inferences. Third, acceptance of the legitimacy of the society by its individual members depends on a general perception of fairness. Rage about unfairness can be directed at individual free-riders or at systematic inequality across the society. Ultimately, the promise of a computational approach to ethical knowledge is not simply ethics for computational devices such as robots. It also promises to help people understand the pragmatic value of ethics as a feedback mechanism that helps intelligent creatures, human and nonhuman, live together in thriving societies.

Risking Civilian Lives to Avoid Harm to Cultural Heritage?

This paper investigates the circumstances under which it is morally permissible to impose non-negligible risks of serious harm (including lethal harm) on innocent civilians in order not to endanger tangible cultural heritage during armed conflict. Building on a previous account of the value of cultural heritage, it is argued that tangible cultural heritage is valuable because of how it contributes to valuable and meaningful human lives. Taking this account as the point of departure I examine the claim that commanders should be prepared to risk lives of innocent civilians in order to avoid harm to tangible cultural heritage. I argue that imposing high risks of serious harm on innocent civilians without their consent constitutes a wrong that can be justified only in order to avoid a greater evil. It is then argued that damage to cultural heritage sites rarely constitutes the greater evil when weighed against the imposition of non-consensual risks of serious harm on innocent civilians, especially when the risk is substantial. Still, imposing substantial risks might be morally permissible under the condition that they are consensually imposed, even if they are not the lesser evil. However, I argue that even if one has reason to suspect that there are civilians who might consent to at least some significant risks in order to avoid damage to their cultural heritage, it is not clear that commanders should take this into account when deciding what to do. Unless all of those who are at risk consent, the fact that some of those whose lives are at risk consent to the risk of being killed do not make it morally permissible to impose this risk on the group as a whole.

On the Street

This chapter describes homeless life on the street. Statistically, most homeless veterans like Ross Moore “choose” an “unsheltered” life. Often averse to the restrictive rules that shelters impose, they find that living outside is the lesser evil. The unsheltered life includes a wide swath of living situations, from sidewalks and tunnels to parks and forests to bus and train stations to cars and vans and more. The most important “location” variables involve legality and visibility. Generally, homeless are looking to find a spot that will not cause them to run afoul of the law and will keep them out of clear sight of the public. Most people think that the homeless do not have possessions, at least no possessions of value. Homeless people definitely do not see it that way, and one of the challenges they have is to protect their belongings from human and natural elements. Self-care is also a challenge for those without a sheltered routine and resources. The chapter then looks at the daily routine of homeless people.