One thing that has been on my mind for a long time is distinction between naughty and evil. I used to define evil as “knowingly doing the wrong thing,” but it occurs to me that there are times when wrong thing done doesn't harm anyone and does not qualify as evil.

In the film Hackers we see the distinction between the two. The protagonists are a bunch of high school kids who enjoy hacking, basically, for sport. The antagonist is a security professional who tries to blow up a bunch of tankers. In first case we see naughty; in second case we see evil. Both know that they are doing the wrong thing. However, while the high school kids are harming no one with their hacking, the security professional attempts to cause huge harm.

In Judeo-Christian tradition, evil is disobedience to God. In Greek tradition, evil is ignorance. Both have a point. Wrong actions can have two sources: Deliberate wrongdoing and error. Wrong can be done deliberately and wrong can be done non-deliberately. Both can be a source of wrong things done. In one case wrong is done knowingly, in the other case it is done unknowingly.

Ignorance is not the only possible source of evil; sometimes the wrongdoer very much knows what he is doing. Some people believe that education will solve the world's problems, but we have seen highly educated people do very wrong things. Where education does stand to be a positive force is in making apparent for people the wrong that such people are doing, so that they are less likely to fall for their gag.

So what is the difference between evil and naughty? Evil harms people; naughty does not. Every care must be taken to prevent evil from happening. With naughty, it's usually just kids having fun, and they will grow out of it.