Adherents to principle are the enemy

There was a story about 20 years ago of a woman who was pregnant with
something like six children. The womans doctor told her that, without
intervention, it was very likely that all of the children were going to die. He
advised her that if she would grant him permission to euthanize one of the
children, the other five would likely survive.
She refused, and as the doctor predicted, all of the babies died.
This is women [and many men] in a nutshell. Hysterical adherents to principle.
They recognize that sometimes adherence to their principles results in the
greater suffering of others, but theyre unwilling to stray from the principles. In
this case, the principle of never killing ones child.
Her:
Doctor:
Her:

The thought of killing one of my babies makes me feel terrible.

But theyre all going to die if we dont.
Theyll pull through, I know it.

You see, to this woman, it doesnt matter that professional opinion instructs her
about the net loss in life should she choose not to euthanize one of her children,
because the thought of directly sacrificing one of her children upsets her more
than the thought of being indirectly responsible for all of their deaths.
Does she want all six of her children to die? Of course not. She wants all of them
to survive. The problem is that her brain is wired such that it accumulates far
more stress from the concept of killing someone than the concept of letting them
die. This disparity in chemical consequences is so extreme that she is incapable
of making rational decisions.
If our goal is to orchestrate a society that maximises the wellbeing of its
inhabitants, then we must understand women like the one mentioned above as
evil.
But dont you see, she loves her children too much to ever imagine killing one of
them!
Im sure she does love them. But evidently her love for them is weak enough that
shes willing to roll the dice and have all of them die just so she doesnt have to
live with the emotional consequences of having directly killed one of them. She is
unswayed by the argument for human flourishing under the circumstances that it
conflicts with her principles.
This womans actions were evil. That is a mathematically true statement.
She figuratively closed her eyes and plugged her ears to the reality of the
situation. Rather than accepting the reality and making the choice that would
result in the greater proliferation of human life, she rejected reality in order to
save her peace of mind. I know that theyll all survive. Im sure of it.
That is evil.

We think of evil people as those who takes pleasure in the harm of others. As
well we should. But I think we need to expand our understanding of evil to
include those who reject utilitarianism.
These could be perfectly polite, law-abiding citizens, who take no pleasure in the
harm of others. But if their behaviour results in a net-negative outcome on the
rest of society, we have to call them for what they are; unfit for society.
Lets say that we have two people. One is a sociopath who functions relatively
normally, has a minor fondness for the harm of others, and in a given lifetime is
likely to kill an average of two people. The other is a guy who also functions
relatively normally and is a pretty popular, sociable person. But his behaviour is
such that he clings strongly to principles and is therefore likely in a given lifetime
to indirectly cause the deaths of two people. For example, he could be obsessed
with performing compulsive rituals which make him a danger on the road. Or he
could be so attached to honouring the death of a family member that he refuses
to offer an inhaler to a person in need because that inhaler was passed on to him
by his deceased family member.
We can think of peoples adherence to principles as cute or sentimental. And
sometimes they are. But we have to be honest about the fact that a harmful
action is a harmful action, regardless of the intent of the perpetrator. So while we
would characterize the sociopath as evil and the compulsive ritual guy as
benevolent. The reality is that both of them are evil. Yes, the compulsive ritual
guy doesnt seek the harm of others, but he IS complicit in their harm for the
sake of fulfilling a duty to principle.
If it was possible to mathematically compute the level of menace that a given
persons life would unleash upon the world, and it computed that a sociopath
and a principle adherent would unleash the exact same level of menace, I
believe that we should identify them as equally evil.