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The laws of nature are far more restrictive than all the current man-made laws put together. They affect every decision we make, and, thus, demand us to consider its consequences before we act. For example, any rational decision, plan or valuation requires that we take into consideration infinity in time, for every action produces consequences to the infinite future.
The first Great Depression occurred around 1930s, and from that experience, Milton Friedman suggested the Quantity Theory of Money, such that Price x Quantity = Velocity of Circulation Of Money x Money Supply (PQ=VM), can be used to avoid future Great Depressions. The second financial Great Depression could either be going on right now in 2009 or will come later. In any case, the current financial crisis seems to have the financial authorities believing in the Quantity Theory Of Money, which, at least, have rescued us from the initial stage of potentially another Great Depression, through the faithful execution of the suggestion of Milton Friedman by the Chairman of Federal Reserve Board, Ben Bernanke.
Post-science, with its solution of value, which is in conflict with a man-made law, The Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act of 1989 (FIRREA), would divide people into three categories: (1) Those who are worse off than Buddhist monks and swim in the infinite bitter ocean, (2) Buddhist monks, and (3) Those who are slightly better that the Buddhist monk by realizing that the non-acceptance of the solution of value by society indicates that the society is still not rational and that anything people do will lead to misery and punishment, except in real estate investments guided by the Infinite Spreadsheet.
The post-science vision can be extended even further into life or computer science, where there have only been small crises, such as regional blackouts of electrical power, Year 2000 computer incompatibility, and the partially automated Microsoft Windows, which is growing in complexity and has become an addictive drug for its users. Society and technology are becoming increasingly complex. Uncontrollable complexity will become the greatest danger to society, far outweighing physical and social crises today. The ultimate solution to unlimited complexity is complete automation, to which post-science has contributed the completely automated software. Again, it might take two major global crises to wake society up to the necessity of complete automation, which characterizes life and will raise our temporary partially automated technology to the level of the permanent and completely automated technology for the creation of entities with permanent existence, such as the completely automated permanent software and life.
The requirement of permanence through complete automation is a design criteria, not a non-violable law of nature; it can be violated as all the engineers prior to the twenty-first century do. However, the requirement is the correct foundation for life and computer sciences, where the growth of complexity is virtually unlimited.
Good and evil take a lower priority than non-violable laws of nature in social science. In any action, laws of nature must be obeyed. We will be punished through pain and suffering, when we are ignorant of the laws of nature. Punishment is how nature teaches us laws of nature. Thus, ethics, which, Benedict Spinoza proposed, should depend on punishment, not any timely notion of good and evil, should be defined by the non-violable laws of nature rather than by good and evil.
However, the Equation Of Evil is practical. Basically, it says that one uses evil to achieve one's overly ambitious goals when one lacks the ability. Evil exists as a survival mechanism for low-ability creatures to compete against high-ability creatures for survival. It is a survival mechanism, a minimal ambition, for the weak to compete against the strong; it compensates the lack of ability.
If we consider good as the opposite of evil, the equation for good is Good = Ability - Ambition. People with high ability and low ambition generally "have to" spend their time doing good. Throughout history there are people with high ability being defeated by evil people of low ability. Historically greatest ambitions for good were achieved with great ability, often accompanied by some "necessary" evil.
The Equation is useful for judging people. It helps explain the prevalent evil in politics and business, which are characterized by unquenchable ambition for power and money. In particular, it helps to explain religion, which exists mainly to promote good and to eradicate evil. The greatest sin for Buddhism, the earliest of the main traditional religions, is ambition.
Post-science believes that there should be a proper balance for good and evil. When evil becomes excessive, religions are invented to promote good. Idealistic practices of good in socialism or communism, which equalizes ambition, are the main causes of their downfall; they require too much good or ability for support.
To gain a intuitive understanding of why there should be a proper balance, good and evil can be thought, respectively, as credit and debt. At a first glance, credit seems to be better than debt, but debt can provide leverage in investments, tie over emergency needs of cash, even enhance the chances of survival either in business or in life. Too much debt, as too much evil, can be a bad thing. Thus, good is useful in balancing evil, or credit, debt.
Furthermore, regarding the good and evil of national debt, nations borrow from the future to pay for their present over-spending, but pretend that the debts are incurred as investments in the future. In war, nations fight evil with evil, and in environmental sustainability, the world practice evil by living off the future. In business practices, since people generally have roughly equal abilities, winning is enhanced by the practice of evil. Currently, self-interest, which is considered an evil by many, is endorsed by Milton Friedman, the leading thinker of the twentieth century, and money being more respectable than knowledge is demonstrated by Bill Gates, the richest person in the world and one of the most idolized persons in the world. Politics, which help fight for the economic pie and is considered evil by many, becomes the most efficient practice of most people, while knowledge, which help expand the economic pie and is considered good, is ignored by most people, who are busy trying to get ahead in the world.
The Equation of Evil can be expanded for practical application in terms of the major elements of each of its terms:
Evil (greed, cheating, debt, etc.) = Ambition (ego, desire, happiness, etc.) - Ability (knowledge, health, suffering, wealth, credit, etc.)
where the study of the internal structure of the terms will certainly be controversial and dependent on the culture of the time. The Equation is proposed purely for its relevance to our daily lives.
The Equation of Evil can be roughly derived mathematically from the equation of total return. %Total Return is the sume of %Monetary Return and %Non-Monetary Return. %Total Return is an approximate time-invariant; quantitatively its value is fuzzy, say, around 10%, but is sufficinetly accurate for applications. Evil and Ability can be considered two contributing parts of %Non-Monetary Return toward Achievement. Since %Total Return is constrained, %Non-Monetary Return is also partially constrained by %Monetary Return. %Monetary Return is determined by the Infinite Spreadsheet, which is the temporal solution of value from post-science. Thus, the Equation of Evil is really a part of the overall solution of value.
Microscopically, each act can be described by the Equation of Evil. Each individual or society should be described macroscopically by the standard of behavior.
Everyone, including even animals and insects, has a standard of behavior based on good and evil. A low standard of behavior is proportional to large amount of evil behavior. Any deviation or aberation from one's standard of evil will be self-punished by a guilty conscience.
To make the picture of value determination complete, the perception of value must be considered. In post-science, the perception of value is a problem in life science, where the intention of the creators of a living system determines the formation or the derivation of the perception of value. Thus far, post-science can only perceive that evil is created to rectify the deficiency in ability. It is a very humble beginning for a subject for creators.
Generally, the advantage of a high standard of behavior is to allow one to associate with others with similar high standard of behavior. People with similar standards of behavior will congregate together. People with different standards of behavior can only have partial or temporary association.
The advantage of a low standard of behavior is to allow one to practice evil to compensate for the lack of ability to achieve one's goals.
In conclusion, competition enhances social progress, but induces evil behavior. Evil or a low standard of behavior is a survival mechanism to help one with low ability to compete for survival against one with high ability and high standard of behavior. However, excessive evil or excessive good could cause, respectively, destructive competition, even mankind's self-annihilation, and laziness and economic stagnation. The solution of value balance good and evil, naturally; it should be the replacement of morality or ethics. The ultimate decision involving the perception of value will be made by future creators, when it is their turn to create.