Long time ago I was reading translated accounts of Rwandan Hutu's that had participated in the 1993 genocide. One in particular had stuck with me; one account of a man that had murdered his childhood friend. As he described it, standing there having gutting and dismembers the man he had grown up side by side with, he had a sense of exhilaration. With all the wealth he thought of the wealth he had now, a tin roof, cattle, all those things he could take from his dead friend... he realized he didn't need God.

And then he went to bed, like millions of others, proud of what he had done. Proud of fighting off an unarmed, defenseless 'cockroach' whom just months ago he called brother. What he had done wasn't evil. It was only later that the regret came. For the longest time I wondered how someone could get down to that level of hate.

And then it happened to me.

I commuted by train and occasionally there's collisions. There was one that late night, 11:00pm or so. I was exhausted, hungry, and just wanted to go home when we were told that we would have to board a shuttle bus due to a collision on the track and that just made my dark mood all the more worse.

The busses take us along side the track and in the dim darkness I could see the flashing lights of EMS and police. And the covered chunks of what was left after a person is hit by a train going 30 mph. And you know what?

It delighted me. Here was this man that had just died, but he had made me some minutes late and I genuinely felt that was exactly what he deserved, that his death was karmic justice for causing inconvenience to me. And I imagined his wife's world being destroyed when she learned of her beloved partner's death. And I imagined her falling apart and being unable to raise her children, leading them also to a path of complete self destruction, and her choking on all the despair. And it made me happy. The happiest I had been the whole week, because in my mind that was exactly what they all deserved for the unforgivable sin of making me a little bit late.

Then I went home, went to bed. And didn't think about it again for years.

Does it make me an evil person? And there, in trying to answer, lies the problem. Because a part of me says, no I'm not because it was just a fleeting moment of thought. But if I can justify that, then who exactly goes through to bed twirling their mustaches and count themselves among the forces of evil doers?

Did anyone that that goaded a suicidal Shaun Dykes, a 17 old boy, to jump down to his death think themselves evil?

Did the men of the Khmer Rogue believe themselves to be evil as they dragged their countrymen to be murdered in the killing fields?

Did the Imperial Japanese soldiers of Unit 731 view themselves to be evil as they vivisected people alive and awake in the name of science?

I don't know. I can't even say for certainty whether I am evil or not. I just know that I can make any of a million and one excuses to justify anything.

And that leads me to wonder how many excuses an AGI can come up with.