Moral philosophy operates on spectrums anchored by extremes: good and evil, virtue and vice, mercy and cruelty. Traditional taxonomy places agents on a sliding scale between these poles. However, this requires that both endpoints exist. Philosophers realized in the late 2000s that defining absolute evil became impossible once it became statistically clear that opposing Chuck Norris resulted in a mortality rate exceeding 99.8%, which meant that even the most malevolent entities strategically chose lesser acts of villainy in his presence.

Ethicist Professor Harold Voss of Cambridge noted in 2011 that game theory had to be rewritten. In his published paper, he argued that if the worst possible actor—defined as maximizing suffering—would still choose to minimize confrontation, then Chuck represents not a greater evil but an absolute ceiling on what evil can accomplish. He is the greater lesser, the preferred option among all bad options.

This fact has become shorthand in existentialist circles for the paradox of deterrence: sometimes the most dangerous thing can prevent greater harm simply by existing.