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Few people play the villain in their own story. More likely they thought they were helping people with chronic pain and justified it by thinking that “more good

• d4mi3n 6y ago
  There's also a cruel irony in the fact that addiction has very negative impacts on folk's self esteem. One of the negative cycles in addiction is when someone does become the villain in their own story. It's heart breaking to talk to a loved one suffering from addiction and hearing that they think they deserve to have it due to some self-perceived failing. I really wish the U.S. would get it's act together culturally around how addicts are perceived, treated, and helped.
• malandrew 6y ago
  Furthermore, there are many layers between them and where much of the wrongdoing took place, so they may or may not have had any involvement in the "villainy". Perverse unintentional incentives at one more places in the stack are more than sufficient to create the appearance of villainy without any intentional malice. Hanlon's Razor is far more common than people want to admit. In this story, doctors are looking for easy solutions they can prescribe in 5-15 minute appointments so they can see as many patients in a day. Management is looking to increase sales. Account managers are trying to get doctor's to prescribe. The only "villainy" at the board/shareholder level could be as simple as tasking management with finding other legitimate well meaning use cases for opioids. That incentive alone is enough to create pressure all the way down the stack and when people in the stack are presented with the challenge of meeting goals, all of them in concert making small compromises within their role are enough to produce the illusion of villainy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor
  • TeMPOraL 6y ago
    > Furthermore, there are many layers between them and where much of the wrongdoing took place, so they may or may not have had any involvement in the "villainy". Or perhaps they had involvement, but it was too abstract to register as obviously "villainy" in their conscience. I sometimes quip that the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to be separated from it by enough layers of indirection. Perhaps that's one of those cases.
• gooseus 6y ago
  I think this is exactly it, the stories we tell ourselves (and each other) about ourselves allow for every kind of justification for any kind of action. It reminds me of studies in confabulation in split-brains: >> Some of the most famous examples of confabulation come "split-brain" patients, whose left and right brain hemispheres have been surgically disconnected for medical treatment. Neuroscientists have devised clever experiments in which information is provided to the right hemisphere (for instance, pictures of naked people), causing a change in behavior (embarrassed giggling). Split-brain individuals are then asked to explain their behavior verbally, which relies on the left hemisphere. Realizing that their body is laughing, but unaware of the nude images, the left hemisphere will confabulate an excuse for the body's behavior ("I keep laughing because you ask such funny questions, Doc!").[1] People are driven by one part of their brain to consume and acquire pleasure/status/money and simultaneously convinced by another part of their brain to believe they are good, deserving, and entitled to everything they enjoy. I see this with all sorts of people who are caught doing something they know is wrong and immediately respond with "well, everyone else does even worse..." or "yeah, but I do X, so it evens out...". [1] https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11513 https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11513
• iamdbtoo 6y ago
  I would also argue that we've noralized the idea that if you achieve massive wealth that is the real success and you shouldn't be held responsible for the bad things you had to do to get there. Most people can't achieve that level of wealth without sacraficing some morality along the way, but when very few of them are held accountable it's just the cost of making billions of dollars.
  • devilduck 6y ago
    Another psychological component is that if you don't demonize the ones who have taken the Billions, then maybe you can get some of that too. Maybe like playing the lottery while ignoring the obvious predation of the lottery system
  • owenmarshall 6y ago
    No one can accumulate billions without decisions that the average person would describe as clearly immoral.
    • no_wizard 6y ago
      I don’t know if that’s absolutely true. Google was successful simply because they built a better mousetrap in search and selling ads around it. The more shady things I’d argue came much later, from what I can gather about the publicly available information on the company and what it’s been like to work there through the years. I’m actually far more worried about what these people and companies do to maintain their wealth and status. That tends to be where things go much much more sideways and ends up more often than not being very harmful historically
  • SantalBlush 6y ago
    There is also the idea that wealth is a reasonable measure of one's contribution to society. This way, any personal wealth that is acquired by legal means is not just morally acceptable, but good for all.
  • smichel17 6y ago
    I am not sure if you typo'd "moralized" or "normalized". I think the latter, but it might be good to edit your comment with the intended version (if you see this before the edit period ends).
• brandonmenc 6y ago
  > more good than harm comes of it I have yet to see any compelling argument that opioids do not provide a net good to society. A cursory glance at the statistics re: opioid abuse suggests that it negatively affects us at about the same level as alcohol, which has absolutely zero therapeutic use.
  • KptMarchewa 6y ago
    Only if you consider only therapeutic use good.
• yread 6y ago
  Very true. Also it's difficult to judge whether “more good than harm comes of it”. I mean: I work in cancer research but maybe it would be better for the world if I didn't and somebody smarter would take my place
• digitaltrees 6y ago
  This sounds true until you hear the Sackler family speak, after that it’s clear they fundamentally detest other people and don’t care about the harm they cause. They wanted money that’s where the analysis stops.