7 ms·
> This doesn’t mean that the authors of that paper are bad people! > We should distinguish the person from the deed. We all know good people who do bad things
by flowerthoughts 9mo ago
> This doesn’t mean that the authors of that paper are bad people!
> We should distinguish the person from the deed. We all know good people who do bad things
> They were just in situations where it was easier to do the bad thing than the good thing
I can't believe I just read that. What's the bar for a bad person if you haven't passed it at "it was simply easier to do the bad thing?"
In this case, it seems not owning up to the issues is the bad part. That's a choice they made. Actually, multiple choices at different times, it seems. If you keep choosing the easy path instead of the path that is right for those that depend on you, it's easier for me to just label you a bad person.
- psychoslave 9mo agoSeems fair in the frame of what is responded. But there is a concern which goes out of the "they" here. Actually, "they" could just as well not exist, and all narrative in the article be some LLM hallucination, we are still training ourself how we respond to this or that behavior we can observe and influence how we will act in the future. If we go with the easy path labeling people as root cause, that's the habit we are forging for ourself. We are missing the opportunity to hone our sense of nuance and critical thought about the wider context which might be a better starting point to tackle the underlying issue. Of course, name and shame is still there in the rhetorical toolbox, and everyone and their dog is able to use it even when rage and despair is all that stay in control of one mouth. Using it with relevant parcimony however is not going to happen from mere reactive habits.
- j3th9n 9mo ago[flagged]
- Hasnep 9mo agoFocusing on criticising people's actions and being lenient and not judging the person's character is literally centuries old, I don't think you can say it's because of woke.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- marginalia_nu 9mo agoIt's arguably one of the central principles of Christianity. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone and so on.
- drysine 9mo agoYes, sounds right. Because you can't hit a killer with stone if you envy your rich neighbor.
- mikkupikku 9mo agoThere's a reason Nietzsche labeled it slave morality. It undermines people's confidence to act and judge other appropriately, revalues weakness to be a virtue and strength as evil, and demands that people stop trying to change the world for the better and focus instead on their own supposed guilt. It's morality developed for people who are structurally unable to act (because they are commoner serfs with no power) to make them feel justified and satisfied with inaction.
- Hasnep 9mo agoYeah, that's exactly what I was thinking of, just didn't want to start a flame war.
- gritspants 9mo agoThe woke movement in many ways has taken core Christian principles, cut out the supernatural elements, and formed a new quasi religious movement. It has its dogmas and priests, it focuses on the poor & disadvantaged, etc. That's not a criticism of woke, I see it more as a response of the failures of Christianity in practice to live or embrace those values.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- macleginn 9mo agoI guess he means that the authors can still be decent people in their private and even professional lives and not general scoundrels who wouldn't stop at actively harming other people to gain something.
- bell-cot 9mo agohttps://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PragmaticVillainy https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PragmaticVillain...
- chrisjj 9mo agoHmm. I wonder how he knows these bad-doers are good people.
- trvz 9mo agoMost people aren’t evil, just lazy.
- mikkupikku 9mo agoIn real life, not disney movies made for simple minded children, lazy apathy is what most real evil looks like. Please see "the banality of evil."
- luckylion 9mo agoAt which point do you cross the line? Somebody who murders to take someone else's money is ultimately just too lazy to provide value in return for money, so they're not evil?
- kibwen 9mo agoWhen apathy results in harm to others and benefits to oneself, those others are allowed to appropriately label that apathy as evil.
- trvz 9mo ago
- CoastalCoder 9mo ago> I can't believe I just read that. What's the bar for a bad person if you haven't passed it at "it was simply easier to do the bad thing?" This actually doesn't surprise much. I've seen a lot of variety in the ethical standards that people will publicly espouse.
- knallfrosch 9mo ago"It was easier for me to just follow orders than do the right thing." – Fictional SS officer, 1945. Not a bad person. /s
- readthenotes1 9mo agoBut he shoveled the neighbor sidewalks when it snowed. I have a relative who lives in Memphis, Tennessee. A few years ago some guy got out of prison, went to a fellow's home to buy a car, shot the car owner dead, stole the car and drove it around until he got killed by the police. One of the neighbors said, I kid you not, "he's a good kid"
- dilawar 9mo agoThere are extremely competent coworkers I wouldn't like them as neighbours. Some of my great neighborhoods would make very sloppy and annoying coworkers. These people are terrible at their job, perhaps a bit malicious too. They may be great people as friends and colleagues.
- abanana 9mo agoPeople are afraid to sound too critical. It's very noticeable how every article that points out a mistake anywhere in a subject that's even slightly politically charged, has to emphasize "of course I believe X, I absolutely agree that Y is a bad thing", before they make their point. Criticising an unreplicable paper is the same thing. Clearly these people are afraid that if they sound too harsh, they'll be ignored altogether as a crank.
- 1dom 9mo ago> Clearly these people are afraid that if they sound too harsh, they'll be ignored altogether as a crank. This is true though, and one of those awkward times where good ideals like science and critical feedback brush up against potentially ugly human things like pride and ego. I read a quote recently, and I don't like it, but it's stuck with me because it feels like it's dancing around the same awkward truth: "tact is the art of make a point without making an enemy" I guess part of being human is accepting that we're all human and will occasionally fail to be a perfect human. Sometimes we'll make mistakes in conducting research. Sometimes we'll make mistakes in handling mistakes we or others made. Sometimes these mistakes will chain together to create situations like the post describes. Making mistakes is easy - it's such a part of being human we often don't even notice we do it. Learning you've made a mistake is the hard part, and correcting that mistake is often even harder. Providing critical feedback, as necessary as it might be, typically involves putting someone else through hardship. I think we should all be at least slightly afraid and apprehensive of doing that, even if it's for a greater good.
- cindyllm 9mo ago[dead]
- anal_reactor 9mo agoAmerican culture has this weird thing to avoid blame and direct feedback. It's never appropriate to say "yo, you did shit job, can you not fuck it up next time?". For example, I have a guy in my team who takes 10 minutes every standup - if everyone did this, standup would turn into an hour-long meeting - but telling him "bro what the fuck, get your shit together" is highly inappropriate so we all just sit and suffer. Soon I'll have my yearly review and I have no clue what to expect because my manager only gives me feedback when strictly and explicitly required so the entire cycle "I do something wrong" -> "I get reprimanded" -> "I get better" can take literal years. Unless I accidentally offend someone, then I get 1:1 within an hour. One time I was upset about the office not having enough monitors and posted this on slack and my manager told me not to do that because calling out someone's shit job makes them lose face and that's a very bad thing to do. Whatever happens, avoid direct confrontation at all costs.
- layer8 9mo agoLabeling people as villains (as opposed to condemning acts), in particular those you don’t know personally, is almost always an unhelpful oversimplification of reality. It obscures the root causes of why the bad things are happening, and stands in the way of effective remedy.
- circus1540 9mo agoWhat if the root cause is that because we stopped labeling villains, they no longer fear being labeled as such. The consequences for the average lying academic have never been lower (in fact they usually don’t get caught and benefit from their lie).
- tomtomtom777 9mo agoAre we living on the same planet? Surely the public discourse over the past decades has been steadily moving from substantive towards labeling each other villains, not the other way around.
- Levitz 9mo agoBut that kind of labeling happens because of having the wrong political stances, not because of the moral character of the person.
- fc417fc802 9mo agoMost people seem to think that holding the "wrong" political stance is a failure of moral character so I'm having difficulty making sense of your point.
- Levitz 9mo agoThey truly don't. That's just part of the alienation. When the opposition is called evil it's not because logic dictates it must be evil, it's called evil for the same reason it's called ugly, unintelligent, weak, cowardly and every other sort of derogatory adjective under the sun. These accusations have little to do with how often people consider others things such as "ugly" or "weak", it's just signaling.
- deadbabe 9mo agoIf you defend a bad person, you are a bad person.
- perching_aix 9mo ago> What's the bar for a bad person if you haven't passed it at "it was simply easier to do the bad thing?" When the good thing is easier to do and they still knowingly pick the bad one for the love of the game?
- dullcrisp 9mo agoIt feels good to be bad.
- perching_aix 9mo agoNot sure if this in jest referring to the inherently sanctimonious nature of the framing, but this is actually exactly what I was gesturing towards. If it didn't feel good, then it would be either an unintentional action (random or coerced), or an irrational one (go against their perceived self-interest). The whole "bad vs good person" framing is probably not a very robust framework, never thought about it much, so if that's your position you might well be right. But it's not a consideration that escaped me, I reasoned under the same lens the person above did on intention.
- jojomodding 9mo agoTo me, it usually does not
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- pdpi 9mo agoIt's 2026, and social media brigading and harassment is a well-known phenomenon. In light of that, trying to preemptively de-escalate seems like a Good Thing.
- shrubby 9mo agoI was just following orders comes to mind. Yes, the complicity is normal. No the complicity isn't right. The banality of evil.
- boelboel 9mo agoIt's interesting to talk about 'banality of evil' in the comment section about flawed papers. Her portrayal of Eichmann was very wrong, Arendt had an idea in her head of how he should be and didn't care too much about the facts and the process. Not that I totally disagree with the idea.
- shrubby 9mo agoI think this is not only about Eichmann, but a picture of humanity in general. The obedience to authority that we must be able to challenge to stand a chance. Milgram's or Zimbardo's tests we're somewhat flawed yes, but still WW2 and Germany kinda proved this tendency IMO. And that's why I brought it up. Perhaps not the best comparison, I admit, but a comparison that seems more and more relevant ni many cases.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- tdb7893 9mo agoI think calling someone a "bad person" (which is itself a horribly vague term) for one situation where you don't have all the context is something most people should be loath to do. People are complicated and in general normal people do a lot of bad things for petty reasons. Other than just the label being difficult to apply, these factors also make the argument over who is a "bad person" not really productive and I will put those sorts of caveats into my writings because I just don't want to waste my time arguing the point. Like what does "bad person" even mean and is it even consistent across people? I think it makes a lot more sense to label them clearer labels which we have a lot more evidence for, like "untrustworthy scientist" (which you might think is a bad person inherently or not).
- mekoka 9mo agoConnecting people's characters to their deed is a double edged sword. It's not that it's necessarily mistaken, but you have to choose your victories. Maybe today you get some satisfaction from condemning the culprits, but you also pay for it by making it even more difficult to get cooperation from the system in the future. We all have friends, family and colleagues that we believe to be good. They're all still capable of questionable actions. If we systematically tie bad deeds to bad people, then surely those people we love and know to be good are incapable of what they're being accused. That's part of how closing ranks works. I think King recognizes this too, which is why he recommends that Penalties should reflect the severity of the violation, not be all-or-nothing.
- ambicapter 9mo agoThe entire point of recognizing bad people is to make it harder for them to work with or affect you in the future. > If we systematically tie bad deeds to bad people, then surely those people we love and know to be good are incapable of what they're being accused. A strong claim that needs to be supported and actually the question who’s nuances are being discussed in this thread.
- mekoka 9mo agoIt doesn't need to be made into something other than logic. Anyone can do a bad deed. Anyone can also be a good person to someone else. If a bad deed automatically makes a bad person, those who recognize the person as good have a harder time reconciling the two realities. Simple. Also, is the point recognizing bad people or getting rid of bad science. Like I said, choose your victories.
- criddell 9mo agoI think the writer might enjoy Vonnegut's Mother Night. > Vonnegut is not, I believe, talking about mere inauthenticity. He is talking about engaging in activities which do not agree with what we ourselves feel are our own core morals while telling ourselves, “This is not who I really am. I am just going along with this on the outside to get by.” Vonnegut’s message is that the separation I just described between how we act externally and who we really are is imaginary. https://thewisdomdaily.com/mother-night-we-are-what-we-pretend-to-be/ https://thewisdomdaily.com/mother-night-we-are-what-we-prete...
- Propelloni 9mo agoIt is like in organisational error management (aka. error culture), there are three levels here: 1) errors happen, basically accidents. 2) errors are made, wrong or unexpected result for different intention. 3) errors are caused, the error case is the intended outcome. This is where "bad people" dwell. Knowing and keeping silent about 1) and 2) makes any error 3). I think, we are on 2) in TFA. This needs to be addressed, most obviously through system change, esp. if actors seem to act rationally in the system (as the authors do) with broken outcomes.
- locknitpicker 9mo ago> I can't believe I just read that. What's the bar for a bad person if you haven't passed it at "it was simply easier to do the bad thing?" For starters, the bar should be way higher than accusations from a random person. For me,there's a red flag in the story: posting reviews and criticism of other papers is very mundane in academia. Some Nobel laureates even authored papers rejecting established theories. The very nature of peer review involves challenging claims. So where is the author's paper featuring commentaries and letters, subjecting the author's own criticism to peer review?
- nathan_compton 9mo agoI guess there isn't much utility in categorizing people as "good" and "bad," arguably. Better to think about the incentives/punishments in the system and adjust them until people behave well.
- pfortuny 9mo agoNever qualify the person, only the deed. Because we are all capable of the same actions, some of us have just not done them. But we all have the same capacity. And yes, I am saying that I have the same capacity for wrong as the person you are thinking about, mon semblable, mon frère.
- irl_zebra 9mo ago> Because we are all capable of the same actions, some of us have just not done them > And yes, I am saying that I have the same capacity for wrong as the person you are thinking about... No one is disputing any of this. The person who is capable, and who has chosen to do, the bad deed is morally blameworthy (subject to mitigating circumstances).
- pfortuny 9mo agoYes, blameworthy, but not “bad”. Not the same thing. At all.
- irl_zebra 9mo agoThey are very related concepts. Lack of remorse? Malicious act? Particularly heinous act? Both morally blameworthy and bad person! Isolated incident? Not a pattern? Morally blameworthy but not bad person. This is pretty standard virtue ethics we all learned in school. Your statements that morally blameworthiness and badness are "[n]ot the same thing...[a]t all" and that we should "[n]ever qualify the person, only the deed" make me think your moral framework is likely not linked to millennia of thought in this area from Socrates on down, so it's unlikely we will get anywhere and should "agree to disagree."
- aidenn0 9mo agoSome people want to avoid labeling individual people without admitting that they don't want to avoid labeling people. They don't seem to be aware that they are doing it either; I've had people tell me to my face that all of these are true: 1. There are bad people 2. We know bad people are bad because they do bad things 3. There does not exist any set of bad actions that one could do to qualify one for the label of "bad person." I've just come to the conclusion that a "bad person" is just a term for someone who does bad things, and for whom their extenuating circumstances don't count because they are the member of the wrong tribe.