4 ms·
If I punch you in the face and then apologize to 10 other people for hitting you, it doesn't make me a good person nor have I in any way made up
by cbr 12y ago
If I punch you in the face and then
apologize to 10 other people for
hitting you, it doesn't make me a
good person nor have I in any way
made up for wronging you.
If you punch me in the face and then apologize to me, your apologizing isn't enough to make you a good person or make up for punching me. So say instead you punch me in the face, and then dive into the river and save someone from drowning. While rescuing them doesn't make it up to me, it's still enough of a good thing that "gnaritas punches cbr in the face and saves X from drowning" is better than "gnaritas does nothing".
But maybe we're just getting into the semantics of what it means to "make up for" or "excuse" wrongs.
- mikeash 12y agoBut there's no reason to combine the two. There are two separate statements: 1) gnaritas punches cbr in the face 2) gnaritas saves X from drowning. Unless you have a really weird mutation, you can do one without doing the other. If you happen to do both, that means you're a lifesaving asshole, not that you're a good person when you add it up.
- gnaritas 12y agoI'm glad someone gets it. Morals aren't math, goods don't offset bads.
- cbr 12y agoIn many real situations good and bad things come together. For example, upthread we were talking about Gates (a) doing some aggressive, mean, and anticompetitive things to make a lot of money which (b) he now donates to do very valuable things. In his case (b) really was dependent on (a); if Microsoft hadn't made lots of money Gates wouldn't have been able to donate so much.
- gnaritas 12y ago> In many real situations good and bad things come together. Completely irrelevant to the points being made. No one is denying that.