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Comment by anovaskulk | Hacker News Reader

No, most people are not basically good, not really. It is an illusion of goodnes that they give off, due to their indifference, and their going with the flow. If the flow is good, the illusion is maintained, and all is well. But when push come to shove, they will show how little they really care.

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You're more pessimistic about people than their behavior in day-to-day reality warrants. We're not worried about intrinsic goodness, nor about goodness in extreme circumstances. We're only worried about effective goodness in normal circumstances. Can you ask someone to watch your stuff? Yes, you can. Whatever the reason, the vast majority of people can be trusted in the vast majority of circumstances. There are few that will simply let someone take your stuff when you ask them to watch it for you.

  when push come to shove

Push doesn't come to shove. When someone threatens them, they may as well have threatened you. When there's a sudden flood, accident or any other unlikely incident, then you're often no worse off having someone else watch your stuff.

I basically agree with you, but don't think you should worry about someone else coming and taking the laptop. It's the person you asked to watch it that knows you are gone, if anyone, it's they that would get up, take the laptop, and go.

But I think that risk is fairly small if you pick the right person. Ideally someone else with a laptop. They're likely not going anywhere, and they clearly already have a laptop...

I'm sorry, I did not mean to suggest otherwise. The illusion indeed is maintained in the vast majority of cases.

Yes, but whether it is an illusion is irrelevant for the purposes of this discussion. And to wander off into more philosophical territory: if you say it is an illusion, you suggest that there is an intrinsic, below-the-veil-of-illusion, goodness in people. That warrants a huge discussion in itself. I would argue there is no such thing: what we are talking about here is 'the' goodness of people. There is no illusion. That they don't behave equally good in different circumstances is not because they are intrinsically less-than-good: it's because the exact same human characteristics simply give rise to different behavior in different circumstances. The motivation/inclination of people to behave in a certain way is not due intrinsic 'goodness', but due to a variety of other intrinsic characteristics, such as 'fearfulness'.

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