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Comment by pan69 | Hacker News Reader

The world we live in is a super complex ecosystem of geopolitical, historical and cultural relationships and differences.

To make sense of this complex world we create simplified narratives for ourselves, whether through movies or daily new broadcasts, whatever. Its easier to think in terms of good guys vs bad guys but in reality there are no good guys and bad guys. As the article says "Nobody thinks they’re doing evil". Ones freedom fighter is another ones terrorist.

We're pretty much all capable of being charitable/thoughtful while at the same time regurgitate a false narrative to advance our political opinions/careers or perform self serving interests or even criminal behaviour.

Humans self righteous beings.

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There are many people who intentionally choose to act purely selfishly and not in good faith, to maximize personal gain. I met many of these types in SV, and I imagine they get much worse on wall street and in military industrial circles. Call it what you will, but these people don't have any illusions of being benevolent or fair.

The toughest one is when you see someone who, for instance, is living beyond their means and because of it they 'have to' do something unpalatable at work. They have walked into the trap and pulled the door closed behind them.

But I've also worked with many engineers whose actions and self-image don't align. When time is tight they'll participate in hand-wringing over all the tech debt we have, but the moment there's a gap in the schedule they "don't know what to work on". If you really meant it when you said "if only we had more time" then why don't you have a hit list? I don't think they're lying, or evil. They're just deluding themselves about their principles.

> why don't you have a hit list? I don't think they're lying, or evil. They're just deluding themselves about their principles.

I rather think the answer is simply that they aren't very organized. Nobody likes technical debt, but unless you're organized enough to make entries in your 'hit list' while they're bugging you, you'll inevitably forget the specifics.

When I mentioned SV, I was referring to investors, many of which are sociopaths. I'm not talking about engineers that subconsciously take shortcuts.

you could use that argument to defend hitler, after all, he did lift Germany's economics in a way that no one else could.

There's certainly a grey area, but there are also non-grey areas, and we need to make sure we're clear on those non-grey areas.

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