Not everything about a person is their public image though. Summing up a persons life like that, even if you disagree with his public image, is just inhumane. Did you know him? Did you ever even see him once?
I briefly met McCafee in this context right before he announced his candidacy. I was using the cowork space to get out of the house. He was there to meet with Kyle, the COO, and what appeared to be potential investors.
Had a conversation with his meth-mouthed bodyguard who started talking about ducking behind me if someone came in with a gun.
At that point I left for the day and didn’t renew my coworking membership. Eventually, what was obvious to me about the place came out. I used it because it was the only coworking option in Auburn-Opelika at the time.
Having been on HN, I figured it was probably what it was. But also accepted I might be wrong…a bias for the sake of using the space perhaps.
Never mind running a con, they were the sort of assholes who didn’t mind putting my life at risk.
We're going to need to rewrite an awful lot of history if our standards for judging people are "knowing them and seeing them even once"
Reading history, I encounter statements about what people did and about what motivated them to do it in a way that is aligned with my deterministic outlook. I never find myself bristling at a historical biography the way I do in, eg., this thread. The author might want me to judge someone, but they don't tell me to do so or even express directly that that is their belief.
I don't think a rule like, "you can't say someone is good/bad if you didn't know them," would result in a change to any history texts I've read, though I expect there are exceptions that I have not seen.