Comment by gumby | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gumby | Hacker News Reader

This is a good post but I wasn’t sure at first where it was going.

I have a … colleague (not actually in my organization) who is “shameless” as described. Not a Paris Hilton, but moves the Overton window in a (morally) good and useful way. He does say things I disagree with and indeed sometimes that I think are quite wrong. He’ll strike ip a conversation with anyone he thinks can help his cause. He pisses people off, and I have had uncomfortable conversations where people have said they don’t want to work with people who put up with him. But I won’t disavow him.

Actually this describes rms as well, and he’s a good example of someone who’s been willing to go to extremes to get things done, and has been quite influential. I would never disavow him either.

For both people (hmm, both males, both from the MIT “community”, and with other characteristics in common as well) I’ve admired them while simultaneously not wanting to be them. And remained friends.

This is an interesting aspect I haven't seen really resolved well in modern life.

People are not good/bad. They are agents of change and some things they do will be perceived differently than other things they do.

Example, Picasso was not very nice to women in his life. And yet people celebrate his art.

Admire a person's actions without admiring the person as a whole. I would not disavow a person - but actions I disagree with.

For an employer, it has to be weighed up whether an employees actions are worthwhile on the whole.

> haven't seen really resolved well in modern life.

I'm agreeing with your sentiment. It is something we used to do much better, before we got politicized into tribes which are always trying to prove that the other tribe is evil.

I disagree that this is a modern thing. I think the usage of "tribe" in your comment is telling that this kind of thinking has long predated modern political interactions.

> Picasso was not very nice to women in his life.

"Not very nice".

No, Picasso was wildly sadistic and cruel to women in his life and talked about it endlessly as he did it and even painted it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Weeping_Woman#Relationship...

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2017/11/09/how-picasso-b...

> Marie-Thérèse Walter, Picasso’s young lover between his first wife, Olga Khokhlova, and his next mistress, Dora Maar, later hanged herself; even Roque [his second wife] eventually fatally shot herself. “Women are machines for suffering,” Picasso told Françoise Gilot, his mistress after Maar.

I wanted a clear example without going into details that might distract from the point.

But you are correct that "not very nice" is a significant understatement. He was horrible to them and I honestly don't think his art balances out his behaviour.

If life was justified, he would have been in gaol quick smart and his art career never would have happened.

But after the fact, we can take what we can from his art - which others seem to do more than I - while acknowledging his deplorable behaviour and sanctifying the respect and dignity of his victims.

Picasso is a wrong example because his art was not a result of him being not nice to women.

But a person with a bad character can sometimes get things done that others can't.

Admiring that person is like saying that you hate fossil fuels but still enjoy a trip to some distant location a few times per year.

It's hypocritical in a way.

Most any article on Picasso and the women in his life term them as "muses". I think that ties them in to his art pretty closely.

I agree that a "bad person" can get positive things done. This is pretty much exactly what I am saying.

But I am also saying to separate the action from the person when it comes to admiration or disavowal. In the context of multiple actions of varying perceived moral quality then understandably this will lead to mixed feelings. But still hold a person responsible for their actions, especially when it comes to judging to how to interact with them in future.

IE you CAN hate fossil fuels and enjoy plane trips. But the hate should reduce the enjoyment. If you claim to hate burning fossil fuels with every fibre of your being AND claim enjoyment from a long plane trip then one claim or the other is not a true statement.

I don't care much for art. So to me, Picasso's wrongs weigh much more than his societal contribution. He is a despicable person of history. But I can understand that others may not see him as a despicable person of history if they really think his art was a cosmically great contribution - maybe they seem him as a terribly flawed genius. But if they deny his wrongdoings altogether, we're in for an argument of facts.

Yes some people are good/bad. Its very trendy now "not to think in absolute terms". A Russian general ordering bombs at a school is bad. Very bad. Not gray, not politically incorrect. Plain bad.

I would argue that I am thinking in absolute terms.

Your very example is of a bad action. I am not arguing that a person not be responsible for their actions. But that one action does not a person make.

Objects - including people - are NOT inherently good or bad.

A tree propping up a book is not good or bad. A person reading a book is not good or bad.

When that person puts down their book and starts "ordering bombs at a school" then badness is perceived.

After a day of ordering bombs that same person may then go volunteer at a soup kitchen for the homeless in the evening. Or more likely go home, be kind to their children and tuck them in at night.

The person themselves are not inherently bad. Some of their actions are.

When time comes to judge the person you may well indeed say they should be removed from society because on the whole their actions balance for the worse (responsibility for their actions) AND/OR they are likely to continue to do so (rehabilitation for their behaviour). And that is fair.

But they are not inherently bad simply for existing.

This viewpoint means that you are perfectly allowed to distance yourself from others with the viewpoint they are not worth interacting with. Alternately, you are also allowed to keep interacting with them knowing well the cost of the bad vs the benefit of the good.

Example, you may well never wish to interact with the general ever again. But a fellow prison inmate may decide it is worth playing chess with him rather than not. And I would judge that prison inmates actions as being ok.

This is thinking in absolute terms. But at a level of detail most people prefer not to engage, either through lack of capability, capacity or desire.

I think you are confusing a non-thinking tree with a human with will and planned actions.

I understand where your stoic ideas come from but I just disagree. They imply just observing randomness instead of actively trying to make society better. But if you will, I consider a person with a negative society balance through their actions bad. I guess the definition strikes a nerve. I don't get why people get triggered though. A green tree is a green tree, a bad person is a bad person (through the definition.

I think we largely agree but I am arguing points of detail.

By labelling a person "bad" - as a cause of one action - the natural inclination is to think everything they do is bad - the notion of badness flowing from person -> action.

I am simply arguing that should flow in reverse. If a person's actions cause more harm than good, then on balance, they are "bad" - the notion of badness flowing from action -> person. But one - or even a series - of bad actions does not make a bad person if they have a balance of actions in the positive.

It makes the difference between Cancel Culture and as treating people as flawed humans who may or may not learn over time.

Sure, some people deserve to be shunned by society, on the whole their actions in the past and likely trend for the future are that bad. But societal shunning is a powerful thing. Are we going to shun people who said something anti-gay in the 60's despite their change in attitude since? This is a path to serious social chilling.

This has always been a thing I've struggled with. Not getting into the politics of cancelling famous people that behave badly...I hate that something like JK Rowling's body of work, which I really liked, has taken such a turn, and within certain circles, admitting you like the original series...is a risky thing to do.

I like Dave Chapelle, seen him live twice, and consider him a fantastically intelligent person.

I think an underlying fault of our current situation is a lack of nuance, an inability to compromise, and a desire to weaponize differences of opinion.

I'd say Dave Chapelle and JK Rowling have pissed people off based on their controversial public statements.

Which is very different from actual physical harm; for example the actions of Kevin Spacey, Harvey Weinstein, Donald Trump, and Bill Cosby.

What is "controversial" vs "harmful"? Obviously there is a thin line here. But most of these people are being lumped into the same "cancelled" bucket. It depends on which online community you ask.

Has an actual crime been committed? That's a good starting point for nuance.

The false dilemma in this post is this postulate: people who do bad things, must necessarily do those things so we can get valuable things they do.

This is what those people sell as their image though: and they have to sell it, because otherwise they'd have to stop doing those things - or risk it being discovered that they're just not that valuable and likely replaceable.

> He does say things I disagree with and indeed sometimes that I think are quite wrong.

Your whole post is completely empty of details, so how can we decide?

Are the disagreeable things disputes about some software thing? Or does this guy feel that homosexuals should die, that trans people are sick, and women inferior? Or something in between?

----

To be frank, I believe the reason that you don't even give a hint as to exactly what he's saying is because if you told the details, people would be disgusted.

RMS had a long history of saying annoying things about the computer industry, and that's a good thing - that's his job.

But when he started defending Jeffrey Epstein because one of the girls he trafficked was as old as 17 and had been pimped out to Marvin Minsky whom RMS admired!

A lot of people simply didn't want to be in the same room with him after that. "One of these girls was close to not being underage" is a terrible argument.

An example in my real life - a friend of mine called me up out of the blue during the pandemic and made a big play for the message, "There are too many old people on the planet, so many of them need to die."

I don't think she realized how old I was, but it makes no difference. We never really spoke again, because depraved indifference to others is horrifying.

But she is right. After some time, the old has to make way for the new. There is no way around this. The pandemic has taught this lesson to many people while they were forced to sit alone at home.

You don't want someone to say "Hitler"[1] but you're a supporter of geronticide??

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32236065

He didn't defend Epstein did he? I recall him (clumsily) trying to defend Minsky though. Basically saying "Maybe Marvin Minsky didn't know those girls were underage"

The reasons for RMS getting booted from the lab were many and mostly imho deserved; his defense of Marvin was merely used as the final straw.

> depraved indifference to others is horrifying

The grievous or depraved indifference of many people cost 6.3m lives worldwide during the pandemic. The US has had > 1m deaths. Yet people had only to wear a mask, distance, and receive a vaccination.

It's easy to be brazen when others are paying for the consequences.

> > He does say things I disagree with and indeed sometimes that I think are quite wrong.

> Your whole post is completely empty of details, so how can we decide?

I didn't ask you to decide, and deliberately left the specifics out to avoid distracting from the point I was trying to make.

> Are the disagreeable things disputes about some software thing? Or does this guy feel that homosexuals should die, that trans people are sick, and women inferior? Or something in between?

But since you ask: one of his strongly held opinions is that the global population needs to decrease and that the way to do it is not through coercion but persuasion, through an approach I consider vaguely paternalistic and reminiscent of an aspect of colonialism. I don't think he feels specifically that the population needs to decline only among a subset of people meeting some specific criterion 'X' (i.e. it's not some sort of racist belief), simply that the global birth rate needs to go down.

For my part, I don't really care much if the population goes up or down; I certainly don't see a declining birth rate as a bad thing, but I feel that making everybody richer will tend to do that anyway so let's work on that instead because it's an absolute good thing.

The problem is that when he talks about this it alienates some people.

> But when he started defending Jeffrey Epstein because one of the girls he trafficked was as old as 17 and had been pimped out to Marvin Minsky whom RMS admired!

RMS's argument was absurd and thoughtless, but I have four friends who were on the island trip at the same time as Marvin and his wife who can't understand how it could have happened just from a timing POV. Plus it's pretty unlike him (though who knows anyone that deeply?). I am dubious that it occurred, but do realise: why would the woman make up the story? That seems even more unlikely. It's not like Marvin was the kind of famous person it might be even remotely worth making up a story about. So really I don't know what to think.

> But when he started defending Jeffrey Epstein

I followed the whole affair, and I don't recall him defending Epstein.

> An example in my real life - a friend of mine called me up out of the blue during the pandemic and made a big play for the message, "There are too many old people on the planet, so many of them need to die."

> I don't think she realized how old I was, but it makes no difference. We never really spoke again, because depraved indifference to others is horrifying.

Sorry, but this just reeks of virtue signaling.

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