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Comment by paulryanrogers | Hacker News Reader

> You have to be bad in order to discover what kind of good you want to be (or are able to be).

I find this hard to believe. Somethings may be difficult to learn without firsthand experience. Though I'm not convinced this is the same for everyone or that it applies to being 'bad'.

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Some folks are able to listen to an authority figure and follow through with what is expected no problem.

Some folks might not trust those authority figures and their advice. For those, doing wrong and discovering you don’t like it is a hard won life lesson.

Along a similar line, I’ve heard it say that if you consider yourself a peaceful person but are not actually capable of great violence, then are you actually peaceful or simply harmless? If you’re not capable of doing wrong perhaos you’re not good, simply neutral “robot” entity confined to your programming.

> Along a similar line, I’ve heard it say that if you consider yourself a peaceful person but are not actually capable of great violence, then are you actually peaceful or simply harmless?

Why not both peaceful and harmless (for the moment)? This is a function of time. I don't think it's possible to make that statement without supplying the time parameter.

Also, I don't think peaceful people are not capable of great violence. It's about choice. I'm capable of violence, but I choose to not use that capability.

It's not simply a choice. I know that I am capable of terrible things, if pushed. I know because I've done plenty of stuff I am not proud of.

Avoiding guilt, or reprisals, doesn't make me "good".

All this reminded me of this fantastic Stargate SG-1 episode: https://stargate.fandom.com/wiki/Absolute_Power

> Some folks might not trust those authority figures and their advice.

Part of this might be just normal human nature; but a big part of it is that authority figures are often simply not reliable. They set and enforce rules based on fears, or their own convenience, or their own pride or status instead of actually making rules which are for the benefit of the person under authority.

I don't think there's such a thing as a human incapable of violence, given the right situation. Check out the reaction of every other mammal on the planet when cornered in a life-threatening situation. Many are incapable of effective violence, but as a last resort it's hardwired. Being a peaceful person on a daily basis is a measure of how socialized you are and how much negotiation and compromise you're capable of, but that in turn is a measure of your ability to evaluate risk and threat in a sane, socialized way. Non-peaceful people are in some ways reacting to everything as if it were a threat to their lives.

Harmlessness and peaceability are orthogonal to each other. One can be violent and harmless just as easily as peaceable and dangerous.

They’re using the word “bad” as shorthand for deviance, because people often view all deviance as bad. I can’t imagine someone going through adolescence without deviating from their own or other people’s expectations and learning something from it— be it about life, themselves, their relationships, or even deviance itself. However, I obviously can’t see into other peoples minds, and my experience was far more deviant than most, so it’s not a representative point of comparison. I do think testing boundaries by defying rules and expectations, even in pretty benign ways, is a pretty normal part of adolescence, and I think by labeling that “bad” the author was trying to elicit a similar response: “well if it’s beneficial, is it truly bad?”

Being bad, in its most salient forms, has a greater power than being good to jolt you out of a complacent life lived around the question how, and thereby make you consider the question why instead.

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