People might do good things or bad things, but people aren't good or bad. They're just people. Actions can be good or bad. It's fair to completely condemn the action, not the person. Since you can't get inside someone's head to know their motives, it's dishonest - or at best deluded - to totally condemn anyone. You can't fix a css problem by debugging the server code.
You can, and often must, understand the reasons behind people's actions while still condemning them - but you should condemn the actions, not the people.
Surely it has to be possible for a good person to do bad things (at least occasionally). I think it would be going a bit far to eliminate the distinction entirely.
>How are we to judge a person fairly, if not by how they conduct themselves?
That is kind of the point. Arguably, you just can't judge people fairly, because you never know what's going on inside.
That doesn't mean that you can't criticize people's actions, just that you should be cautious about making more fundamental judgments about their character.
The point is that people have an inner life which isn't necessarily reflected in their actions. Someone might do "good" things all the time, but if you could read their thoughts and see their motivations, you might not necessarily consider them to be as good as they appear. Similarly, someone who's done a lot of bad things might not seem so bad if you knew their inner motivations. Actions only give you half the picture (if that).
You also seem to be making a terminological point about when it's ok to apply the term "good person" or "bad person", but that's a red herring. You can use those terms however you like, but it doesn't have anything to do with what I was saying.
There is no objective definition of good. To someone you're a good person. To someone else you're as bad as a nazi. That's the real slippery slope: from benevolent censor to malevolent.
I can see where you are coming from but if you boil people down to being good or evil (over generalizing), who do you want on your side? There are people who purposely intend to do bad things and do, and there are people who mean to do good things and do bad. No one is perfect and people make mistakes, and results don't always come out as intended. But the people who intentionally act on bad intent are never people you want to work with. To come back to your original statement actions are not what matters in the end (in relation to what hacker news represents) but results are. In the end we all want positive results, but we are all people, and good people will always get you closer to your goal than bad people.
You've gone on a veritable expedition to make this argument, and somewhat wrapped two ideas into one.
Someone's motivation is enough to lose respect for them, especially if it's under the guise of something else. It's conniving to deceive in order to get your way.
So lets say we consider the action a net good, we can totally support the action, recognize the bad sides, and still lose respect for the person for the way they have conducted themselves.
Why should we condemn a person for good acts based on previous poor actions? Or are you just so cynical that you can't take his good actions in good faith?
Individuals are not a complex mixture of good and bad. Almost nobody commits what might be considered a bad action just for the sake of being a bad person. We should not be so readily to apply black and white moral judgments on others.
People generally don't consider themselves to be bad people. Even if they've done something bad, in their own mind there is bound to be a justification for it.
Could very well be, I wasn't there so I can't say.
I have seen good people do bad things out of negligence that later gets attributed to malice on the internet when it gets discussed.
People always drift towards malicious intent but I think it's uniquely terrifying that "good" people can do bad things when the incentives are misaligned, or they aren't thinking end to end, if only because it's an opportunity to admit that we ourselves might make a similar mistake, so we should be vigilant.
Bad things happening to bad people is still bad if it’s done unjustifiably so. There’s nothing really about this story that prevents it from happening to a site you like.
Of course, doing the right thing very often has a cost and self protecting behavior is very natural.
I can very much understand why they likely chose to do a bad thing and I can't claim that given their specific circumstances I woudn't do the same in their shoes - but yes, it is still justified to claim that they did do a bad thing.
Knowing the specifics of the people I'm condemning clarifies the justification and reasons for behaving the way they did but it cannot make their conscience clean. Having good personal reasons for behavior that hurts others is an understandable mitigating circumstance, but the actions should still be condemned by the wider society.
Doing a good thing doesn't cancel out the bad, but I don't think it's fair to anonymously call people assholes on the Internet when they are actively trying, and succeeding, at doing good in the world. Especially when their sins are immaterial things like whatever damage you think MS did to the computer industry.
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