14 ms·

This is not mentioned nearly enough. I think it’s rooted in the idea that people must be either great or awful when being both is a very real possibility.

mrayycombi 2y ago
A certain owner of an electric car company comes to mind.
- tankenmate 2y ago
  Which also raises the contrapositive; just because you are good at one thing (or even a handful of things) doesn't mean you're good at everything.
  - ruthmarx 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - mrayycombi 2y ago
      He's a good businessman. His market analysis around zip2, PayPal, tesla, and spaceX were spot on. Twitter, not so much.
      - abustamam 2y ago
        I don't think he intended Twitter to be a good financial investment. It seems like he bought it for its power in the public discourse. Whether or not that investment paid off is an exercise for the reader.
      - ruthmarx 2y ago
        Born into money and making obvious investments that plenty of people with similar opportunity would make isn't particularly impressive. It's not outright bad like failing to make money from a casino, but it's not particularly good either.
        fragmede 2y ago
        The failures of other electric car companies; Fisker Arrival, Dyson EV, Nikola, Faraday Future, would seem to indicate that being merely competent is a higher compliment than it feels like it would be.
        ruthmarx 2y ago
        What role did Musk do other than invest? You could even say he just got lucky with a gamble.
        fragmede 2y ago
        His biographies go into far more detail than fit here, but even if you only believe half of those stories, he is still way more involved that most investors. At one point he slept in his office at the Fremont plant to get the Model 3 launched. There's more to him than being able to sign a check.
      - Agentus 2y ago
        well he managed to turn the twitter blunder into literal political capital with trump. so it all worked out in the end.
agnishom 2y ago
> when being both is a very real possibility. Another possibility is that being a good or bad are not inherent properties of people -- but only properties of actions. Bojack Horseman explains it well. > That's the thing. I don't think I believe in deep down. I kinda think that all you are is just the things that you do. and > There's no such thing as "bad guys" or "good guys." We're all just...guys, who do good stuff sometimes and bad stuff sometimes. And all we can do is try to do less bad stuff and more good stuff [...]
- GauntletWizard 2y ago
  This view too, is naive. There absolutely are bad guys. There absolutely are good guys. Bad people still occasionally do good things; Good people occasionally do bad things. Fred Rogers was unquestionably a good guy. He still made mistakes, and was very upfront about this. He made mistakes from the bottom of his heart trying to do the right thing but not always having the information (or patience to gather and process) to make better decisions, but he absolutely always made decisions trying to, even when advancing his own interests, take others into account. Unfortunately, there are people who make decisions always with the intent to hurt others. Many of the actions that they take are individually neutral or good. It's hard to get anything done if you don't do some cooperation in society. It's quite probable that even for the most awful people, if you count unweighted they've taken more good actions than bad - but the magnitude of their evil is much higher. Most people are neither. Most people are stupid and selfish but trying not to do too much bad. Bojack gets this, but somewhat misses the other implication - that being good and bad is learned and practiced, and that you should learn from and practice the ways people who are Good at being Good people,
  - SZJX 2y ago
    Interesting perspective, and it's hard to disagree with the idea that there are people who are more outliers than some others on either end, which is just a natural result of any distribution, though I think another angle to this topic is how "good" and "bad" are always relative. Throughout human history, somebody who is regarded as a visionary, saint and savior by their own in-group might well be regarded as the biggest evil by another group of humans. Some simple examples would be somebody like Columbus or Genghis Khan. Those are extreme cases of course, but the same applies on various scales.

mrayycombi 2y ago

A certain owner of an electric car company comes to mind.

tankenmate 2y ago
Which also raises the contrapositive; just because you are good at one thing (or even a handful of things) doesn't mean you're good at everything.
- ruthmarx 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - mrayycombi 2y ago
    He's a good businessman. His market analysis around zip2, PayPal, tesla, and spaceX were spot on. Twitter, not so much.
    - abustamam 2y ago
      I don't think he intended Twitter to be a good financial investment. It seems like he bought it for its power in the public discourse. Whether or not that investment paid off is an exercise for the reader.
    - ruthmarx 2y ago
      Born into money and making obvious investments that plenty of people with similar opportunity would make isn't particularly impressive. It's not outright bad like failing to make money from a casino, but it's not particularly good either.
      - fragmede 2y ago
        The failures of other electric car companies; Fisker Arrival, Dyson EV, Nikola, Faraday Future, would seem to indicate that being merely competent is a higher compliment than it feels like it would be.
        ruthmarx 2y ago
        What role did Musk do other than invest? You could even say he just got lucky with a gamble.
        fragmede 2y ago
        His biographies go into far more detail than fit here, but even if you only believe half of those stories, he is still way more involved that most investors. At one point he slept in his office at the Fremont plant to get the Model 3 launched. There's more to him than being able to sign a check.
    - Agentus 2y ago
      well he managed to turn the twitter blunder into literal political capital with trump. so it all worked out in the end.

agnishom 2y ago

> when being both is a very real possibility. Another possibility is that being a good or bad are not inherent properties of people -- but only properties of actions. Bojack Horseman explains it well. > That's the thing. I don't think I believe in deep down. I kinda think that all you are is just the things that you do. and > There's no such thing as "bad guys" or "good guys." We're all just...guys, who do good stuff sometimes and bad stuff sometimes. And all we can do is try to do less bad stuff and more good stuff [...]

GauntletWizard 2y ago
This view too, is naive. There absolutely are bad guys. There absolutely are good guys. Bad people still occasionally do good things; Good people occasionally do bad things. Fred Rogers was unquestionably a good guy. He still made mistakes, and was very upfront about this. He made mistakes from the bottom of his heart trying to do the right thing but not always having the information (or patience to gather and process) to make better decisions, but he absolutely always made decisions trying to, even when advancing his own interests, take others into account. Unfortunately, there are people who make decisions always with the intent to hurt others. Many of the actions that they take are individually neutral or good. It's hard to get anything done if you don't do some cooperation in society. It's quite probable that even for the most awful people, if you count unweighted they've taken more good actions than bad - but the magnitude of their evil is much higher. Most people are neither. Most people are stupid and selfish but trying not to do too much bad. Bojack gets this, but somewhat misses the other implication - that being good and bad is learned and practiced, and that you should learn from and practice the ways people who are Good at being Good people,
- SZJX 2y ago
  Interesting perspective, and it's hard to disagree with the idea that there are people who are more outliers than some others on either end, which is just a natural result of any distribution, though I think another angle to this topic is how "good" and "bad" are always relative. Throughout human history, somebody who is regarded as a visionary, saint and savior by their own in-group might well be regarded as the biggest evil by another group of humans. Some simple examples would be somebody like Columbus or Genghis Khan. Those are extreme cases of course, but the same applies on various scales.