Should we discard achievements made by unlikable people?

[Anomalocaris]

Newton was an ass. Don't even get me started on Tesla.

One has to weigh the assness next to the size of lasting contribution.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Newton was an ass. Don't even get me started on Tesla.

One has to weigh the assness next to the size of lasting contribution.

^^This.  I mentioned Michael Faraday in another thread.  He was, by all accounts, one of those annoyingly fanatical 'primitive' Christians.  Doesn't mean I'm going to stop using electricity.

Boru

[Edwardo Piet]

Discard achievements by everyone

No but seriously, what do you mean by discard them?

People achieve stuff, whether they're awful people or not. The question is only whether we should give them credit for it. And why give anyone credit for anything regardless of how good or bad they are as a person? Even when someone's a good person, gratitude is a better emotion than pride.

---

Is it possible that Cosby, when he's in the public, actually IS a great guy?  Or is it that he is always, 24/7, a monster, and he's hiding the truth?  Am I a 24/7 monster too, someone who has imagined rape, murder, theft or violence in the past, but have had either the discipline (or the simple lack of opportunity) to keep my actions under control?

?????

The fact Cosby has done bad stuff is what makes him a bad person. Imagining awful things doesn't make someone bad at all.

Acting nice in public has nothing to do with how good a person is. Fake niceness is not the same thing as good actions.

[mlmooney89]

Depends on the achievement and how it helps us. Great inventions that we use can be celebrated without acknowledging the inventor. Trivial things can be forgotten. Lead singer of the Lost Prophets was caught doing very bad things and despite liking their music I will never again listen to it.

[bennyboy]

?????

The fact Cosby has done bad stuff is what makes him a bad person. Imagining awful things doesn't make someone bad at all.

Acting nice in public has nothing to do with how good a person is. Fake niceness is not the same thing as good actions.

It seems to me that you could look at it another way: the innate tendency to act badly is itself badness-- like the start of rot in an apple-- even if someone's never done wrong; at best, we'd expect such a person might be a ticking time bomb, right? But I'm not so sure that people who do bad things are necessarily bad people all the time-- plenty of war heroes have risked life and limb for their countrymen, then gone home from war to beat their wives. So are they heroes or villains?

Hermann Hesse in Steppenwolf talks about the divisions in the apparent unity. In that book, Steppenwolf sees himself as a division between the nature of human and wolf, but Hesse seems to suggest that a human is so fractured that finding a unified individual is impossible. (or at least so far as I've read-- I'm in the hospital now and I don't have that book here)

I for sure wouldn't excuse Cosby's crimes against women. Rape is rape, and it's a terrible crime and should be punished. However, I suspect that when he was educating kids or doing light-hearted stand-up, that he wasn't a fraud-- in that mode, he was also expressing a very real side of his humanity.

---

Depends on the achievement and how it helps us. Great inventions that we use can be celebrated without acknowledging the inventor. Trivial things can be forgotten. Lead singer of the Lost Prophets was caught doing very bad things and despite liking their music I will never again listen to it.

I gotta say that in looking at rape-y scenes in some of these guys' movies, it does affect my perception of what was behind the camera. I mean, The Cosby Show even used to have a lot of sexual education: I recently watched an episode about the dangers of pornography: "Hey hey heyyy!"

---

Like what? You imagine Sam Harris is a notorious rapist? Or that Joe Rogan is a traitor, who fights to keep black people enslaved? You seem to think, that demented sociopaths constitute a much larger percentage of the population, than is the case.

It might just be me. Whenever I close my eyes, my visual field slowly fades to black (it takes about 3 seconds). Sometimes I'll open and close my eyes to see how long I can hold that fading image. I assumed that everyone is like that. But so far, nobody I've talked to has confirmed they have the same effect: for them, when you close your eyes, there is a complete and almost instant total lack of visual imagery.

Maybe I really am a sociopath, like the 1%. I've had daydreams where I imagined someone harming my daughter, and then had a complete scenario unfold in my head of how I would react; sometimes, I get so engrossed in it that it borders on hallucination.

I'm a pacifist vegetarian. I've never fought anyone since grade 5, I've never beat my wife, I've certainly never raped. But given my experiences, I can imagine that in the right climate-- maybe sleep-deprived or very upset, maybe in wartime or when attacked-- there's a real tendency toward violence hiding under the surface. I think that at least part of my humanity consists of a real capacity not only for evil, but for the lust to do it.

I wish these guys could elaborate: really honestly open up and explain how they ended up doing the things they did (Cosby and Weinstein, I mean). I suspect they'd tell stories of guilt, of abuse, of addiction, of insecurity, etc. I also wonder about the degree to which normal or even especially decent people struggle with negative thoughts and impulses. I'll bet that Joe Rogan is about 1 bad day from being the Devil incarnate, for example.

That doesn't exonerate anyone, ever, at least in my opinion. But maybe after all this, we are finally going to arrive at a better understanding of how so many people end up in these places.

[Edwardo Piet]

I'm pretty sure 100% of the population are psychopaths, and the vast majority merely non-criminal ones. I mean, I can't see it any other way or how anyone else could be any different, being one myself

[bennyboy]

I'm pretty sure 100% of the population are psychopaths, and the vast majority merely non-criminal ones. I mean, I can't see it any other way or how anyone else could be any different, being one myself

This is how we learn-- we start with our own experience, and then attempt to communicate with others.

And though you are clearly just try to charm me with your usually love and support, I think a little knowledge might lead you to wonder if your statement should be taken literally.  It seems to me that all of WWII Germany pretty much resulted in a mass triggering of underlying psychopathy. Is perhaps some of Hollywood or political culture of abuse rooted in some of the same psychology as we see in Milgram?

[vorlon13]

Nixon started the EPA, better disband it !!


Glad we cleared that up !!!

[bennyboy]

Nixon started the EPA, better disband it !!


Glad we cleared that up !!!

Not disband it, for sure.  But should he be credited for it with a nice portrait and a few kind words online, or should history be white washed of his name?

[Rev. Rye]