alt Hacker News> I’ve been in the car with some drunk drivers, some dangerous drivers, who could easily have killed people: that’s a bad thing to do, but I wouldn’t say these were bad people.
If this isn't bad people, then who can ever be called bad people? The word "bad" loses its meaning if you explain away every bad deed by such people as something else. Putting other people's lives at risk by deciding to drive when you are drunk sounds like very bad people to me.
> They’re living in a world in which doing the bad thing–covering up error, refusing to admit they don’t have the evidence to back up their conclusions–is easy, whereas doing the good thing is hard.
I don't understand this line of reasoning. So if people do bad things because they know they can get away with it, they aren't bad people? How does this make sense?
> As researchers they’ve been trained to never back down, to dodge all criticism.
Exactly the opposite is taught. These people are deciding not to back down and admit wrong doing out of their own accord. Not because of some "training".
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As writers often say: there’s no such thing as a synonym.
“That’s a bad thing to do…”
Maybe should be: “That’s a stupid thing to do…”
Or: reckless, irresponsible, selfish, etc.
In other words, maybe it has nothing to do with morals and ethics. Bad is kind of a lame word with limited impact.
When everyone else does it, it's extremely hard to be righteous. I did it long ago... everyone did it back then. We knew the danger and thought we were different, we thought we could drive safely no matter our state. Lots of tragedies happen because people disastrously misjudge their own abilities, and when alcohol is involved doubly so. They are not bad people, they're people who live in a flawed culture where alcohol is seen as acceptable and who cannot avoid falling for the many human fallacies... in this case caused by the Dunning Kruger effect. If you think people who fall for fallacies are bad, then being human is inherently bad in your opinion.
labelling a person as "bad" is usually black and white thinking. it's too reductive, most people are both good and bad
> because they know they can get away with it
the point is that the paved paths lead to bad behavior
well designed systems make it easy to do good
> Exactly the opposite is taught.
"trained" doesn't mean "taught". most things are learned but not taught