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Comment by lujim | Hacker News Reader

Einstein was a genius, but he was also a jerk to his first wife and kids. His existence was certainly a big win for humanity I don't think of him as a hero, just a super smart guy that followed his passion. Being a good parent, or employee, friend is commendable but not heroic. The word heroic has become watered down to describe people that do commendable things.

Knowing you can be killed, disfigured, or severely injured within the next few minutes and still doing your job is heroic. Dan Carlin's hardcore history podcast described British soldiers in WW1 looking at their watches and knowing that in 5 minutes they would be going over the top into no man's land and would very likely be killed or injured. That hit me for some reason. Imagine taking your last look at the world around you and knowing that in two minutes you would probably be dead or wrenching around on the ground in complete agony, but you still go.

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Are you still a hero if you die invading a country for its resources? What if you die because someone asked you to walk into gunfire for no reason and you did? Is it the death that makes the hero, or the defending others? If the latter, why does the hero have to die?

I think a heroic act happens at the individual level in the moment. It's when someone has to overcome their survival instinct to do their job in a given moment. Are terrorist heroic? No, they want to die because they think they will be rewarded. Where there heroic soldiers fighting on every side in WW2? I think so. Just because Hitler was a psycho doesn't mean that a German soldier jumping on a grenade to save his close personal friends didn't act heroically. He wanted to go home to his wife and kids but in an instant, without thinking about the macro political motives behind the leaders of his country, ignored his survival instinct and saved a few friends. Dying doesn't make you a hero, but I do think by definition a heroic act is when an individual ignores their self preservation instinct with no expectation of reward or gain to do a task that they might rather not do. I think the word is watered down to describe people that do nice things, but aren't risking literal life and limb.

I'm not sure that whether the individual believes there is a reward is relevant.

Example: atheist terrorists -- atheistic suicide bomber, say -- would be heroic because they don't believe there is a reward?

Are there atheist suicide bombers?

I get what you are trying to say, and i think it boils down to how you define a hero. If you had asked me about a heroic act, my definition would be very close to yours, while for a hero, my definition has now become, as you put it, a little watered down, thanks to how the word hero is used in todays culture.

On a related note, would you consider someone like Ozymandias (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozymandias_(comics)) a hero?

Sure. Perfect heroes doesn't exist. Grab what you can learn and keep moving.

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