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Comment by cookiecaper | Hacker News Reader

Why are you so sure their intentions are pure or that "none of them are genuinely bad guys"? Do you know the people that were there well? If you don't, you're not really qualified to say this. People put a lot of time into image and posturing and often it has little to do with what's really under the surface.

If they are in actually involved in illegal collusion, they should be charged and prosecuted. I don't think it's sufficient to say the damage to the reputations of those involved is sufficient punishment if accusations of conspiracy are correct.

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"genuinely bad guys"

Here's my take: generally, people and life situations are very complex and the reality is that people don't neatly fall into categories of "good guys" or "bad guys".

Zoroastrianism really emphasized individual responsibility and thinking of individuals as good or bad. This made its way into Judaism and then spread into Christianity and Islam. Since our heritage as a nation is Christian, we have picked up this paradigm of thinking in terms of "good guys" and "bad guys". It also features heavily in our storytelling (movies). It's so much a part of our way of looking at the world that we actually think it's real.

tl;dr: People are too complex to be labeled "good" or "bad".

You missed the context: these guys were being bad and they got an appropriate bitch slap. Hopefully that's the end of it. I'm sure none of them are genuinely bad guys.

In other words, the point of them being "genuinely bad guys" or not is whether the affair should be allowed to blow over after a few firm but loving reproaches. staunch and cookiecaper are both speaking in the same terms, on the assumption that only "bad guys" need to be punished harshly, because non-"bad guys" want to behave well and just need a mild wake-up call now and then.

Rejecting the concept of individual people with persistent qualities forces you to argue in different terms, but it doesn't necessarily change the result of the argument. So let's talk about punishment from the opposite orientation:

People exist in complex fields defined by their personal relationships and social institutions. People tend to engage in behavior that results in comfort, advancement, and social approval, they and tend to avoid behavior that results in deprivation, loss of position, and loss of social capital. Harmful behavior is controlled by ensuring that personal relationships and social institutions punish bad behavior instead of rewarding it.

In this case, that means society should find out what these people did, enforce any laws against it, and (in the case of people who know them and work with them) shame them with disapproval and show an aversion to dealing with them. Otherwise bad behavior will flourish and affect more people. We do not want to be responsible for tempting people to behave in ways that are injurious to others, because aggressive, selfish behavior harms those who engage in it as well as their victims. If we, as a society, do not inflict just punishment on those who harm others, then aggressive, selfish behavior will increase, and there will be more suffering for both victims and aggressors.

tl;dr: Rejecting the idea of "genuinely bad guys" leads to the conclusion that they should be punished regardless of whatever personal characteristics might be ascribed to them.

> Rejecting the idea of "genuinely bad guys" leads to the conclusion that they should be punished

The idea of individual punishment also was emphasized in Zoroastrianism and spread its way into the global human psyche. Punishment is a very natural tool for us but it's clumsy. I would elaborate more but it takes a lot of words to explain a different paradigm and uncover hidden assumptions.

I'm not saying you're wrong; I just want to note that thinking in terms of punishment is not the only way to think.

Perhaps the idea that punishment should always be individual, never collective, started with Zoroastrianism (I haven't a clue) but individual punishment predates it by a wee bit.

For example (got this all from Wikipedia; you can verify it there), the Code Of Hammurabi predates Zoroastrianism by hundreds of years. Wikipedia lists seventeen examples from the code; each example describes an individual punishment based on individual responsibility for an infraction. (Since I can't stop surfing Wikipedia now,) the Code of Ur-Nammu, "the oldest known tablet containing a law code surviving today," also prescribes individual punishments for individual infractions. It dates from the third millenium BCE, predating Zoroastrianism by over one thousand years.

Thanks, that's an important distinction. The punishment idea already existed; Zoroastrianism simply emphasized individual responsibility (and therefore punishment). Thanks for the correction.

If you don't want to expand on that, can you point us towards more information elsewhere? I'm interested in this other paradigm.

Maybe, but we all use stereotypes. We imagine/form/accept patterns and they make our lives easier.

>>People are too complex to be labeled "good" or "bad".

People are extremely complex, and overall, bad or good (in relation to almost everyone's ethical standards).

The sun is extremely complex... but it is fair to call it "hot".

The idea that no one is "good" or "bad" is ridiculous. People can change over time, they can have messed up motivations, or emotional issues, but in the end people make conscious decisions that either are or are not moral and ethical by society's standards.

"in relation to almost everyone's ethical standards"

And here is the problem. Comparing people to the dominant ethical standards is not a good measure of their goodness or badness, it's a measure of how conformant they are to others' ethics. (Enter Godwin's Law, stage right.)

Good point. I'll get the wood, you get the matches.

I'm not suggesting that those involved be vilified or "burned at the stake" as the euphemism goes. I merely think that we lack data on the whole situation, and that we shouldn't assume that there are no "genuinely bad guys" in the bunch just from their public personas. Also, that statement is premature anyway because we don't even know who was there.

I don't think that we should vilify or exonerate yet. We should just sit on it and wait for reliable data to emerge. I was surprised that your post had so many upvotes because it jumps to an irrationally optimistic conclusion that none are "bad guys".

The correct conclusion based on the data we have is no conclusion, because nothing conclusive has been presented. It seems confirmed that a dinner was had and that many powerful angel investors were involved. That's about all that has been agreed upon so far. So why are you saying that none of these are "bad guys" when we don't know who was there or what they were doing?

You'd be surprised who's a bad guy and who isn't when it comes down to the wire. It's easy to be gracious when things are going well, and easy to appear gracious in a medium that you control.

And in any case, I merely suggested the terms of the law be enforced if it is found that the law was violated. This hardly amounts to a "burning at the stake".

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