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Comment by cat199 | Hacker News Reader

> These people are not brilliant. They are utterly deceitful.

these two things are not mutually exclusive. one implies intelligence/skill, the other implies honesty/sound ethical principles.

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I think that's only true if a) "brilliant" is seen as a neutral term, and b) there's no relationship between intelligence and ethics. But I think both of those are false.

If you look at the the synonyms, it's clear that "brilliant" has strong positive connotations. And a lot of ethics are essentially recognizing that actions which might be rewarding in the short term are in the long term detrimental.

I looked at the synonyms and I have to disagree with your opinion. Can you elaborate on which synonyms gave you this impression?

Probably the synonyms in definition 3 here, like splendid, marvelous, wonderful, awesome? https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english-thesaur...

When I search Google for "brilliant" it gives these: "gifted, talented, virtuoso, genius, accomplished, ingenious, masterly, inventive, creative; intelligent, bright, clever, smart, astute, acute, brainy, intellectual, profound; skillful, able, expert, adept, elite, superior, crack, choice, first-class, first-rate, excellent; educated, scholarly, learned, erudite, cerebral; precocious". It cites that to english.oxforddictionaries.com.

And maybe three of those could lean towards morality. Someone could be a gifted sniper, a talented warmonger, an evil genius, an accomplished pick pocket, a creative criminal, an educated Ponzi scheme operator, or a profound mass murderer.

My point is that it's not a socially neutral term. Those are almost all positive associations in the synonyms.

I also think most of your phrases aren't things people would actually write, in that the adjective tone is dissonant with the noun. The one exception is evil genius, where I think the dissonance is the point.

Totally disagree. People like Mao, Stalin, Hitler, etc were brilliant men. They were evil, but they were brilliant. Ted Kazcynski and many other criminals are also considered brilliant.

Mao, Stalin, and Hitler weren't brilliant at anything except being ambitious, amoral, and rather deluded. Their only real talents were a flair for populist rhetoric and a knack for brutally eliminating and repressing political opposition using methods that morally normal people recoil from.

None was particularly effective as a military commander - which is something we should be grateful for, because if the Nazis had been ruled by someone with the military skills of Napoleon or Julius Caesar we'd all be fluent in German and xenophobia.

In fact they all did huge physical and psychological damage to their countries - something a genuinely brilliant political leader would have avoided.

I think they were intelligent, sure. But as I said, I think brilliant has a positive connotation, where intelligent is more neutral.

I'm seeing this sort of thing often these days. People absolutely insist on taking a moral stand on the flimsiest of situations. Not everything is a value judgement for Christ's sake, sometimes words just mean what they mean!

Brilliant is quite commonly used to mean "very good" or "excellent" in the UK, so it is not unreasonable to assume there is some value judgement implied.

Being “very good at marketing” also doesn’t mean “honest at marketing”.

I too would prefer it if every professional had the same moral compass you and I have; but that is a separate issue. Hence why people can be both successful and arguably immoral.

Marketing is pretty much dishonest by definition.

It's not. There is a commercial for a hospital next to my house. On it is a photo of one of their best doctors (very well known and respected), saying "I work for this hospital because they enable my success". 100% honest. I wouldn't know he works at that hospital without that commercial and would never visit him without it. I am thankful.

That is actually a good example of deceptive marketing. It happens that you want to see this doctor, so you don't notice th problem: you now have an association in your mind between the reputation of the doctor you know and respect and the hospital itself. You have no idea if other doctors for other specialties are comparable in skill. You have no idea if the hospital charges exaggerated prices, how their services are in general etc - the commercial is simply meant to appeal to your positive emotions about this particular doctor. And they didn't even have to lie about anything to obtain the effect.

I don't live in a healthcare system where any of this matters. I live in a universal healthcare (insurance) country. I can go to any hospital and any doctor "for free" at any time. I don't care about their other doctors in the slightest, I have my list of trustable doctors and where they work based on personal merit. I always pre-check my doctors on the internet before I visit them. I don't even know the names of the hospitals I visit, to be honest (often it's just town name anyways). However most often the hospital nearest to me is the one I visit because the standard of care is good enough - now I will go a little (2 km) further to visit this one. I wouldn't go more than 5 km out of my way to visit a doctor (obvious exceptions apply).

I'm confused - you knew of this doctor, you knew you wanted to see him, but for some reason you couldn't use google to work out where he works?

Where I live (Czech Republic) we don't do healthcare like that. We often go to the one available at the hospital of our choice (often the nearest one) or the one our practician recommends. We don't travel long distances to visit doctors. Now that he works near me (less than 5 km out of my way), I will switch my hospital of choice - if I didn't know, I wouldn't.

well, surely the definition is something like telling the market a product exists and/or creating that market.

which I think is quite reasonable.

it's the stuff people do and call it marketing and advertising that is dishonest - trying to make people want something despite it not being in their best interest.

once upon a time, I think we trusted businesses because we saw most business was honest. and now much less so, since we see most business is dishonest now.

This isn't true, doing good product placement or publishing accurate test results is also marketing but is not dishonest.

Granted, modern marketing is rarely applied this way so in practice almost all marketing is dishonest, but that's not what "by definition" means.

I don't know what "good" product placement is, but selectively publishing accurate test results only if they support your cause is dishonest, yes. And if you have no demonstrated conflict of interest and commit to publishing your results regardless of what they say, then that is not "marketing" - it's "research".

Marketing is dishonest "by definition", because its purpose is to persuade, not inform.

Is persuasion dishonest by definition?

Good point. Not necessarily. But persuasion of something you do not yourself believe is dishonest, and persuasion masquerading as neutral information is dishonest.

Really the question is - whose interest are you purporting to serve by communicating with me? Yours, or mine? And whose interest are you actually serving?

Not really. It’s just the memorable examples that are. An advert in your local paper saying “Handyman Bob, ${phonenumber}” is fine. However once you start to scale things the rewards for dishonesty become greater (as does your budget to pay for experienced professionals who understand which marketing tricks work).

I diddn't assume causation was implied. Your interpreter reads "." with a value of " because" while mine read "." with a value of " however". If we assume a single meaning value of "." then our two different outcomes (because,however) are mutually exclusive. They are not, however, collectively exhaustive. It may have been interpreted litaraly, as punctuation without prusumption of exclusitivity.

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