Fair enough; I certainly wouldn't purposefully hurt anyone (at least not nowadays), and I don't know that I'm willing to extend the benefit of the doubt to Ponzi, but I have certainly done things that have hurt people transitively, or done things that are somewhat self-serving that I convince myself are good for the other person.

I'd like to think I haven't really done anything like that since I was a teenager, but as you said, cognitive dissonance is amazing. It's entirely possible that I do things all the time that are horrible.