“Of human beings, none are good but all are sacred.”
In layman's logic, someone who's already committed something bad in the past are likely to commit it again. Based on that logic, it's not completely unreasonable to use a critical point of someone's history to define that individual.
Of course it might be unfair, but the cost of error testing can be high, and your empathy might be exploited. Plus, if someone indeed did something wrong in their past, maybe they're the one who should put in the effort to redeem themselves.
That said, while I think it's not fair to judge someone based on few decisions they've made, I also don't blame labelers when they have good reasons.
Younger folks don’t remember that world. I wonder who of their heroes today will be the monsters of tomorrow.
That's why binary is a good thing.
Not the lightest of shades though, to many people?
I'm sure there is good in Alex Jones. It is very well buried if so, but it probably does exist. I still feel justified in never wanting to interact with him and wishing the rest of the world didn't have to either.
While we shouldn't be completely dogmatic and only consider someone's bad points¹, and I wouldn't say that Jobs was at all actively evil², the fact that someone isn't the blackest-of-black pantomime evil, or the gaudiest-of-gaudy moustache-twirling pantomime evil, doesn't mean we can't discuss their bad points. It might actually help other arseholes who don't realise that they are being a problem, if they see the discussion and think “hang on, I do that, maybe I'm upsetting people too, perhaps I should try a different tack”.
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[1] or conversely only their good points: Churchill was undoubtably what we needed as a prime minister during and in the run up to war, a good family man by most accounts, supported some good social reforms, ete., but he also had some questionable views on race (less so by the standards of the time than now, but still), supported the use of chemical weapons, and so forth,
[2] just a bit of an arsehole by many accounts, and presided over a company that at the time³ benefited from what we now call modern slavery
[3] and to this day doesn't have a clean record on that count
When I look at the criticisms of Steve Jobs or Apple, I look at it in context of the life of people and other businesses, and it takes a lot of double standards to make the argument land one way “he’s satan” or the other “he’s god’s gift”.
It's why when I hear Steve Jobs/Apple is evil, I hold it with the same credibility as people that say Steve Jobs/Apple are the greatest. I.E. With no credibility whatsoever.
You might do well to exercise your self-awareness muscles a bit more.
So what do you do? Frame him as one way - in this case in a bad light. Exactly as I stated some people do.
And what? You’re upset that I don’t value your opinion on the matter because you can’t process inconvenient shades of grey.
Sure quote Lisa, I could come back and quote J Ive - because different people have had different experiences with him. It merely proves that shades of grey exist.
Still you seem incapable of seeing that people have different views of him. That perhaps he was good in some ways, awful in others.
Hence why I will never pay any credit to people who can’t look at, and pay appropriate credit to all of the information. Everything exists in a shade of grey.
Anything else is ridiculous.
This is true, but also highlights an important asymmetry. Somebody who is an asshole only to some people is really an asshole all the time. They're just a smart asshole, aware of the need to secure others' cooperation or more generally manage others' opinion of them. By contrast, a nice person is no worse than neutral to (within epsilon of) everyone. They don't need to manipulate others into being allies.
> Everything exists in a shade of grey.
Both sides, eh? Even grey has different shades. Yes, we should consider all the information and reach nuanced conclusions, but there's nothing wrong with recognizing that someone's "default setting" was to treat others poorly and that others should not try to emulate them. The "brilliant asshole" archetype, of which Jobs was very much an exemplar, has done immeasurable harm to our industry, and a few stealth-PR "revelations" don't change that.
So do what works for you though, I really don't care - that's my point. I care about people who can hold a nuanced view, they're the ones who are going to inform me without some adopted bias coming into play. Deliberately filtering the available information to create a convenient strawman is cherrypicking.
Being able to have a backbone and say a person did good and bad things and articulate clearly what those things are takes courage. Especially when the bandwagon has decided on one way or another.
In this case we're talking about Steve Jobs, so I'll also restate it: People who act like this man was god's gift are similarly holding a view I don't value. I actually said that in my original comment, so you can clearly see my view here. Whether you're choosing to make him out to be all good, or all bad is creating a false image, a lie.
Now perhaps you might be asking? What's so bad about a little lie, why shouldn't a person just round off these people into good or bad boxes and call it a day, isn't that easier.
No, because such behaviours are a slippery slope. Perhaps your own personal life is what someone else would classify as deeply and morally wrong. Then perhaps you'd be the one to hope that others don't throw you into the trash based on the one-line assessment of a stranger.
Change comes from within.
This statement is a truism; it's valid for every person, and it doesn't contain any information.
Based on the information publicly available, my assessment is that he had a narcissistic personality disorder. People with such illness are certainly not in the ballpark of mass murders, but they're definitely very damaging to other people, and they are generally labelled as "bad people". What saves Steve Jobs in the eyes of the public is that he had, without any doubt, exceptional talents.
Since he's dead (and he hasn't been diagnosed by a specialist), there will never be certainty, however.
I'm sure they weren't pure evil either but sometimes people deserve the label.
...But at least he wasn't Larry Ellison.
The category being human.
> It's a habit of the internet diaspora to label a person either good or bad
> Steve, like any other human, is a shade of grey.
i.e. the completely correct but also completely useless claim that there is no person who is absolutely evil or absolutely good . What the analogy is trying to do here is to say "OK, so you don't think Hitler is absolutely evil?", not "OK, so you don't think Steve Jobs is Hitler?".
My point is be careful how much you choose to let people get away with a "they're just human" pass. Some people deserve the labels. For anyone that worked with Steve I'm willing to bet they think he deserves the arsehole label they give him.
> Jobs couldn't pay for an organ. Nor could he pay to cut the queue. But what someone with Jobs' resources could do, according to liver transplant surgeons and ethicists, is to use money and mobility to improve the odds either by going to an area of the country where there are more organ donors, or by signing up at multiple transplant centers.
> "It's not for anybody but the rich. It's called multiple-listing, a practice some would say is unethical," said Arthur Caplan, co-chair of the United Nations Task Force on organ trafficking and chair of the department of medical ethics at University of Pennsylvania.
https://abcnews.go.com/Health/Economy/story?id=7902416&page=...
And do you think if you every other human being and put them in his position at that time, do you think they would behave better or worse? Be honest with your answer.
you mean he was selfish? I'm pretty sure this is widespread trait among humans. Let's say if people were in the same situation as him with FU money and the ability to do that, I'm pretty sure most would do exactly what he did.
Disclaimer: I don’t know if the statement you made is factual or otherwise, but if the system let him do it, then I don’t see the point in expecting him to be altruistic.
Why should organ transplants be any different?
the organ collection does not follow any capitalist principle. You can't sell your own organs even if you wanted to. So thats a pretty bad point to make.
> "It's not for anybody but the rich. It's called multiple-listing, a practice some would say is unethical," said Arthur Caplan, co-chair of the United Nations Task Force on organ trafficking and chair of the department of medical ethics at University of Pennsylvania.
So why do we not allow people to sell their own organs? Or eggs and sperm? Or rent out our womb, or sell our hair?
Do we not have sovereignty over our own bodies?
Steve, like any other human, is a shade of grey. He did some awful things and some great ones. That's that. It neither makes him a monster nor a saint. It makes him a... Human.