Good/Bad - Right/Wrong

I know these concepts are extremely ambiguous and hard to define, and most discussions we create will tend to fail because of ill-defined words, but I just want to give my point of view on the topic (while also relying in that most people have at least some sense of the meaning of such words). I'll use my definitions in the context of this post.

I think it's very important to separate each pair from the other.

Right and wrong are related to concepts of morality and justice, whether something is deserved or not. It is closest to emotions, and depends heavily on the time period, individual upbringing, culture and even personality and mood. Nevertheless, we can see some trends. Most people agree that it is wrong to hurt someone who has nothing to be blamed for. A slightly smaller majority would also agree that the strong shouldn't take advantage of the weak. But there are topics which are a lot less universal and more contentious, as we see everyday (sexuality, gender, race and religion are the easiest to notice). It is centered on the nature of the action itself.

On the other hand, we have Good and Bad. I will use them in a similar way to "more/less advantageous". I consider these terms to be slightly more objective, though extremely dependent on context and desired/expected results. In this sense, gambling your money away or setting your house in fire will probably be bad. The most useful approach to good/bad is when talking about big groups: "This is good for most" could end up meaning "this should improve most people's quality of life/level of happiness" (if that's our objective). It includes a subject (whom is it good for?) and an objective we want to achieve.

Now that I have defined these words, I can finally make my point: When we are thinking about individuals and responsibility, it's alright to judge them based on "right" and "wrong". If you have a relative who invested in Luna despite however much you told him about ETH, and you think he deserves it, make a post here making fun of him if you want.

But when we are talking about big groups, about governance, about the direction we should all face, those concepts start falling apart and leading us into a society nobody wants to live in. It's alright to blame your neighbour for burning a tree or to condemn the guy who crashed his car while driving drunk. But as a big collection of actors, with bigger objectives, analyzing big groups, the focus shouldn't be on blaming or condemning, but on improving.

It doesn't make sense to chase after every single person who did something wrong (it has been proven in several ways that has a negligible positive effect, if not outright negative). It's not useful for us to normalize laughing at the misfortune of others, even when it was self-caused (especially if it was out of ignorance). As a group, as a society (in whichever way you use that word), we should minimize the damage of such events, and try to prevent it from happening again. Focus resources on improving stuff and enacting positive change, not on blaming people and "letting them have what they deserve".

If you are aggravated by someone, instead of getting angry and replying aggressively, try to defuse the situation and come to an understanding. Even if it's unfair, even if the other person started it. What do you get from being aggressive back? Both will end up angry, spend the rest of the day in a bad mood, and even hate each other and waste efforts and time trying to make the other miserable, instead of improving your own life.

If you have someone who grew up uneducated and ended up stealing your car, hate them if you want, it's your right. If you want to go after them, it's your choice. But if you have 200k families growing up uneducated and resorting to crime, using most of your resources persecuting, prosecuting and jailing them will not bring any real improvement. Letting some go and using a good part of those resources improving the situation of 100k of those families will save and improve countless more lives. It might seem "unfair" to not punish a criminal from your point if view. I don't really think "fair/unfair" is the main thing to drive our choices here, but anyways, they might claim that it was unfair from the beginning to grow up uneducated. Right/wrong vs Good/bad.

If you have a family that made a bad decision and lost 10k, and you can reimburse 2k to help them, it might be the best way to use those 2k. You can't say "if we do that they won't learn" (8k is expensive enough of a lesson). And you shouldn't be angry and say "they deserve it". It doesn't matter if they deserve it, let's minimize the damage. Again, right/wrong vs good/bad.

The same can be said about climate, in a very easy to understand way. It's logical to feel that it's unfair that we, as the next generation, have to fix the previous generation ongoing climate destruction. Or to not make it about generations, that we as small consumers have to make efforts to improve the things broken by super-capitalistic corporations. But most of us agree that we should fix it anyways, even if we are not the cause. We are not responsible for it, but we take responsibility, even if it's unfair, because we know what's good for everyone (even good for the ones who should be responsible).

There is an argument to be made about public goods and about improving capital efficiency by aligning right/wrong with good/bad, and with capitalistic incentives, but that's not my point today.

Don't get caught up on emotions, don't make arguments based only on what you think is right/wrong. When discussing something, remember that right/wrong are subjective, and that sometimes it's better for everyone involved to think about what's good.