Are there good people and bad people?

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The question is in the subject line, are there good people and bad people?

The question is essentially whether there are people who generally make good/bad choices given their set of relevant constraints (relevant being up to the decider) and given information, or whether if we account for all variables, all people end up being essentially morally equal.

Additional question: if there are good and bad people, do you think of yourself as a good person and why? And why would you consider a bad person to be a bad person?(what things would they have to do, etc)

(also, don't be too evil in response to all of the inane options on the poll)

There are awesome people and there are lame people.

i try to think of yin/yang, not inheritnely bad people but not inhertlely good people

"you cant see the light, without the dark"

yada yada yada

Does awesome = good? Does lame = evil?

Just curious, as your statement is undoubtedly true, but doesn't necessarily mean anything for the question, unless you are saying that goodness and evilness are inherent or something.(as awesomeness and lameness could partially be an issue of genes, and do not require libertarian free will to exist)

AG is evil personified in one person.

well, based on some criteria of morality, some would be bad and some would be good, but based on a different criteria, some who would be considered good in the former case could be considered bad in the latter and viceversa.


well, it depends on which morality and also the circumstances, will a person making a bad choice be synonymous to being bad in every case? One perspective may perhaps say yes, some may say to not be always necessarily the case, also the issue is about establishing what is a bad choice and what is a good choice.


well, I suppose it can be a matter of security, protection, a defense mechanism and comfort, from my part at least, into assuming (which would be probably a fictionalization but I wouldn't much care to be honest) that a given person is "bad" or that they can be "bad" regarding their actions, because it would be "safe" and convenient to do so, not to his side but for my side. What things they should have to do? well, things like stealing, killing, assaulting, causing phyisical damage and probably psychological (even though that may seem questionable sometimes, I like the idea though :p), etc. Although some may justify those actions to not be considered bad but a justified action.

Last edited by greenblue on 02 Aug 2009, 12:28 am, edited 3 times in total.

or it could be that awesome = bad and lame = good, and I think that some people could actually consider them as such.


I don't think that to be (undoubtedly) true, given that, very much, awesomeness and lameness are in the eye of the beholder.

There are good people who do bad things and bad people who do good things(all for different reasons such as stupidity and ignorance and selfish motivation and religious dogma etc., etc.) and general labels are so irrelevant that they are fairly useless.

I agree. The judgement of a human being as "good" or "evil" is so completely subjective. How do you define these things? Someone might think it is "evil" for a woman to have an abortion, or even to drink a beer. (Was it in Malaysia that a woman recently got sentenced to lashings for drinking a beer?).

Obviously we need some sort of agreed upon code of ethics and standards of morality to keep a society functioning. This is to provide some measure of protection from harm to the people. Some of these standards are simply in place because they work for that particular society at that particular time. Some to further a party line and allow the holy trinity (the church, the state and the corporation) to hold on to power, control or money. I would like to think that there are certain things that we can universally define as good or evil. For example rape and murder. The trouble here becomes defining rape and murder. Nothing is black and white.

As to whether "good" and "evil" or, good and bad behaviour are inherent or are a result of choice, I believe it is a complex inter-action of the two, as most things are.

There are good people who you can see anywhere just by walking around. Then there are bad people, too. They can be spotted by their suits, or white collars.

There's no grey zone option? -.-

Finally someone said it...

I would guess it's a bell curve.

i miss an option that blames the random chaos of the universe.

choise-schmoise and bad-schmad. we all do what we do when our reality prompts us to do it.

Well, polls aren't good at getting all of the different grey areas in a subject, so having people overstate their position in favor of something black and white is thus generally preferable than trying to hit every weird train of thought people find themselves in.


I am not sure how you would conceive the random chaos of the universe as being morally significant for individual actions. It seems to me that if you are talking about a person that ends up going down a bad path due to situations outside of their control, then the best option is inherentness. Why? They aren't making the choice, but rather it is something that these individuals are bound to do. Also, I generally am more of a determinist so saying it is built into the structure of the universe for this to happen makes sense.

im not conceiving that it is morally significant. im saying it isnt. "moral" is a poetic construct. i dont even know exactly what its supposed to be.

"bad" and "good" comes down to surrounding realities. hitler was good when he was painting aquarelles. then his teacher told him he sucked. his teacher was good when he told another artist he ruled. to put it very simply.

you do what you do with your surroundings. the guy who rubs his hands going "oh how EEEVIL i am!" for selling drugs, stealing cars, or raping people would most likely be severely mentally ill, which would be just another "fact of reality" and not "evil".

Once you have laid out clearly what is good and what is bad you can decide whether an action fits the description. Muslims, Christians, Jews, atheists, and so on infinitum might have a few problems in agreeing on the decisions. Then when you try to attach te decisions to individual people who probably make many decisions in both categories the whole thing becomes a silly farce.