Bum Simulator will simulate life as a homeless person

Quoting: buenaventuraYawn, looks so stupid. The real Urban Survival Sim is Urban Pirate [itch] [steam] folks, go get it. Much nicer graphix and music too!

Hey, don't just go off-topic! We're talking about do-gooders here! /s
:P


Last edited by Lakorta on 13 May 2018 at 1:14 am UTC

Quoting: TheSHEEEPIf I actually did go out of my way to defend the poor and downtrodden Panterra people, and believe I am doing good, I would be a do-gooder.
Because that would only lead to the Panterra people never learning to defend themselves and always require someone to do it for them, it would actually be a bad result.

If you're right, that's a problem. And it's a widespread claim; give a man a fish, yadda yadda. This is the ostensible rationale, for instance, behind many pushes to reduce, eliminate, or aggressively micromanage social programs. There is however a lot of controversy over how often it is actually true. Much data suggests, for instance, that cutting social programs mainly leads not to increased self-reliance but to poverty and suffering.
Whoever's right, the problem is not the intention to do good, but the possiblity that the means chosen to do it may be mistaken.

Mind you, I would tend to agree that a lot of "aid" organizations supposedly helping people in third world countries end up doing little or no good and often a great deal of harm, and so the people well meaningly supporting them are making mistakes. However, that has relatively little to do with the well-meaning people either donating small amounts of money or staffing the organizations at the lower levels. Left to themselves, they might do quite a bit of good. However, the design of these organizations' programs tends to be shaped by their major sources of money, which tend to be either large corporations or first-world governments, both of which have as their main objective not doing good but making sure the third world countries remain good places for foreign investors to extract profits from. So the "aid" is in fact an investment meant to shape the third-world society to its own disadvantage. In short, the problem is not the do-gooders, but the do-badders, and it is not a problem of unintended consequences but of intended ones.

Good people doing things with good intentions can create bad results. But it's less common than many believe. And the Adam Smith myth of bad people doing things with bad intentions creating good results thanks to the magic of the market can happen too, but that is also far less common than many believe. In fact, good intentions generally create good results, and bad intentions usually create bad ones. The problem is that a lot of the most powerful people have bad intentions, and that can swamp the effects of other actors doing smaller things. Being told that it's good intentions causing the problems tends to help us miss the bad intentions that are actually doing so.


Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 13 May 2018 at 4:02 am UTC

Quoting: jens

Quoting: Eike

Quoting: TheSHEEEPBut: What I say is that there is a difference between hypocrites (people who say A and do B) and do-gooders (people who say A, do A, claim that A is good, but A is actually a bad thing once you think about it more deeply).

So, a try-do-gooder?

A naive hypocrite then? :)

Erm, no, not at all. About the opposite.

Quoting: Doc AngeloThat means that only those people are do-gooders that are doing things that you wouldn't do. Or people who have views you don't share. You label them do-gooders as soon as you disagree with their views or the reasoning behind their actions. If I would do the same, you would be a do-gooder from my perspective.

It really just boils down to your disagreement with their views and actions. You don't like what they say and do, and you show your dislike by calling those people names. In my opinion, that's neither useful nor helpful for you or for them.

Uhm, no?
I call them do-gooders because their well-meaning actions (would) lead to negative results.
Of course I disagree with actions that lead to negative results. There is nothing positive about a people incapable of defending themselves having to be kept kicking by another party spending their resources for eternity. That is only logical.

But of course, it is so much easier to reduce what I do to name-calling instead of swallowing the bitter pill that many good-willed actions are actually harmful ones in a nice disguise.

Quoting: Purple Library GuyWhoever's right, the problem is not the intention to do good, but the possiblity that the means chosen to do it may be mistaken.

Yes and no.
It isn't the intention to do good that makes one a do-gooder. Everyone (generally) intends to do good.
But those that go about it in a very naive way are the most likely to actually create or support a negative effect.
So a do-gooder would be more identified by how naive and uninformed they act.
And naive and uninformed actions rarely to never lead to a positive result. Though they admittedly might.


Last edited by TheSHEEEP on 13 May 2018 at 8:01 am UTC

Quoting: TheSHEEEPAnd naive and uninformed actions rarely to never lead to a positive result.

You base this guesstimate on what?

Quoting: tuubi

Quoting: TheSHEEEPAnd naive and uninformed actions rarely to never lead to a positive result.

You base this guesstimate on what?

Logic. Common sense.
If you don't know what you are doing, how likely are you to achieve what you want to achieve?

Quoting: TheSHEEEPI call them do-gooders because their well-meaning actions (would) lead to negative results. Of course I disagree with actions that lead to negative results.

Some people think that all help organizations do good. Some people think that all help organizations do bad. Both are cases that are phrased with superlative wording and are extremely likely not true.

That means that what actually happens is somewhere in between. Some do good, some do bad. By assuming that one of the two extreme cases is true, you rob yourself of a good look at reality.

Anecdote time! In 10th grade, there was a kid in my class that got bullied hard. It was the typical small and thin kid that didn't know how to defend himself - be it physically or socially. For him, it had become normal to be bullied, so he just ate it up and waited until the bullies were done with him.

I was in his shoes for years, I knew exactly how he felt. That is why I changed the school: I just couldn't take it anymore in my former class. Because kids are weird and, well, kids... I somehow wasn't the bully target anymore in the new school. In some weird turn of the stars, I suddenly was the cool guy (took me a half year to fully realize that). So I intervened, and people stopped immediately bullying him. Sometimes it would happen again, but I stopped them quickly. After a few times, it stopped for the rest of the year. Not that it completely stopped: There was of course still some verbal fighting and other mean stuff... what kids do. But they never tried to put him into the waste bin anymore. Such kind of humiliation didn't happen anymore. In my personal opinion, this was good for him. He now knows that there are people that are there for each other and step in. He now knows that it isn't normal to be bullied like that. And he left the class without being the only victim all the time. I think this gave him a positive kind of a perspective. At least I hope.

Maybe he would have fought back and changed his personality so that he wouldn't get bullied anymore. But maybe not. Maybe what happened instead helped in different ways. There are two ways you can stop bullying: By fighting back, or by not being the easy and silent target anymore. I like the latter far better.

You may disagree. You may have thought: "He should help himself. If I help him, I'm making it worse for him!" That may be your opinion. But calling me a do-gooder is just calling me names. A well phrased disagreement and an explanation would be more helpful.


Last edited by Doc Angelo on 13 May 2018 at 10:39 am UTC

Quoting: TheSHEEEP

Quoting: tuubi

Quoting: TheSHEEEPAnd naive and uninformed actions rarely to never lead to a positive result.

You base this guesstimate on what?

Logic. Common sense.

Common sense as in "many people think so." Where's the logic in that? It used to be common sense that the Sun orbits the Earth.

Quoting: TheSHEEEPIf you don't know what you are doing, how likely are you to achieve what you want to achieve?

Who knows. The scope or your question is too vague and there are too many variables. Sure, the result might be negative, but isn't it more likely it has no profound effect at all? That's not the same as negative. It's just insignificant. In the end, trying to do good is always preferable to trying to do bad. And trying is usually better than not trying.


Last edited by tuubi on 13 May 2018 at 11:28 am UTC

Quoting: TheSHEEEP

Quoting: tuubi

Quoting: TheSHEEEPAnd naive and uninformed actions rarely to never lead to a positive result.

You base this guesstimate on what?

Logic. Common sense.
If you don't know what you are doing, how likely are you to achieve what you want to achieve?

"Common sense", in my experience, largely means "matches with the things I was taught as a child and assume are universal laws". It leads to a lot of problems when presented with ideas and people that refuse to fit into simple little boxes.

And I see from the previous comment that we've started to attract the edgelords. Hello, hello. Welcome to GoL.


Last edited by Nezchan on 13 May 2018 at 2:29 pm UTC

Quoting: tuubi

Quoting: TheSHEEEP

Quoting: tuubi

Quoting: TheSHEEEPAnd naive and uninformed actions rarely to never lead to a positive result.

You base this guesstimate on what?

Logic. Common sense.

Common sense as in "many people think so." Where's the logic in that? It used to be common sense that the Sun orbits the Earth.

I don't think common sense means what you think it means.
I will help you:
Common sense

QuoteIn a psychology context, Smedslund defines common sense as "the system of implications shared by the competent users of a language" and notes, "A proposition in a given context belongs to common sense if and only if all competent users of the language involved agree that the proposition in the given context is true and that its negation is false."

I think you would be hard pressed to find someone to disagree with the notion that you should know what you are doing in order to produce the results that you want. Thus, common sense.

Quoting: tuubi

Quoting: TheSHEEEPIf you don't know what you are doing, how likely are you to achieve what you want to achieve?

Who knows. The scope or your question is too vague and there are too many variables. Sure, the result might be negative, but isn't it more likely it has no profound effect at all? That's not the same as negative. It's just insignificant.

You wasted your (and more than likely someone else's) time.
Time is the most important resource any non-immortal being has.
I'd call that quite negative. And that is the best case scenario - of the failure cases, which are more likely than the success cases.


Last edited by TheSHEEEP on 13 May 2018 at 4:52 pm UTC