> "[Everybody is] going to have cases where they did something bad to somebody, said something nasty to them and maybe regret it later."
> I think that's a more enlightened point of view.
This kind of argument is weak. It's just a bland kind of truism that everyone can agree with that is unrelated to the original argument - when someone says that some one is a bad person, there is an implicit comparison to most people, ie the "badness" of a person is a relative one. Then bringing up some kind of absolute quality - perfection - is just trying to distract from the original argument.
But you can’t just name one bad thing a person did and say they are a bad person, no more discussion about it. That just makes no sense at all. It’s such a minor thing, too. His wage fixing together with Google and other companies is much more recent, relevant and much worse.
At the very least Steve Jobs was an intensely interesting person. I don’t think characterising him as a bad person makes much sense. This is such a simple-minded worldview.
> I think that's a more enlightened point of view.
This kind of argument is weak. It's just a bland kind of truism that everyone can agree with that is unrelated to the original argument - when someone says that some one is a bad person, there is an implicit comparison to most people, ie the "badness" of a person is a relative one. Then bringing up some kind of absolute quality - perfection - is just trying to distract from the original argument.