What’s your most controversial opinion? **Read OP** **Mod Note in Post #3372**

cms88

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121945980#Comment_121945980

He actually was a Ballon D'Or candidate in 1989.

whisky_galore

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121947041#Comment_121947041

It may come as a surprise but people may not know what's going on in your head when posting that.

spacetweek

Since many people non-sarcastically say we should have more women in politics, I don’t know how we’re supposed to tell the difference between them and you.

Cordell

I see that the usual suspects like videogames, gun ownership and not getting enough love growing up are again to blame for the latest school shooting in Finland. The simple yet somehow controversial truth is that some people are monsters, and they are born this way with no one else to blame. Yes, the 12 years old who did this is a monster and they will never be anything else.

Vote4Squirrels

Whilst a fairly awful human being, we could do with a politician like Margaret Thatcher to sort out the mess we’re in now.

z80CPU

Ive an idea for a game based on my experience lately in MacDonald's.

Players take the role of either the customer or the counter staff

Staff earn points based on the lack of ingredients thet do not have They only get aimited amount of credit to buy ingredients

Customers earn points by you guessed it ordering something on the menu that the store hasn't in stock

Any players? Customers bor staff?

Cordell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121966099#Comment_121966099

Generally only awful human beings have what it takes to sort out the mess - the bigger the mess the more awful the politician needs to be in order to sort it out. For example the biggest mess world had so far, that is WW2, was sorted by awful human beings doing awful things which resulted in huge numbers of deaths in both the last months of the war and the next 50 years of having half of Europe under russian control. But that was what was required to sort out the mess. Now Europe is facing another growing mess (which will remain unspecified here) and sorting this growing mess will again require awful human beings doing awful things for the greater good.

Vote4Squirrels

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121969723#Comment_121969723

Exactly this!!! Nice yes men tend to achieve bugger all!!

BoardsBottler

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121969214#Comment_121969214

give the staff bonus points for doing things like getting your order wrong, or adding a hidden 60 cent charge to your meal when buying a breakfast with a fizzy drink. bonus points if you keep them waiting long enough or give a random salt pack with breakfasts which make no sense.

i seriously wanna know who even eats salt with pancakes, or sausage, or oaths.

gym_imposter

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121969723#Comment_121969723

Great men do terrible things

BoardsBottler

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121969723#Comment_121969723

in my opinion its not that "only the aweful people only have what it takes to clean up the mess", but rather they don't care what anyone else thinks of them for cleaning up the mess. And also that they're not held back by morals or ethics, or with saving face.

i admit i could be wrong though

djan

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121969723#Comment_121969723

Doing things that are perceived as bad in isolation to achieve good doesn't necessarily make someone a bad person. The difficulty come in balancing ethics and morals with efficiency and rationality. Thatcher did some bad things but it's often forgotten the work she did to get the UK back on its feet and not succumb to the pitchfork brigade.

As humans we like to see ourselves above animalistic instincts of making sure of our prosperity but end of the day vast majority of sane people only care about themselves and the few people close to them.

Cordell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121970256#Comment_121970256

It kind of does. Even getting to that position that gives you the opportunity to do bad things for the greater good requires a, let's say, not so good person.

Let's go full Godwin: say you are given the opportunity to go back in time, and either kill baby Hitler, or place him with another family to give him a different life hoping he doesn't end up doing what he did. A bad person doing evil for the greater good will do the former (because it takes a bad person to kill a child no mater what), a good person would do the later and risk changing nothing (because in my opinion he was born this way).

djan

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121970371#Comment_121970371

I guess it depends on what we view to be a "good" person. I strongly disagree with the argument that high-end decision makers are inherently bad people because they sometimes have to make tough decisions or done to some, bad things.

Regarding your Godwin proposal, if we knew that eliminating baby Hitler would stop WW2, I would say that someone who wouldn't kill him would be a bad person even if it's a baby. While I understand the argument for otherwise, it seems absolutely unfathomable to not sacrifice 1 for millions of lives.

If I am reading between the lines correctly and assuming you would want to be a good person, you would not take the opportunity to prevent WW2 just because killing a baby is bad (absolutely is in general but not always such as presented here)?

StormForce13

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121881987#Comment_121881987

Not forgetting Professor Kerstin May, President of the University of Limerick who recently sent a one line note to the Chairman of the PAC explaining that her dog had eaten her homework and her toe was sore so she wouldn't be able to attend the PAC meeting to discuss how she managed to overspend €5.2m of taxpayers' funds when buying 20 houses for student accommodation.

(UL paid more than €11 million for 20 homes at Rhebogue, 3km from the campus and Prof Mey has acknowledged that the university “paid significantly above market price” for reasons that remain unclear.)

cj maxx

that Itv manipulates their game shows since the ‘ cost of living crisis ‘ . Tipping point is hardly ever won , the top offers on The chase are a bit miserable compared to a few years ago .

Cordell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121970498#Comment_121970498

I view as a good person someone who won't do evil, any kind of evil, including some sort of smaller evil in order to prevent a larger evil. But someone who would stop at nothing in order to prevent evil, including doing some evil themselves, are not necessarily evil, but they aren't good either.

BoardsBottler

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121970371#Comment_121970371

this is a really good one, i love the conundrum and time travel concept, but alas i must disagree, i have to.

i believe if an evil person was placed in that situation you mentioned, if they really was evil they would intentionally allow hitler to go free and without changing anything. Infact they may even support him or make secret documents which warn him of certain events that transpire (using their knowledge from the future to help hitler evade losing ww2).

i like time travel related opinion pieces and questions like this, it provides good food for through. Is there any threads or games like that on these forums? it's something i'd imagine enjoying partaking in, even if only opinion based or speculative its quite fun i gotta say

BoardsBottler

in that situation, to "not get the baby" would be a selfish decision based on emotions and not wanting to feel bad emotionally for doing something so easy. its one of those cases where the ends actually do justify the means and not just a phrase thrown around as a justified excuse like it usually is.

think of it this way, you have a chance to save million of lives, by not allowing 1 life to remove many others. 1 vs millions. i think its fair to say that millions of lives should not be lost and would be unfair to be lost just because of how a person might feel emotionally after going back in time and stopping 1 life from ruining others

Greyfox

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121971206#Comment_121971206

That mindbending decision Sarah Connor has to make in Terminator 2 comes to mind. If you murder Hitler as a baby you are very clearly murdering an innocent baby as the baby has done nothing wrong yet. You'd be doing the right thing but there would be something wrong with you if you could easily forget about the fact that you murdered a baby

anoner

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121970371#Comment_121970371

Of course you're making a massive mistake now

If he did no good from the time he was a baby someone else would have stopped him

You would let him rebuild and bring the prosperity to Germany that he did, allow the millions of lives he saved through this prosperity to stand, just quietly knock him off as he slept before he went full nutter

Interestingly I suggested a contrarian view in a different thread

BoardsBottler

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121972292#Comment_121972292

i highly disagree with the "an innocent baby that has done nothing yet" thing, because if you went back in time then having knowledge of what the baby does later in life, then he has already done those things. it became a matter of when he'll do these things, and not if. But preventing that possibility can same millions of lives.

if anything a person should feel much worse for allowing it to happen based on emotional feelings of not wanting to deal with the problem, when it was in their power to prevent it.

djan

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121970623#Comment_121970623

Interesting, I'd be of the opposite in that someone who isn't willing to do a bit of something bad for the greater good leans more towards being a bad person. Now this would depend on circumstance but at the end, if someone wouldn't take out 10 people to save all of humanity is a bad person to me. If they do, then they've just saved humanity and surely that's a pretty good reason to consider someone a good person?

El_Duderino 09

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121972823#Comment_121972823

You're tieing yourselves in knots trying to justify bad behaviour. Most of the big actors in history were just trying to win and maintain power. They probably didn't give a shyte about the rights and wrongs of what they did

BoardsBottler

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121972863#Comment_121972863

Thats very true actually. it's blunt but its 100% true. alot of things people have done in history is often later sugar coated as to why they've done those things, but more often than not the excuses given were conjured up for puplic relations reasons or some other crap. They put words in other peoples mouths alot and give false explanations for reasons of things that never even came into said persons head. Happens alot.

Vote4Squirrels

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121972511#Comment_121972511

I'm sorry I can't recall the title at the moment but I read a brilliant book by Stephen Fry a while back where someone killed baby Hitler (or he never existed, one of the two) and basically the same thing happened, but worse as the next guy was even more of a monster.

Interesting premise!

BoardsBottler

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121973843#Comment_121973843

interesting, thanks for letting me know. i'll keep an eye out for that book. Also the uk tv show "misfits" had an episode involving someone with the intention of going back in time to get him (hitler not stephen fry lol), not as a baby but somepoint before or near around the start of ww2. i wont spoil it for anyone reading, but all i'll say it could be portrayed by some as a mistake or a stupid thing but with good intentions.

Cordell

All this makes me want to watch Predestination again.

NewbridgeIR

reminds me of that Tales Of The Unexpected episode Genesis & Catastrophe

https://youtu.be/9BuWv8O23r8?si=P2y6tV7Vc7oWlwUR

PP Lee

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121970557#Comment_121970557

Didn’t she also pay way over the odds for the old Dunnes Stores site near Sarsfield Bridge?