[coldtea]

Well, hitting on women (for men), hitting on men (for women), drinking, taking drugs, being tightwad, being lavish, being easily angered, and tons of other things, never stopped anybody from being a giant of letters or the arts, a great politician, a good scientist, a great athlete, a great actor, a great humanitarian, a great businessperson or any other thing...

In fact it's probably more common in the great men and women, than in the puny average moralists who never achieved greatness, but also never dared go into any excess as people, and had far far less chances to indulge in such things...

[SquishyPanda23]

People are entitled to like sex and to approach people for relationships that may become sexual.

If female grad students were inviting him over for booty calls I think the tone of the conversation would be much different.

But the claim is that he was making advances on people who didn't welcome them. This is especially a problem since he was an influential professor with power over their careers.

Even for professors, where the natural state for many is social awkwardness, you have some obligation to read the signs of when your behavior is unwanted.

[coldtea]

>But the claim is that he was making advances on people who didn't welcome them.

That was part of my point. One can be crash or sexist like that and still a great writer/thinker/etc.

The other ("If female grad students were inviting him over for booty calls I think the tone of the conversation would be much different") of course goes without saying!

[SquishyPanda23]

Sure I don't disagree that people with significant failings can do good creative work. My go-to example is always Teichmuller, who produced beautiful mathematics and was a literal Nazi.

[mannykannot]

I see that you are employing the rhetorical device of diluting rather serious allegations by putting them in a list that also contains things of no importance, but nevertheless, I am in favor of judging a person's contributions independently from their personal attributes. I will not, however, accept that the contributions either justify or excuse harmful behavior.

[coldtea]

>I see that you are employing the rhetorical device of diluting rather serious allegations by putting them in a list that also contains things of no importance,

Let me add somethings of importance then: one can be thief and/or murderer (like e.g. Caravaggio, François Villon, Burroughs, Jean Genet, Cellini, etc.) and still be a great writer, poet, painter, sculptor, etc.

>I will not, however, accept that the contributions either justify or excuse harmful behavior.

Could be the worse, the harmful behavior could inform the contributions.

Good people can still make great art (Bach for one), but they don't make great art of the kind bad people make, nor do they have the same access as bad people to express those impulses and that side of humanity.

[supernova87a]

Is it possible that extreme greatness in certain talents comes with unavoidable flaws in others? Creativity, depression, wit, temper, outbursts, humor, affection. Would banishing some also eliminate the others?

Lots of amazing writers, poets, scientists, are terribly flawed, depressed, tortured souls. Hell, even we here on HN debate every day the ridiculous company founders and VCs whose behavior creates interesting enterprises but leads to inevitable problems later.

We seem to want saints who pique our attention, stimulate our fancy, and amuse/entertain us. But as some witty person said, living in heaven with the saints would be worse than hell.

[zorked]

"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him."

People who actually achieve something are just subject to more scrutiny.

Also changing social mores means you are almost guaranteed to have done something improper if you have been publicly exposed for several decades.

[smhost]

well, i don't know if either of you have been paying attention to anything that's been happening the past several decades, but there's an inherent problem with the codification of offensiveness. if everything's just a bunch of offensive meaningless shit (mormon amusement parks and dragon dildos or whatever), then you run into problems with the the moral relativism of offensiveness (or, in your case, sexual assault) itself becoming some kind of heroic righteous category.

so which is it? should sexual assault be condemned, or should it be celebrated, like you're doing here? to be clear, i care less about where you stand than i care that you pick a fucking stance.

[supernova87a]

I wasn't commenting about those allegations, I was replying to the parent comment about creative types who have extremes of personality.

I personally have no knowledge of those serious claims. I don't read in any reports here or elsewhere that Harold Bloom came close to perpetrating sexual assault. Do you, or do you have personal knowledge? If not maybe you should think about your own relativism as you try to turn every possible act by a person you don't know into a rallying cry to fuel your righteous indignation?

I was commenting that the people who have the most creativity often display severe personality flaws. I wasn't excusing anything. Seems like you're quite angry?

[LeonB]

People in power are the only ones who have opportunities to abuse power. People who are given power and abuse that power should have that power taken away from them. There’s plenty of other people who will fill their role.

[coldtea]

And what if they people who "are given power and abuse that power" are still by far the best for the role?

One can imagine a politician who is a thief for example, stealing public money or who uses the state to harm his personal enemies, but is still a genius of public policy, great for steering the economy, a great leader at war, and so on. In the end, the amount of money they stole e.g. (in the case of the embezzler) is insignificant compared to the good he hid for the country as a leader.

You'd replace them with some "good person" if said good person's weren't as good?

And here's the catch, history accounts are filled with such people.

[LeonB]

The case at hand is an older man who interacts with younger students. Half of them don’t feel safe around him. He’s going to have to do an astounding job with the remaining 50% to make up for that.

It’s not about declaring some people “good” before hand. It’s more about spotting when power is being abused and giving someone else a go.

A government area very close to here recently arrested a politician who was also the most popular politician in the country (by % votes). He’s now been found guilty of some crimes the scale of which is quite small compared to the absolute scale of the area he ran. But all of his decisions and appointments will now be examined. There are definitely plus and minuses to his downfall. But on balance I’m glad that people didn’t continue to turn a blind eye to his corruption, even if some of it “got the job done” faster.

[emmelaich]

Moreover it (was?) in many professions considered part of the role.

Lecherous / womanising professor is a popular trope.

e.g. Donald Sutherland in Animal House

[DataWorker]

Hitting on others isn’t wrong unless you’re successful, then it’s power imbalance.