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I'm highly skeptical of this notion. In practice, my experience is that the man who does evil accidentally in service of a non-evil goal, will inevitably double down on that evil as not actually evil and then call out even considering following some alternative non-evil path as the ultimate evil. On the other hand, the man who does evil in service of an evil goal can often be coerced into stopping his evil actions, by forcibly preventing his evil actions from accomplishing his evil goals. This is a different point than the one about the virtue of competence, but I think it's true nonetheless, that in terms of effect to the rest of society, someone doing evil deliberately is better than someone doing so accidentally.
On top of that, I'd say they're more likely to decide they've had their fill, or that some things are too fucked up even for them.
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That's an interesting idea, could you give some examples of what you mean?
I think the reaction to Trump since his initial campaign in 2015 all the way to now is a good example. Let's just take for granted that preventing Trump from becoming POTUS is a non-evil goal - hardly a consensus opinion, but certainly one believed in the hearts of hearts of the people being discussed right now, who would likely say it's not just not-evil, it's anti-evil. In an effort to accomplish this non-evil goal, many people did many evil things, including lying about Trump, ostracizing Trump supporters, obfuscating Biden's mental incompetence, and physically assaulting people who appear as Trump supporters, among others. Some people tried to point out that these evil things were evil, and that a non-evil path to accomplish this non-evil goal was preferable (I personally also believed that a non-evil path was more viable and more likely to be successful, but that's beside the point), but those people were cast aside as evil Trump supporters who were either trying to obfuscate their Trump support or were ignorantly supporting Trump without even recognizing it. As a result, people - who in general don't want to be seen as pushing back against an anti-evil movement - were cowed into not speaking out against these evil things, and thus these evil things kept happening (and, again, beside the point, the electorate's trust of journalists has fallen heavily, and Trump looks like the current most likely person to become POTUS in 2025).
There's actually no shortage of examples in CW issues. The whole trans/gender issue in the past 5 or so years is another good one: to the supporters of "trans women are women," the goal is a very much not-evil - again, actually anti-evil - one of helping otherwise ostracized and denigrated people feel more belonging in society, and they believe in accomplishing this by opening up women's sports, prisons, and shelters to any male who genuinely believes that they are a woman, enacting legal punishments for people who choose to use pronouns that reflect their own perception of someone's gender instead of the person's claimed internally experienced one, and encouraging adolescents to hormonally/surgically/socially transitioning in secret from their family and friends if they judge them to be "eggs" (i.e. people, usually young, who are considered to be not yet aware that they are trans). Many people pointed out and continue to point out that these are all evil acts in service of an ostensibly non-evil goal, and those people have tended to be dismissed as evil transphobes who are motivated by their evil hatred of trans people to evilly oppress them. As a result, people - who in general don't want to be seen as pushing back against an anti-evil movement - were cowed into not speaking out against these evil things, and thus these evil things kept happening.
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