r/AskReddit • u/DrCompenomics • 13h ago

Who’s the best real-life example of “you either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain,” and what happened?

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u/KaraAliasRaidra 10h ago

I don't know if this has been mentioned already (and I apologize if it has), but recently I learned about something dubbed Nobel disease. It's a phenomenon in which some Nobel Prize winners go on to espouse strange or unsound scientific theories. You look at the list of examples and it ranges from "That's a little strange..." to "What in blazes is wrong with you?!" The most notable examples are the ones who went on to support Nazism and eugenics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_disease

There's also Ingrid Newkirk, one of the founders of PETA. She started out doing genuinely good work for animals, but she's become more unhinged over the years. One article I read about her offered an interesting theory about how once good-hearted people become corrupted, and it boils down to arrogance about self-perception. "G-d is good. I am good, therefore I am a god." It was an interesting analysis and it's something we all need to be on guard against regardless of personal beliefs.

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u/Kozeyekan_ 8h ago

I've seen it a lot in some highly capable people. They get to the top of their field and can legitimately claim to be the smartest person in the room when that field is present. But sometimes, they assume that also translates into being the smartest in any room with any people.

So you get a highly regarded cardiac surgeon pioneering new techniques who thinks they're also an expert on geopolitics, or an engineer who was able to completely redefine the energy efficiency level of a huge, multi-purpose building suddenly claim to be an expert on vaccines and epidemiology.

Some of them make being smarter than others a core trait, and struggle to adjust to being out of their depth when not in their field.

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u/VelvetyDogLips 6h ago

This is why, as a medical doctor, I only tell people what I do for a living, or introduce myself as "Dr", when I'm in a clinical setting. Or a setting where, for some other circumstantial reason, people need to know. Other than that, please just call me Mr, or by my first name. I find it grounding for me, and socially palatable for others, to keep in mind that I may be nobility in my own realm, but when I'm in other people's realms, I'm just an ordinary guy. A nobody or very lowly man, even, depending on the set and setting.

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u/Animalcrossingamiibo 8h ago

Neil DeGrasse Tyson has entered the chat

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u/RaymondBeaumont 5h ago

actually, Neil DeGrasse Tyson didn't physically enter the chat, only the idea of Neil DeGrasse Tyson came up in the mind of the readers.

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u/slashthepowder 5h ago

Engineers as well, i think it is the i am trained in problem solving and root cause analysis so ill just slap that on every situation and call it correct.

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u/JokerVictor 5h ago

Every engineer that loses their humility and desire to learn "because they already know it" is an idiot.

Source: Am an engineer. There are shocking number of terrible ones out there. The good idea fairy is a fucking menace.

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u/slashthepowder 4h ago

From my work experience like 80% of the engineers are wonderful great people that i love working with. The remaining 20% are the most useless arrogant people I have worked with.

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u/PhoenixApok 7h ago

I think you can especially see this in athletes.

"Yes. You can hurl an object with impressive power and accuracy. That IS amazing, but in NO way qualifies you to speak about other things requiring intellect, education, and training."

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u/Bazrum 7h ago

That and the actual brain damage many of them suffer from, it staggers my mind that they’re who people will listen to

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u/NearbyCommission287 2h ago

Strangely, a lot of people just don't believe in the brain damage part/think it isn't a big deal. I hope at some point there will be a more widespread reckoning brain injuries in sports. I remember there being a lot of news about CTE in the mid-2010s after Junior Seau completed suicide and Aaron Hernandez murdered Odin Lloyd, but I can't recall hearing much about it since then.

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u/KnowsAboutMath 7h ago

an engineer who was able to completely redefine the energy efficiency level of a huge, multi-purpose building suddenly claim to be an expert on vaccines and epidemiology

Cf. the Salem Hypothesis.

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u/RaggedToothViking 5h ago

Omg I've never heard this, but I am always complaining about engineers! I have a doctorate in environmental science and policy and engineers always come up with stupid (sometimes even destructive) magical-thinking environmental "solutions" and refuse to listen to experts about why their idea sucks (see: the ocean cleanup, which is a straight up scam at this point). I always say it's because they're good at math, but not systems. Feedback loops seem beyond their comprehension. 

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u/JokerVictor 5h ago

Every engineer that loses their humility and desire to learn "because they've already seen it" is an idiot.

Source: Am an engineer. There are shocking number of terrible ones out there. The good idea fairy is a fucking menace.

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u/RaggedToothViking 4h ago

The "why has no one thought of this (very simple) idea" fairy, repeatedly clobbered by the, "experts did, it's not going to work" truck

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u/TheRealSlamShiddy 1h ago

I would argue "good at math" is also tenuous when engineers are involved

Source: I am an engineer lol

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u/ERedfieldh 6h ago

Or a guy of average intelligence who was born into a emerald mining family who bought a dozen companies claiming he knows everything better than anyone.

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u/donitdotis 3h ago

to think elon isn't extraordinary in achievement is insane.

and if he did the "correct" politics, the left would still celebrate him.

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u/Xaron713 1h ago

There are no ethical billionaires, and certainly no ethical trillionaires.

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u/MantiSigma 6h ago

Oh, I see you met my dad

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u/dotpan 6h ago

It's the issue of "genius" people think it is a generic term instead of meaning that you excel in one specific thing. You "have" genius, you aren't "a genius". Arrogance and self importance are the downfall of many.

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u/TheRealSlamShiddy 1h ago

"Patrick, your genius is showing!"

"WHERE?!"

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u/dnjprod 5h ago

So you get a highly regarded cardiac surgeon pioneering new techniques who thinks they're also an expert on geopolitics,

Was that an intentional Dr Oz call out or did it just happen to land perfectly?

If it was, that dude went well down the drain way before that.

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u/discussatron 8h ago

They get to the top of their field and can legitimately claim to be the smartest person in the room when that field is present. But sometimes, they assume that also translates into being the smartest in any room with any people.

Every billionaire ever.

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u/Aidian 7h ago

Excepting that many billionaires aren’t necessarily the top in their field by any metric beyond “wealth” and/or “ruthlessness”.

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u/KaraAliasRaidra 5h ago

Sad but true. Some people can't handle not being the best at something/not being right about something.

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u/reckless_responsibly 3h ago

Having worked in academentia, dealing with faculty is the worst.

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u/yrogerg123 43m ago

Ben Carson comes to mind.

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u/KakeLin 4h ago

Lol Ben Carson

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u/Practical-Shape2325 5h ago

It's a Dragonlance quote, but I think it applies well:

"So this is the end," Tanis said. "Good has triumphed."

"Good? Triumph?" Fizban Repeated, turning to stare at the half-elf shrewdly. "Not so, half elvin. The balance is restored. The evil dragons will not be banished. They remain here, as do the good dragons. Once again the pendulum swings freely."

"All the suffering, just for that?" Laurana asked, coming to stand beside Tanis. "Why shouldn't good win, drive the darkness away forever?"

"Young lady?" Fizban scolded, shaking a bony finger at her. "There was a time when good held sway. Do you know when that was? Right before the cataclysm!"

"Yes," he continued seeing their astonishment "the king priest of Istar was a good man. Does that surprise you? It shouldn't, because both of you have seen what goodness like that can do. You've seen it in the elves, the ancient embodiment of good! It breeds intolerance, rigidity, a belief that because I am right, those who don't believe as I do are wrong."

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u/TrifectaBlitz 1h ago

I want to thank you for the pleasure at reading a Dragonlance quote "in the wild." I treasure these books before I even knew they were part of the DnD universe; a universe I never entered except for these books.

This quote is likely from the second original trilogy, judging by characters.

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u/BasroilII 15m ago

Nope, first one. Dragons of Spring Dawning, if I remember correctly.

Second trilogy mostly focused on Raisltin and Caramon.

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u/NoDramaIceberg 9h ago

My theory: It takes a lifetime's work to win the Nobel. And most winners are very driven to achieve that high. But once you've got it, it's impossible to go back and win it again with some other work (since it's a lifetime's work). So to stay in the conversation and the news, I suppose you feel you have to say wild things.

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u/KaraAliasRaidra 5h ago

That makes sense. It reminds me of these singers, reality show stars, etc. who had one big success and now they're doing more and more outlandish things to try to get that same level of attention. It also reminds me of the celebrities who become grifters to try to find a supportive audience.

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u/VelvetyDogLips 6h ago

This is the point of a lot of the jokes where Southpark makes fun of the rich and famous. "Now that I've got the world's attention, and am so accomplished in my field that I'm untouchable, allow me an extra 15min in the sun to rep this cause / movement / group / ideology that means so much to me, but that nobody wanted to hear about before I got big."

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u/LongLiveStaceyKing 7h ago

You see this in the paranormal researcher world all the time.

Someone hits the field because of a very narrow unexplained phenomenon, like large human shaped foot prints in the woods or military released footage of unidentified flying objects or cattle mutilations because there *is* something tangible going on that you can point to and investigate.

Cut to a few years later and they are talking about the tall blonde Nordic Pleadians coming to turn off all our nukes and save us from ourselves.

It's genuinely a fascinating thing to watch happen to someone...Linda Molton Howe is the best example.

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u/KaraAliasRaidra 5h ago edited 5h ago

I hadn't thought about it happening in the paranormal research field, but it makes sense. I have heard of people in that field (not a majority of people, just a few) falsifying data/experiment results because they're so desperate for their theories to be proven right (same as in more traditional scientific fields).

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u/rezelscheft 6h ago

once good-hearted people become corrupted

i have a family member who has worked in politics in the (US American) south for 20+ years, and she calls this "pastor syndrome." where people who start out as pretty decent, community minded leaders start getting more popular and powerful, start running for bigger and bigger offices, and begin to excuse any questionable actions as a means towards their righteous goal.

the slope gets real slippery real fast and once-decent people become monsters who are convinced that they are always blameless.

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u/Tasty_Cry_3844 5h ago

Yep. The savior complex doesn't stop. And the idolization makes it infinitely worse. Surround yourself with "yes" people and you have no idea how the world works. If you're rich, it's worse. Being financially rewarded for your work AND having the highest accolade in all the land means that you're now dealing with being THE BEST. And you have to maintain that. 

So you lose it. 

I think of science like music. You have your whole life to write your first album and two years to write your second. I think scientists feel the same way. 

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u/FiveUpsideDown 5h ago

I find HOA boards suffer from this. They may have been well meaning when they got on the board. Then they decide that they are doing good; therefore whatever they do is good.

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u/joelluber 4h ago

I think the Nobel winners just have a big platform so that their nonsense becomes notable. The Nobel disease folks are all natural scientists, and many of their odd beliefs are related political, sociological, or humanistic fields. But this is actually very common among natural scientists, who often have very facile beliefs or ideas about how society works.

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u/DoingBestWeCan 1h ago

Good old Watson (co-discoverer of DNA with Crick, on the back of Rosalind Franklin's work) could be argued to have fucked up his own field, claiming that black people were genetically inferior. 

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u/ztomiczombie 4h ago

With Ingrid Newkirk some of the people who knew her back then have said she was always nasty and unhinged but was better at hiding it.

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u/Magikarpeles 3h ago

Having spent some time in academia this does not surprise me one bit.

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u/bstabens 3h ago

I've heard it put into words by an elementary school teacher.

"You're the smartest person in the room for 6 hs straight and it starts to get into your head."

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u/KaraAliasRaidra 2h ago

In a similar vein, I hear a lot of amateur athletes have issues when they reach the professional level (even if it's the minor leagues). They think they're hot stuff because they were the best player in their town/village/school, and then they get to the professional level and they're not special anymore because everyone else was the best in their town/village/school as well. A number of players break down in frustration and have to get ahold of themselves or else they'll wash out.

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u/Th3B4dSpoon 5h ago

I think there's something in not so much human nature, but i how status socially works that can lead people to detach from reality and of being critical of their own ideas.

In short, as an example, winning a Nobel prize brings great prestige. People want a piece of that to rub on to them, and start drawing near the winner. To be ensured access, they want to be as likeable as they can. This is when they will praise everything the one with status does. Getting this feedback from others, the recipient may start to believe it, and start thinking their farts don't stink 

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u/KaraAliasRaidra 4h ago

Sad but true. People need to learn to recognize suck-ups who just want to get something from them.

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u/derioderio 4h ago

There's a great SMBC on this as well

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u/disisathrowaway 3h ago

Linus Pauling, after having won two Nobel awards, eventually came to believe that taking gargantuan doses of Vitamin C was essential to good health and could even cure cancer. We're talking thousands of milligrams a day.

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u/donitdotis 3h ago

you see this with lots of celebrities. they get celebrated for being good actors for example, and suddenly they think because of all the adoration that they are special in general and that they now should talk on things they have no clue about it.

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u/exceive 3h ago

Linus Pauling and vitamin C.

I guess he didn't really turn evil, but he had two solo Nobel prizes and went on to convince a lot of people (including my parents) that vitamin C, in large doses, can cure or prevent the common cold and maybe cancer.
Spoiler alert: no, vitamin C in large doses doesn't stop or prevent the common cold or cancer.
Fortunately, huge doses of vitamin C don't cause lots of harm. I suspect that huge doses while not drinking enough water (living in places where safe water doesn't come from the faucet) might be part of the reason my kidneys are not the greatest, but I am not aware of any research to back up that suspicion. Vitamin C is good stuff if your body needs it, and your body can safely discard what it doesn't need. Good (and cheap) antioxidant. But it isn't a miracle cure for anything except preventing scurvy, and a tiny amount does that. Eat at least like one fruit or vegetable every month and scurvy won't get you.

Absolutely brilliant scientist in multiple fields. Went way off the rails on the vitamin C thing.

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u/reality_boy 3h ago

We all need peers around us to act as sounding boards. If you sit alone your mind can wander to dark places, but if you have others around you who can tell the truth, you can get corrected quickly.

You see this crop up with all sorts of famous people. They get to a point where they are treated as different, and no one wants to tell them the truth anymore.

The same thing happens when you surround yourself with untruths. If you listen to podcasts or news shows that are not being honest, you can loose your moral compass fairly quickly.

We all need a variety of voices in our lives. And we all need to not be the most important figure in our world.

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u/KaraAliasRaidra 2h ago

Agreed. We all need people who are straight with us, telling us we're wrong if we're wrong and telling us we're right if we're right.

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u/BLT_Trade_r 2h ago

I think this has a ton to do with personality. What these people likely have in common is that they become deeply tied to their belief systems and have strong emotions/personalities. If you look at a ton of mid-century science, the scientists who won out were those who went hard for a long time on a belief that was eventually proven true. Then they end up famous or with a Nobel Prize. But just like Steve Jobs, they were just the lucky ones, tons of similar personalities fell on the wrong side of a belief system and were proven false.

Another good example is James Watson, who wrecked his reputation with racism. Watson and Crick are famous for the structure of DNA. So you think, well, he just became old and stupid. But in reality, if you know the true story, you realize he and Crick were not even smart enough to figure it out. Even Linus Pauling screwed up. They were just tenacious about trying to get this done, so tenacious that they were instructed to stop working on it because they were so embarrassed in a lab meeting by not knowing what they were doing. However, they just kept working on it behind their professor's back.

I do not know the story of every single person, but when I go digging, I usually find out they were nowhere near as capable and as genius as people made them out to be.

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u/failure_most_of_all 2h ago

I've always figured it was like... those super-smart people have super-smart brains, and sometimes a super-smart brain does crap it's not supposed to do. Like... the hyperactive pattern detection that led them to <insert discovery here> also allows them to mistakenly draw parallels between totally unrelated things, and now they believe in all these conspiracy theories and whatnot, and being adept at reasoning turns into this screwed up thing, where they're able to come up with ways to reason themselves into nonsense. So it's almost like the intelligence and logic that allow them to be brilliant in their field are just the other side of the coin of whatever brain biology weirdness that allows them to believe the totally bonkers stuff, too.

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u/broakland 6h ago

I just wanna know why every PETA ad looks like its trying to unlock a new fetish

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u/KaraAliasRaidra 5h ago

I hadn't thought about it that way, but holy cow, now that you've mentioned it, they do!

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u/Soggy_Competition614 9h ago

My grandma always said their is a very fine line between genius and madness.

I think it comes down to not making people gods. Yes you’re smart, yes you’re good looking, yes you’re charismatic. Do your job get compensated and move on. It’s why I like 2/4 year terms for presidents.

Look at Clinton he just could not step back. 9/11 happened and he’s right there at ground zero hugging people. I thought it was tacky.

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u/sickswonnyne 8h ago

Clinton or Bush?

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u/entropicdrift 7h ago

Clinton. He wasn't president anymore but he showed up.

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u/TheThomasMRyan 7h ago

See i disagree I think thats exactly what ex presidents should be doing. Provide good will and comfort instead of corporate lobbying and 'speaking fees'

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u/entropicdrift 7h ago

I personally agree with your stance, they should use their star power to inspire and fundraise for worthy causes.

But my previous comment was just clarifying to the person who was confused about whether the person they replied to had meant Clinton or Bush.

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u/Soggy_Competition614 6h ago

I think what he and GHB did for Haiti was awesome. I also think putting the work into the democratic convention helping support and mentor new aspiring politicians is important.

I just didn’t like how he was out shaking hands and hugging people days after 9/11. He said all the right things but it still came off tacky to me.

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u/dnjprod 5h ago

I have a lot of conversations with christians, and one thing they always like to say is that a lot of Nobel Prize winners are religious in some way so that must mean science somehow supports Christianity. This is just more evidence of what I've always told them: just because you are competent in one area doesn't mean you aren't going to use bad critical thinking in others.

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u/KaraAliasRaidra 5h ago

There are a number of people who think they're better than others simply because of their belief system (Christians who think they're more righteous just because they're Christian, atheists who think they're more humane just because they're atheists, Muslims who think they're purer just because they're Muslim, etc.). In reality being good has nothing to do with what you claim to believe and everything to do with whether you're kind to your fellow man and respectful of the world around you.

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u/Ok-Firefighter7926 4h ago

Most Nobel Prize winners are war criminals so this is not at all surprising.