The trouble is, you can think you're dealing with a Bob, but you're actually dealing with an Alice, even after enduring multiple crises that didn't trigger their specific type of badness.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/03/how-i-...
But as fun as this line of thinking is, my initial charitable post was only asking for a kind of "superficial" indistinguishability. As long as you don't think about it too hard, y'know?
Which in the end is precisely the reason why we want to understand the intentions behind the actions, right?
Right.
My stance on this is: Try to find a way to do good that doesn't make you miserable. Lying is to yourself is a form of oppression, and lying to others is a tactic for enduring oppression. (Ask a queer person about their time in the closet if you don't understand what I mean here.) Oppression makes you miserable, and misery tends to result in vapid thinkpieces that don't scratch below the surface of the referenced source material.
But also: Be honest with yourself about what you want and why you want it. Whether for good or for ill. That way, at least you can have a modicum of peace. I wrote more about this train of thought recently, if anyone's curious: https://soatok.blog/2025/10/15/the-dreamseekers-vision-of-to...