Regardless of which stance one may hold on an issue, one sentiment seems to commonly shared:
“The bad side is cunning, smart, ruthless, and knows how to play the game. Our side, the good side, is too soft, dumb, naive, and doesn’t know how to game at all.”
This sentiment is common in Hollywood, in fiction, in politics, sports, etc.
So - just wondering how many Dopers hold this view - in general, do you think bad guys (whoever the “bad guys” are) - are generally smarter and tougher than good guys?
I don’t know if this counts as a “yes” or a “no” to your question, but I think there is a natural tendency to blame the other side for doing underhanded, unscrupulous things that your good-guys would never stoop to. It is a defense mechanism for when you are getting beaten.
The hostage taker isn’t shrewder than the hostage negotiator, they just have very different goals, and very different ideas of what is acceptable collateral damage.
I think evil is often brutish and ignorant. In general, I think it is motivated by fear and is often openly hostile to science and expertise, so no I don’t think they are shrewder, just less capable of empathy and complex reasoning.
I’ll vote a very tepid and weak “yes,” in that good people have some slight difficulty in perceiving other people as evil, whereas evil people have no problem at all perceiving others as evil. “Good” has a slight built-in naivete, a tendency to trust, a greater likelihood to stand fast when presented with the Prisoners’ Dilemma. It is (slightly) easier to deceive a good man than an evil one.
It is not all that difficult to be a decent person. I think that most decent people object to cruelty, greed and recklessness, so, if an “evil” person sees one or more of those as the means to their goals, they must figure out how to disguise or justificate their actions in order to make them seem palatable to the average person’s sense of decency. Or simply acquire so much power that they can forcibly overcome any objections.
In our culture, stupid people are generally considered fair game, so if an “evil” person succeeds through subterfuge, hey, they earned it and the idiots deserved it by not being smart enough to avoid being victimized. I have a hard time imagining how our socioeconomic system would function if honorable behavior was a qualifying requirement for advancement.
The idea that good and bad are a game gives it away from the start.
If someone wants patio furniture, and just go around at night taking it from the neighbors, does that mean the idea’s clever and the neighbors are fools for leaving it outdoors? No. Of course not. These people are trashing the customary decent behaviors to get what they perceive as some kind of gain for themselves.
The ‘bad side’ does not play by any rules. They will do anything if they think they can get away with it. The ‘good side’ is filled with fools who think this time Lucy won’t pull the football away. Even with the fools in minority time, effort, and resources are wasted discussing the matter.
If by “bad side” you mean criminal sociopaths, then I think “the bad side” do terrible things, and then are shocked—shocked I tell you—to be held to account for their misconduct because they were too stupid to see all the ways their plan would backfire. As part of their reaction to the judgement of others, they resort instinctively to “I’m just too smart to live by your rules!” Because of course they can’t bring themselves to contemplate what is most likely true: that they are too stupid to live by our rules, and thus see the futility of cruelty and genuinely anti-social behavior.
Humans are a social species. We don’t like assholes. That’s not being “sheeple” (as the assholes in the midst will often chime), that’s being “human.”
But you’re pretty vague on what you mean by “bad side,” so I’m left to project on what I think you’re getting at, and the sort of people I am most used to seeing resort to the “I’m too smart and too special to live by the rules of a bunch of snowflakes” defense.