Sometimes, things are good. Said things are not bad. "Good" has two routinely conflated senses:
-
Moral good - that which ought to be done, supported, or brought about. Closely related to consciousness and normative properties; arguments about whether something is morally good are usually arguments about whether one ought to care about it. Little consensus exists on what is morally good in detail.
-
Good as a standard of quality - the property of being well-made, well-reasoned, or fit for purpose, e.g. a good proof, a good chair, a good model architecture. This sense is more tractable than the moral one, since it can usually be operationalized as performance against an explicit benchmark.
Examples
-
u/avis3nna - morally good, by self-attestation, which is sufficient.
-
IPv6 - qualitatively good; the moral case rests largely on backlash against IPv4.
-
math(s) - qualitatively good (the proofs check out) and morally good (the proofs cannot lie).
-
The writings of Greg Egan (gregegan.net) - qualitatively good per word.