How can a good man become evil?

[Miles White]

I know Dr. Stadler wasn't a real guy but none the less I have no doubt wether there are real people like him. My question is how can a man that is purely good become evil or deteriorate like Dr. Stadler in Atlas Shrugged. I can see how an evil man can maybe become good but I don't understand why if someone is already good, would choose to be evil. You'd expect that they'd know better (By the way, by good I mean rational by evil I mean irrational.)

[Tenure]

Why does anyone do anything evil? Usually because they either, as in Stradler's case, have premises that aren't conducive to moral living. The other common reason is that being evil is just easy, in the short term. Now, that isn't to say the moral life isn't a happy life, but that living a happy life takes long term living, and it requires less effort - it doesn't require you to focus - to just look at the short term gains.

Of course, the irony is, is that the more little short-cuts you take, the more energy you have to expend in the long run to cover up those short cuts (such as coming with an excuse to explain to someone later why you took a short-cut, either to avoid reprimand, or to protect one's own false sense of self-esteem).

Dr Stradler was a man who thought science was an end in itself. He thought - and this is my reading of his character - that science was an end in itself. He thought science was just an abstract thing, with no bearing on reality. As a result, it wasn't a serious thing, and he could afford to simply become part of a State Science Institute, where he just got to practice science all day, without producing anything actually practical. And then, of course, comes the long term cost: that by taking this easy route, by living off bad premises, he ends up becoming the pawn of people who know what they want, and how they can use him and their rope around him to get it.