first principles

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

It never really occurred to me to ask the question until I recently encountered someone who's answer differed from mine. To me the answer was a "first principle" as intrinsic as mathematical law.

In hindsight this was a gross oversight on my part.

Now obviously in an ideal world all people would make noble intelligent decision for noble intelligent reasons and the results of those choices would be exactly those that were intended.

That said, we don't live in an ideal world, so given a choice between valuing intent and valuing outcome...
[Poll #1853516]


Further more (and this is where politics comes in) how do you reach an agreement with someone who's most basic principles are different from your own? Is it even possible, or are we doomed to conflict?


Maybe there should be a tag for talking about talking about... ;P

Comments

[politikitty.livejournal.com]

Intentions are more important in interpersonal relationships. Outcome is more important in policy.

That policy requires so much networking is part of the reason I think it ends up so fucked up.

[soliloquy76.livejournal.com]

Good point. I'd like to add this caveat to my answer.

[jobey-in-error.livejournal.com]

Nicely put.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

I'm curious, why do you think that intent matters more/less in a personal relations?

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

Good answer.

In my personal life intentions are primary; things like honesty, integrity and compassion are fundamental to me considering someone to be a good person. Even if they fuck up a lot, if they're intentions are good I'm willing to let a lot slide. However, when it comes to my professional or political life, I just care about what works.

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

Interesting point, with policy there will always be multiple, often conflicting intentions. With personal relationships one only has to worry about the intentions of one (or maybe a small number of people).

The road to hell ...

[ed-rex.livejournal.com]

Intentions can be a mitigating factor in judging a person's actions but the outcome is what matters (especially with regard to repeat offenders; even in interpersonal relationships, good intentions only go so far).

After all, who among us thinks of him or her self as a villain?

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

So if intention is bad, but outcome is good (by happenstance, or by idiocy of the person who intended to cause harm) then that's "what matters" that outcome is good?

This is why I vote for mixed.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

The answer is none of the above, it depends on the circumstances and what both intention and outcome are supposed to be.

[luvdovz.livejournal.com]

You know what they say about good intentions.

[chron-job.livejournal.com]

> Further more (and this is where politics comes in) how do you reach an agreement with someone who's most basic principles are different from your own?

By realizing that the contentious principle in question is probably not as basic as you think it is, and that you and the other party probably share other, more basic principles, perhaps initially unconscious or unstated.

I suspect that we all share some principles, and we differ on many. But basic disagreement about one of them can still be resolved, because we all arrange our principles into hierarchies. Once you've figured out that you and the other have a principle which is not shared, then the discussion becomes one of testing what other principles such a situation touches upon and where those principles reside in your several hierarchies.

[spaz-own-joo.livejournal.com]

oh god who invited mr. logic

[chron-job.livejournal.com]

When judging others (my favorite of pastimes!) I have better access to outcomes, then to intent, so I inherently weight them differently. I observe outcomes. I must infer intent, or trust its self-reported value.

The weighting gets especially relevant over time as intent/outcome events are iterated. If a guy "intends to kill" someone, but keeps 'accidentally' making them fabulously wealthy, I question his self reported intent.

In any iterated series where intent and outcome conflict, I typically abandon the self reported intent and develop my own model of that person's cryptic intent, based on observed outcomes. Since outcome 'wins' in this particular game of rock, paper, scissors, I am comfortable saying I value it more.

[notmrgarrison.livejournal.com]

As far as politicians go I would say usually outcomes. Especially since intentions aren't that easy to ascertain (though many appear convinced that they can, all they need is check if the politician is R or D).

More important doesn't mean all important, and it definitely depends on the situation.

If someone were trying to cripple me but failed, or not cripple me but succeed, the latter would certainly be more important to me (though not to their punishment).

[spaz-own-joo.livejournal.com]

VIRTUE ETHICS VS CONSEQUENTIALISM
ROUND 1
FIGHT

[pastorlenny.livejournal.com]

Although, to keep it optimally real, the OP may not be asking this question in the context of ethics as we generally understand the term -- since he has consistently claimed to deny the metaphysical legitimacy of the ethical enterprise on the grounds that, yanno, people disagree about them.

[major-dallas.livejournal.com]

dimple chad...that is all

[rick-day.livejournal.com]

the odds of one getting away with murder is almost 3:1

http://www.8newsnow.com/global/story.asp?s=12593189

How do you interpret this? Does this mean that homicide laws are a deterrent because of a perception that you will most certainly get caught, therefore 'but it could be worse'?

Or does it mean that homicide laws are ineffective at deterring murder because your odds are actually pretty good at getting away with it?

Same with your poll. Each option is totally subjective, therefore too vague to accurately answer.

But I tried :D

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

Good answer.

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

What is this about? I mean, there's no context.

Are we talking stalking manipulating and provoking people and then claiming good intentions?

Or are we talking about the drunk who tried to punch (bad intentions), but only fell down himself (no bad outcome)?

[foreverbeach.livejournal.com]

Results are everything. Intentions are what fuckups and losers care about.

[pastorlenny.livejournal.com]

LOL

[eracerhead.livejournal.com]

I'm reading this as similar to the age-old question "Do the ends justify the means?" The best answer I can come up with is "It depends. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't."

[danalwyn.livejournal.com]

Personally, I think the weighting of intentions and results in determining whether an action was "good" or "bad" depends on an estimation of how forseeable the outcome was for the initiating party. In a case where the actions taken are clearly not going to achieve the intent (for instance, helping an alcoholic by buying them tremendous amounts of beer), then the intent doesn't matter much for me - to me this is clearly a failure of the entire concept of what the subject was doing. In an intermediate case, for instance baking a cake for someone and including an ingredient to which they are allergic but which they have never told you about, this is a failure of planning. You could have asked, but how "guilty" you are depends on how rare the condition is and how well the subject hid it. I find that in judging people's actions, I am far more likely to forgive the actions of people (or policy actors) with comprehensive plans that were just not entirely sufficient than people with no plans at all. And finally, I think intentions matter the most in situations where what happened was outside their control. For instance if someone says that they're going to take out the trash, but on the way to the dumpster they get hit by a drunk driver and sent to the hospital, I wouldn't be angry at them for failing to put out the trash, or judge them as guilty of failure to do so. They were going to put out the trash, and they would have put out the trash if an Act of God had not intervened.

Basically, I judge culpability in an event by the difficulty in foreseeing the particular path that events took. Basic elementary errors in logic and lack of planning are more likely to get condemnation then someone whose plans were ripped apart by a natural disaster beyond their control. This leaves a lot of room, because "foreseeability" is not a well-measured quantity.

In terms of making future decisions on past results, then you always want to weight results almost exclusively. The problem is figuring out which results are which...and whether something was working before an Act of God derailed it.

[pastorlenny.livejournal.com]

I think this comment suggests a more coherent way of considerting the relationships between intents and outcomes from an ethical perspective.

[rimpala.livejournal.com]

I'm practical minded, and am over the whole "OMG people are Machiavellian and have ulterior motives sdfhgs..."


Intentions are less important than outcome.

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

Some people totally do! I recently got screwed over by someone at work to further their career... If they had just asked me to help them out to further their career I totally would have done it because I'm happy with what I do and don't see my professional life as a competition.

I have Aspbergers, so it's hard to understand how other people work sometimes, then things like this happen, things that I always had just heard about, but never experienced (or just put down to things happening, not any evil intent) and I get so shocked!

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

It must be viewed by both.

A) Drunk driver hits a person by accident
B) Sober driver hits a person by accident
C) person (drunk or sober) driving hits a person on purpose

We can't possibly view those the same.

But what is more important is case-by-case.

Did I accidentally or deliberately do X?
What is more important? depends on X.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

To the person getting hit they are exactly the same.

[factotum666.livejournal.com]

The question does not make any sense to me. Like so much that passes for meaningful discussions, this is just words put together that, upon close inspection, amount to little more than the equivelant of grooming that primates do to each other to enhance bonds within the group.
What does important mean other than "I prefer it a lot"?
are intentions any different than wishes? If so how and why?
who judges the value of the outcome?
Was the outcome the best that could be expected?
In general if there is no metric for something, than it is just opinion, or personal preferences. Which is ok, but one should know the difference.
What is the context of the actions?
Given a few more minutes, I could raise more issues, but this should be enough to show that the question/pole really has little meaning.
And here is a very concrete example.

The intent of the opperation was to cure the patient, but it only discovered that the situation was untreatable.

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

For someone who thinks this is all meaningless you raise interesting questions.

What does important mean other than "I prefer it a lot"?

It depends; it can certainly just mean "I prefer it", but if there are many other things contingent on that preference then it could give it a higher degree of necessity.

are intentions any different than wishes?

Perhaps not. Although I would suggest that one's intentions tend to be grounded more in self perceived reality than dreams. I say self perceived because we are shockingly bad judges of what is and is not possible.

who judges the value of the outcome?

Individuals. Society. Judges. The better question here is how do we decided whose judgement to value and what weight should it be accorded. It's also situation dependent. When it comes to interpersonal relationships only my opinion, and occasionally the opinion of people close to me matter. When it comes to a political decision then the opinions of all my fellow citizens matter, ideally equally to society as a whole, but not as much as mine to me.

Was the outcome the best that could be expected?

To play your game, who decides what constitutes "best" and "expectable"?

In general if there is no metric for something, than it is just opinion, or personal preferences. Which is ok, but one should know the difference.

There is a metric to measure morality? It seems to me that all moral choices are matters of opinion. I like to play fun games with people where I try to get them to justify rape and genocide (it is possible if your brain is free to play in hypotheticals and can truly get inside other worlds). Ethics and morality are by their very essence a creation of society, thus, the morality of any choice can only be judged by society and individuals. There is no Ethicometer to measure these things.

The intent of the opperation was to cure the patient, but it only discovered that the situation was untreatable.


The doctor's intent was to save a life, but was unsuccessful. I'm pretty comfortable thinking that is a preferable outcome to not trying at all. It matters not a squat to the patient (indeed, probably makes their quality of life worse), but it says that as a society we value the lives of others.


It seems to me that what you're saying is "I prefer option 1, and think everyone who disagrees with me is wrong". That doesn't make you right, it makes you a douche :) Please correct me if I'm wrong.