> Isn’t it possible that there actually are some powerful political groups who have honest and good intentions and others which do not? I think it's important

> Isn’t it possible that there actually are some powerful political groups who have honest and good intentions and others which do not? I think it's important to really carefully spell out what we mean by "not having good intentions". Because there are two different reasonable things that that can mean, and they're _really_ different, but the incentive to flip-flop between them can be strong. The first meaning sounds like "having bad ideas". For example, let's say I'm in favor of some new law to...promote the arts. (Trying to pick a bland example.) You might think my law is actually going to hurt the arts, and argue against it for that reason. Or maybe you agree that it'll help the arts, but you think its other downsides outweigh its upsides. At maximum generality, maybe you don't object to my idea per se, but you'd just rather spend the same money on something else. The second meaning sounds like "having bad values". For example, you could claim that I'm not actually interested in art, and just trying to divert money to my friends. Or maybe I could paint you as some sort of uncultured caveman, who can't understand why normal people like art. When we put it that way, I think it's clear that we usually say "good intentions" to talk about the second meaning. Like, the whole point of saying it is usually to _contrast_ someone's good values with some bad outcome they're associated with, right? On the other hand, it's much easier to take an argumentative position using the first meaning. The world is complicated, everything has downsides, etc. Plus object level arguments tend to be more sophisticated and interesting, with expertise and fancy math getting involved. So a tempting strategy can be to equivocate between "having bad ideas" and "having bad values", by making an argument about ideas or outcomes and yet drawing or implying a conclusion about values. This is the sort of fallacy that internet rationalists complain about constantly, calling it a "motte and bailey" or something like that. And I'm really sympathetic to that complaint: I think that it's very easy to make this sort of bad argument, that it's actually kind of hard _not_ to make it without some sort of shared community or commitment, and that the effect of this sort of argument on discourse is frustrating, unproductive, and ultimately dehumanizing. So all that said, do I think that some groups objectively have bad values? I...oof...I feel kind of forced to admit that it's true sometimes. I can't sustain a really extreme position here like "everyone's values are special and lovely in their own way", at least not without diluting the concept of values so much that it's not very interesting anymore. But at the same time, I just feel...super skeptical of most "bad values" arguments in practice.