9 ms·

Yeah thats me, I don't care about 'intent' as much as 'outcome' All the well meaning in the world doesn't mean shit if you're creating hostility or demeaning o

Yeah thats me, I don't care about 'intent' as much as 'outcome' All the well meaning in the world doesn't mean shit if you're creating hostility or demeaning others (that is not commentary on RMS, just in general)

hntrader 6y ago
"I don't care about 'intent' as much as 'outcome'" Accidentaly killing someone with your car is very different to negligent driving which causes death which is also very different to intentionally killing someone with your car. Clearly intent and context matters a lot.
- mjg59 6y ago
  These are all different things, but the end result is that someone has been hit with a car. If your goal is to avoid people being hit with cars and someone keeps accidentally hitting people with their car, then you probably want to considering whether that person should be allowed to drive.
  - Guthur 6y ago
    The causes are of different classification and require different responses. When a cause is systemic it maybe with some natural variance and within what realistically deem acceptable, depending on where we set the bounds. While others maybe special cases and require detailed study to understand. Blindly setting outcome goals without understanding the system is folly.
    - mjg59 6y ago
      Sure! The response to someone who is deliberately offensive and someone who habitually offends people by accident should be different, and I don't think anyone denies that. But that's not an argument for doing nothing in response to someone who habitually offends people by accident.
      - hntrader 6y ago
        "But that's not an argument for doing nothing in response to someone who habitually offends people by accident." Well that really depends. Offense is sometimes a strategy employed by cynical actors to gain a political advantage. If I say that your posts are constantly offending me, what do you propose we do about that? There isn't a universally applicable rule here. This is also where the driving analogy breaks down. It's an easy trade-off to revoke someone's license if it means we can prevent death. But taking action to prevent subjective offense enters into a much more tenuous and debatable cost-benefit trade-off. What makes sense would come down to the details of the case.
  - mjgs 6y ago
    You might also want to consider whether the people that have habitual contact with that accident prone person, should in fact be allowed to have contact with that person.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- redis_mlc 6y ago
  > Clearly intent and context matters a lot. This applies to old laws in the US, and not many other countries. In France, you're guilty until proven innocent. And in China (and many other regions governed by Chinese people), you're strictly liable regardless of intent. And now in the US, most new laws do not consider intent, just strict liability.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- patmcc 6y ago
  Not so different to the deceased, though.
  - hntrader 6y ago
    You're extending the analogy beyond its usefulness. In the case of subjective offense, it should be and usually is different. If you're called a racial slur by someone who just started learning English and genuinely doesn't know the true meaning of the word, you should take less offense to it than if you were called the slur by someone with obvious malicious intent. Intent and context matters both in terms of how the "accused" should be viewed as well as how the "victim" should feel.
- junke 6y ago
  > Clearly intent and context matters a lot. The parent comment was short, said "as much as", and yet people downvote it, misinterpret it.
- RangerNS 6y ago
  They don't call them "on purposes". Intent and context do matter. On the other hand, if a driver consistently has accidents and people end up dead, it could be that they are a bad driver and shouldn't be in a position to, you know, drive.
AzzieElbab 6y ago
I have never in my life seen so much hostility generated by good intentions as we are seeing now during this woke revolution. I repeat - never! And I lived through collapses of two failed states.
- phkahler 6y ago
  >> I have never in my life seen so much hostility generated by good intentions as we are seeing now during this woke revolution. The "woke" don't actually have good intentions. There are several motivations, but good intent just seems to be an excuse for the hostility you mention.
  - mhh__ 6y ago
    The vast majority of people you would write off as ""woke"" do have good intentions. There's just a very loud minority just as there are in any political movement.
    - AzzieElbab 6y ago
      I actually can see where the person you are replying to is coming from. That loud minority can be viewed as leadership, and they seem to fall into three categories- grifters, bullies, and burn the world types
  - NateEag 6y ago
    That's a strong statement about a whole lot of people. Maybe you should limit that to "The 'woke' people I know."
- astrange 6y ago
  There's nothing new about wokeness. It's just what American Protestantism looks like; Americans have always been this way. Even used to be called the same thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide_Awakes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide_Awakes
  - 6y ago
chriswarbo 6y ago
I've been trying to think in terms of outcome recently, since I've found intent can (a) be combative rather than collaborative and (b) quickly devolves into a 'philosophical circle-jerk'. For example, say someone makes a racist joke that's over the line, and we feel a need to call them on it. Framing things in terms of intent becomes a debate about 'are you a racist?', with side quests like 'what is racism?', and metaphysical introspection on the nature of one's 'true self', etc. All of which is irrelevant and distracting. Framing things in terms of outcome lets us avoid such a quagmire, and avoids things becoming personal. In particular, if someone defends themselves as 'not a racist', we can agree and support them, e.g. 'in that case I'd try to avoid ABC, since XYZ'.

hntrader 6y ago

"I don't care about 'intent' as much as 'outcome'" Accidentaly killing someone with your car is very different to negligent driving which causes death which is also very different to intentionally killing someone with your car. Clearly intent and context matters a lot.

mjg59 6y ago
These are all different things, but the end result is that someone has been hit with a car. If your goal is to avoid people being hit with cars and someone keeps accidentally hitting people with their car, then you probably want to considering whether that person should be allowed to drive.
- Guthur 6y ago
  The causes are of different classification and require different responses. When a cause is systemic it maybe with some natural variance and within what realistically deem acceptable, depending on where we set the bounds. While others maybe special cases and require detailed study to understand. Blindly setting outcome goals without understanding the system is folly.
  - mjg59 6y ago
    Sure! The response to someone who is deliberately offensive and someone who habitually offends people by accident should be different, and I don't think anyone denies that. But that's not an argument for doing nothing in response to someone who habitually offends people by accident.
    - hntrader 6y ago
      "But that's not an argument for doing nothing in response to someone who habitually offends people by accident." Well that really depends. Offense is sometimes a strategy employed by cynical actors to gain a political advantage. If I say that your posts are constantly offending me, what do you propose we do about that? There isn't a universally applicable rule here. This is also where the driving analogy breaks down. It's an easy trade-off to revoke someone's license if it means we can prevent death. But taking action to prevent subjective offense enters into a much more tenuous and debatable cost-benefit trade-off. What makes sense would come down to the details of the case.
- mjgs 6y ago
  You might also want to consider whether the people that have habitual contact with that accident prone person, should in fact be allowed to have contact with that person.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
redis_mlc 6y ago
> Clearly intent and context matters a lot. This applies to old laws in the US, and not many other countries. In France, you're guilty until proven innocent. And in China (and many other regions governed by Chinese people), you're strictly liable regardless of intent. And now in the US, most new laws do not consider intent, just strict liability.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
patmcc 6y ago
Not so different to the deceased, though.
- hntrader 6y ago
  You're extending the analogy beyond its usefulness. In the case of subjective offense, it should be and usually is different. If you're called a racial slur by someone who just started learning English and genuinely doesn't know the true meaning of the word, you should take less offense to it than if you were called the slur by someone with obvious malicious intent. Intent and context matters both in terms of how the "accused" should be viewed as well as how the "victim" should feel.
junke 6y ago
> Clearly intent and context matters a lot. The parent comment was short, said "as much as", and yet people downvote it, misinterpret it.
RangerNS 6y ago
They don't call them "on purposes". Intent and context do matter. On the other hand, if a driver consistently has accidents and people end up dead, it could be that they are a bad driver and shouldn't be in a position to, you know, drive.

AzzieElbab 6y ago

I have never in my life seen so much hostility generated by good intentions as we are seeing now during this woke revolution. I repeat - never! And I lived through collapses of two failed states.

phkahler 6y ago
>> I have never in my life seen so much hostility generated by good intentions as we are seeing now during this woke revolution. The "woke" don't actually have good intentions. There are several motivations, but good intent just seems to be an excuse for the hostility you mention.
- mhh__ 6y ago
  The vast majority of people you would write off as ""woke"" do have good intentions. There's just a very loud minority just as there are in any political movement.
  - AzzieElbab 6y ago
    I actually can see where the person you are replying to is coming from. That loud minority can be viewed as leadership, and they seem to fall into three categories- grifters, bullies, and burn the world types
- NateEag 6y ago
  That's a strong statement about a whole lot of people. Maybe you should limit that to "The 'woke' people I know."
astrange 6y ago
There's nothing new about wokeness. It's just what American Protestantism looks like; Americans have always been this way. Even used to be called the same thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide_Awakes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide_Awakes
- 6y ago

chriswarbo 6y ago

I've been trying to think in terms of outcome recently, since I've found intent can (a) be combative rather than collaborative and (b) quickly devolves into a 'philosophical circle-jerk'. For example, say someone makes a racist joke that's over the line, and we feel a need to call them on it. Framing things in terms of intent becomes a debate about 'are you a racist?', with side quests like 'what is racism?', and metaphysical introspection on the nature of one's 'true self', etc. All of which is irrelevant and distracting. Framing things in terms of outcome lets us avoid such a quagmire, and avoids things becoming personal. In particular, if someone defends themselves as 'not a racist', we can agree and support them, e.g. 'in that case I'd try to avoid ABC, since XYZ'.