4 ms·

> concordance of action and "intention" .... must be united in ethically good action Yeah, I had to disagree with how TFA brought "fake it till you make it" in

by shandor 11mo ago

> concordance of action and "intention" .... must be united in ethically good action Yeah, I had to disagree with how TFA brought "fake it till you make it" into this very discussion. Yes, one can have "faking" that ultimately ends up creating the thing it promised....but I fear that for each such benign or constructive "fake" there are so many cases of Theranos et al that I could ever remove what you called intention and ethically good action from the calculation.

some_furry 11mo ago
The most charitable thing I can offer here is: Alice is a horrible sociopathic monster that fakes being good because of the social utility it provides. Bob is authentically, genuinely a "good" person (however you define it). If the two are indistinguishable from an outsider's perspective, and arrived at a similar level of social status and "success" (intentionally vaguely defined), the path they got there may not matter to you. At least, it might not at a glance? If you don't think about it too long? Or deal with them for too long? ... Yeah, I think I did hurt my back with that reach.
- mannykannot 11mo ago
  It's a fair question, but would you trust them equally in an unanticipated crisis, where doing the right thing might be costly in hard-to-predict ways?
  - justbees 11mo ago
    If the two are indistinguishable from an outsider's perspective how would you know which one to trust?
    - some_furry 11mo ago
      This sounds like a job for cryptography! (No, it doesn't, actually.)
    - mannykannot 11mo ago
      You can phrase the same question thus: which set of traits is more likely to lead a person to stay true to prior form in a crisis?
      - some_furry 11mo ago
        The trouble is, you can think you're dealing with a Bob, but you're actually dealing with an Alice, even after enduring multiple crises that didn't trigger their specific type of badness. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/03/how-i-discovered-i-have-the-brain-of-a-psychopath https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/03/how-i-... But as fun as this line of thinking is, my initial charitable post was only asking for a kind of "superficial" indistinguishability. As long as you don't think about it too hard, y'know?
        shandor 11mo ago
        Which in the end is precisely the reason why we want to understand the intentions behind the actions, right?
        some_furry 11mo ago
        Right. My stance on this is: Try to find a way to do good that doesn't make you miserable. Lying is to yourself is a form of oppression, and lying to others is a tactic for enduring oppression. (Ask a queer person about their time in the closet if you don't understand what I mean here.) Oppression makes you miserable, and misery tends to result in vapid thinkpieces that don't scratch below the surface of the referenced source material. But also: Be honest with yourself about what you want and why you want it. Whether for good or for ill. That way, at least you can have a modicum of peace. I wrote more about this train of thought recently, if anyone's curious: https://soatok.blog/2025/10/15/the-dreamseekers-vision-of-tomorrow/ https://soatok.blog/2025/10/15/the-dreamseekers-vision-of-to...
    - vacuity 11mo ago
      Yes, then there is no way to elevate Bob above Alice, but in practice I think the assumption of external indistinguishability is too strong, and even the suspicion that Alice is sketchy (i.e. without hard proof) is meaningful.
- alangou 11mo ago
  You are changed by the intention behind your decisions. Someone who continually chooses to do things out of greed turns into a greedier person. Someone who continually chooses compassion becomes a more compassionate person. Even if the external outcome is the same, the direction towards which the person evolves is vastly different. And when lifted out of a narrow thought experiment, in real life, who you are does determine all the great and small ways you behave, and the methods you are willing to employ. That’s why in the Sermon on the Mount, Christ says “It was said to those of old, you shall not murder, and whoever murders will be liable to judgement. But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgement.” You will find similar principles expressed in Buddhist teachings, or the Bhagavad Gita, or Confucian ethical philosophy. In this instance, anger on its own is merely a seed. But if left to grow, and it grows by you watering it, then eventually it expresses itself in a much more destructive way.
  - BurningFrog 11mo ago
    Maybe this is how it works, but how can we know this? It could also be that doing good things for selfish reasons creates habits of doing good things, and after a while that is who you are and what you do.
    - shandor 11mo ago
      This is a good take, and I agree that habits can do that to people. On the other hand, the intention behind the habit/action easily twists it in actuality to something else. I think the “fake it till you make it” I brought up upthread a great example of this. Yeah, it might end up with the fake becoming something valuable, or you building character, or whatever. Or, the habit that is getting built isn’t positive hustle and tenacity, but just a habit of outright lying, constantly reinforcing itself. Sometimes it’s impossible to see from the outside what is which until it breaks down.
    - alangou 11mo ago
      There are multiple ways, all of which are useful for you to decide whether it's true or not. First, you can trust in the wisdom of those who came before you, i.e. scripture. Second, you could trust in tradition, which may say such things. Third, you can use reason yourself. Fourth, you could rely on personal experience.
- theptip 11mo ago
  This exact problem comes up in AI alignment. It’s not enough to just look at the legible outputs. If you are going to trust someone with important responsibilities, you want them to “show their working” and convince you that that are not faking it. The difference of course is what Alice and Bob do when the mask is off, when no one is looking.
- ratelimitsteve 11mo ago
  the only reason Alice's intentions matter is their ability to predict her future behavior. if we assume for the sake of argument her behavior will always be identical to bob's then not only does it not matter what her internal motivations are it's arguable that her internal motivations don't actually differ from bob's. Thinking is, after all, an action, and all of their actions are identical. Therefore it seems like your example assumes Alice's behavior both is and isn't identical to Bob's.
  - lithocarpus 11mo ago
    If their intentions are really different their thinking is probably different.
    - ratelimitsteve 11mo ago
      then it follows that if their thinking is the same then their intentions are the same. given that thinking is an action, and the description says their actions are the same, then their thinking must be the same and therefore their intentions the same. it's meaningless to think of someone who only does what's right but only does it for wrong reasons as someone can only arrive at right actions through right thought, to allude to buddhism. if alice's motivations are truly different then her actions must diverge from bob's at some point (or we just assume that alice's actions and motivations have no relationship which, again, renders the question meaningless).
  - some_furry 11mo ago
    > Thinking is, after all, an action, and all of their actions are identical. Therefore it seems like your example assumes Alice's behavior both is and isn't identical to Bob's. By your logic, I was heterosexual for my entire young adult life when I actively worked to deceive people from realizing my actual orientation :P People employ dishonesty for lots of reasons, and in myriad ways. Sure, in this thought experiment, perfect indistinguishability means the difference is inconsequential. But you can use crises as an oracle to observe different behaviors, and thus undermine its indistinguishability. To keep the cryptography going, this is like an active vs passive attack. Sure, it's IND-KPA, but is it IND-CPA or IND-CCA? Perhaps not!
- DenisM 11mo ago
  This presupposes a constantly stable and omnipresent and benevolent society. Which it is not. Society always has reprehensible things in it, sometimes systematically sometimes sporadically. Society is not omnipresent or omniscient. And things go up and down over time. And one is never exposed to the whole society.
- amarant 11mo ago
  The counter point to this is the well-meaning idiot who causes destruction by doing things they, quite naively, believe will have positive outcomes. When the outcome predictably is terrible, do we let them off the hook for meaning well?
  - some_furry 11mo ago
    I don't know. How are the Kardashians doing?
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
- more_corn 11mo ago
  But that’s not how it plays out. What we see time and again is people who profess beliefs in positive philosophies and actions that don’t match. Look at any religion you like. Now look at how members of that religion actually behave. They’re people who profess a positive philosophy without the actions to match. I’ll take someone who consistently does good but without a coherent positive philosophy over someone who talks a good game and behaves badly all day every day.
  - seec 11mo ago
    Exactly. I have been (forced) in catholic circles in my youth because of my mother and it's absolutely frightening how bad those people can act/talk, often openly. Similarly, I have some far-left friends who constantly advocate for things close to communism but they are (by far) the stingiest and least sharing people I know. I think there is some sort brain gymnastic that protects them against the incoherence.

by shandor 11mo ago

some_furry 11mo ago

The most charitable thing I can offer here is: Alice is a horrible sociopathic monster that fakes being good because of the social utility it provides. Bob is authentically, genuinely a "good" person (however you define it). If the two are indistinguishable from an outsider's perspective, and arrived at a similar level of social status and "success" (intentionally vaguely defined), the path they got there may not matter to you. At least, it might not at a glance? If you don't think about it too long? Or deal with them for too long? ... Yeah, I think I did hurt my back with that reach.

mannykannot 11mo ago
It's a fair question, but would you trust them equally in an unanticipated crisis, where doing the right thing might be costly in hard-to-predict ways?
- justbees 11mo ago
  If the two are indistinguishable from an outsider's perspective how would you know which one to trust?
  - some_furry 11mo ago
    This sounds like a job for cryptography! (No, it doesn't, actually.)
  - mannykannot 11mo ago
    You can phrase the same question thus: which set of traits is more likely to lead a person to stay true to prior form in a crisis?
    - some_furry 11mo ago
      The trouble is, you can think you're dealing with a Bob, but you're actually dealing with an Alice, even after enduring multiple crises that didn't trigger their specific type of badness. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/03/how-i-discovered-i-have-the-brain-of-a-psychopath https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/03/how-i-... But as fun as this line of thinking is, my initial charitable post was only asking for a kind of "superficial" indistinguishability. As long as you don't think about it too hard, y'know?
      - shandor 11mo ago
        Which in the end is precisely the reason why we want to understand the intentions behind the actions, right?
        some_furry 11mo ago
        Right. My stance on this is: Try to find a way to do good that doesn't make you miserable. Lying is to yourself is a form of oppression, and lying to others is a tactic for enduring oppression. (Ask a queer person about their time in the closet if you don't understand what I mean here.) Oppression makes you miserable, and misery tends to result in vapid thinkpieces that don't scratch below the surface of the referenced source material. But also: Be honest with yourself about what you want and why you want it. Whether for good or for ill. That way, at least you can have a modicum of peace. I wrote more about this train of thought recently, if anyone's curious: https://soatok.blog/2025/10/15/the-dreamseekers-vision-of-tomorrow/ https://soatok.blog/2025/10/15/the-dreamseekers-vision-of-to...
  - vacuity 11mo ago
    Yes, then there is no way to elevate Bob above Alice, but in practice I think the assumption of external indistinguishability is too strong, and even the suspicion that Alice is sketchy (i.e. without hard proof) is meaningful.
alangou 11mo ago
You are changed by the intention behind your decisions. Someone who continually chooses to do things out of greed turns into a greedier person. Someone who continually chooses compassion becomes a more compassionate person. Even if the external outcome is the same, the direction towards which the person evolves is vastly different. And when lifted out of a narrow thought experiment, in real life, who you are does determine all the great and small ways you behave, and the methods you are willing to employ. That’s why in the Sermon on the Mount, Christ says “It was said to those of old, you shall not murder, and whoever murders will be liable to judgement. But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgement.” You will find similar principles expressed in Buddhist teachings, or the Bhagavad Gita, or Confucian ethical philosophy. In this instance, anger on its own is merely a seed. But if left to grow, and it grows by you watering it, then eventually it expresses itself in a much more destructive way.
- BurningFrog 11mo ago
  Maybe this is how it works, but how can we know this? It could also be that doing good things for selfish reasons creates habits of doing good things, and after a while that is who you are and what you do.
  - shandor 11mo ago
    This is a good take, and I agree that habits can do that to people. On the other hand, the intention behind the habit/action easily twists it in actuality to something else. I think the “fake it till you make it” I brought up upthread a great example of this. Yeah, it might end up with the fake becoming something valuable, or you building character, or whatever. Or, the habit that is getting built isn’t positive hustle and tenacity, but just a habit of outright lying, constantly reinforcing itself. Sometimes it’s impossible to see from the outside what is which until it breaks down.
  - alangou 11mo ago
    There are multiple ways, all of which are useful for you to decide whether it's true or not. First, you can trust in the wisdom of those who came before you, i.e. scripture. Second, you could trust in tradition, which may say such things. Third, you can use reason yourself. Fourth, you could rely on personal experience.
theptip 11mo ago
This exact problem comes up in AI alignment. It’s not enough to just look at the legible outputs. If you are going to trust someone with important responsibilities, you want them to “show their working” and convince you that that are not faking it. The difference of course is what Alice and Bob do when the mask is off, when no one is looking.
ratelimitsteve 11mo ago
the only reason Alice's intentions matter is their ability to predict her future behavior. if we assume for the sake of argument her behavior will always be identical to bob's then not only does it not matter what her internal motivations are it's arguable that her internal motivations don't actually differ from bob's. Thinking is, after all, an action, and all of their actions are identical. Therefore it seems like your example assumes Alice's behavior both is and isn't identical to Bob's.
- lithocarpus 11mo ago
  If their intentions are really different their thinking is probably different.
  - ratelimitsteve 11mo ago
    then it follows that if their thinking is the same then their intentions are the same. given that thinking is an action, and the description says their actions are the same, then their thinking must be the same and therefore their intentions the same. it's meaningless to think of someone who only does what's right but only does it for wrong reasons as someone can only arrive at right actions through right thought, to allude to buddhism. if alice's motivations are truly different then her actions must diverge from bob's at some point (or we just assume that alice's actions and motivations have no relationship which, again, renders the question meaningless).
- some_furry 11mo ago
  > Thinking is, after all, an action, and all of their actions are identical. Therefore it seems like your example assumes Alice's behavior both is and isn't identical to Bob's. By your logic, I was heterosexual for my entire young adult life when I actively worked to deceive people from realizing my actual orientation :P People employ dishonesty for lots of reasons, and in myriad ways. Sure, in this thought experiment, perfect indistinguishability means the difference is inconsequential. But you can use crises as an oracle to observe different behaviors, and thus undermine its indistinguishability. To keep the cryptography going, this is like an active vs passive attack. Sure, it's IND-KPA, but is it IND-CPA or IND-CCA? Perhaps not!
DenisM 11mo ago
This presupposes a constantly stable and omnipresent and benevolent society. Which it is not. Society always has reprehensible things in it, sometimes systematically sometimes sporadically. Society is not omnipresent or omniscient. And things go up and down over time. And one is never exposed to the whole society.
amarant 11mo ago
The counter point to this is the well-meaning idiot who causes destruction by doing things they, quite naively, believe will have positive outcomes. When the outcome predictably is terrible, do we let them off the hook for meaning well?
- some_furry 11mo ago
  I don't know. How are the Kardashians doing?
deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
more_corn 11mo ago
But that’s not how it plays out. What we see time and again is people who profess beliefs in positive philosophies and actions that don’t match. Look at any religion you like. Now look at how members of that religion actually behave. They’re people who profess a positive philosophy without the actions to match. I’ll take someone who consistently does good but without a coherent positive philosophy over someone who talks a good game and behaves badly all day every day.
- seec 11mo ago
  Exactly. I have been (forced) in catholic circles in my youth because of my mother and it's absolutely frightening how bad those people can act/talk, often openly. Similarly, I have some far-left friends who constantly advocate for things close to communism but they are (by far) the stingiest and least sharing people I know. I think there is some sort brain gymnastic that protects them against the incoherence.