[shandor]

> 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]

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.

[alangou]

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.

[theptip]

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.

[mannykannot]

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?

[more_corn]

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.

[amarant]

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?

[DenisM]

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.

[ratelimitsteve]

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.