I agree that we should mostly care about effects and not give someone a pass on iffy behavior because they seem to have good intentions. But there are still good reasons for people in the community to care about intentions beyond “fun to debate”:
If someone with good intentions ends up doing harm, or had good intentions but then became corrupted in trying to do good, we want to learn from how they went wrong so others in the community can avoid falling into similar traps. Whereas if they had poor intentions from the start lessons are much less generalizable.
In handling an individual case where someone is showing warning signs, figuring out how they tick can be helpful. Someone who badly puts good intentions into practice may be helped (perhaps they’re missing an important consideration, need a warning, etc) while someone with poor intentions should probably just be kicked out. Of course you can’t always tell, and interacting with people as if they have good intentions (while being firm about problems) is generally a good approach, but I do think there’s something here.
I agree that we should mostly care about effects and not give someone a pass on iffy behavior because they seem to have good intentions. But there are still good reasons for people in the community to care about intentions beyond “fun to debate”:
If someone with good intentions ends up doing harm, or had good intentions but then became corrupted in trying to do good, we want to learn from how they went wrong so others in the community can avoid falling into similar traps. Whereas if they had poor intentions from the start lessons are much less generalizable.
In handling an individual case where someone is showing warning signs, figuring out how they tick can be helpful. Someone who badly puts good intentions into practice may be helped (perhaps they’re missing an important consideration, need a warning, etc) while someone with poor intentions should probably just be kicked out. Of course you can’t always tell, and interacting with people as if they have good intentions (while being firm about problems) is generally a good approach, but I do think there’s something here.
On the LW cross-post Richard Korzekwa has a similar comment that gives a detailed example.
(I agree; thanks for the nuance)