For example, let’s imagine I have two friends, Alice and Barry.

Alice is what we might call a “good friend”. She’s reliable and supportive. She shows up on time when we have plans, she helps me out when I need it, she’s supportive when I’m feeling unhappy. Sounds great, right? Well, it turns out that unbeknownst to me, Alice is doing this solely for selfish reasons, because she’s focused on the reciprocal side of the relationship, the things I do for her.

Meanwhile, Barry is what we might call a “bad friend”. He’s not reliable. He often cancels plans. He offers to help and then flakes out. When I’m feeling down, he’s not a great listener because he can’t seem to focus on what I’m saying. Now, sadly, it turns out Barry has a number of psychological/neurological issues that lead to this behavior. He _wants_ to be reliable and supportive and helpful, but his issues means he forgets commitments, double books himself, and tends to have trouble focusing on what other people are saying.

Which of these two friendships should I invest in? Well, Barry is a “good person”, if we look at his intentions, and Alice is a “bad person”. But surely it would be madness for me to focus on deepening my relationship with Barry over Alice!

We can repeat this type of scenario with many variations. For example, maybe they’re politicians on the city council.

Alice is ultimately self-serving and deep down, only cares about being famous and getting re-elected. To do that, she spends a lot of time researching issues that her voters care about and carefully crafting legislation that is in her their best interests. Over time, her efforts help address severe problems that her voters care about, like reducing homelessness, reducing local housing costs, and improving local services like trash collection, police response, etc.

Barry, OTOH, is a guy with a great heart. He really cares deeply about other people. I truly believe him when he tells me he wants to help me and the other people of my city. Unfortunately, Barry isn’t super smart, he’s a bit unfocused, and he’s easily swayed. He’s constantly advancing legislation that _sounds good_ but turns out to have unforeseen bad consequences. He lacks the long-term focus and planning to evaluate his past actions, so he never works on reversing his bad decisions. He’s easily swayed, so special interest groups have an easy time of talking him into bad legislation that advances the interests of the few over the many.

Which one should I vote for? Surely, it would be madness to vote for Barry, right?

So what is the point of labeling someone a “good person” or “bad person”?

Instead, when I evaluate people (for relationships, politics, financial support, etc.), I should probably focus on their past actions, as well as information that helps me predict their future actions. It’s this last bit, “predicting future actions”, where intentions do come into play. But this is just one factor among many that I should evaluate, and it’s probably not the most important one.

Similarly, when I consider things like legal consequences for actions, intentions are not terribly relevant. The good-hearted schizophrenic mass murderer needs to be put in a situation where they cannot harm others. So does the evil-hearted serial killer. It doesn’t really matter why they did what they did. As long as we think they might do it again, they are a danger and need to be dealt with. Maybe the schizophrenic goes to a high-security asylum and the serial killer goes to a high-security prison. And maybe one day the schizophrenic can go free because they’re no longer a danger, while the serial killer will never change. But these are small differences, overall.

To summarize, actions speak louder than words, and the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.