I’d be interested to know: what is missing from my new list of causes of bad things and potential types of solutions? Thanks to those of you who commented on my prior version!

Causes of bad things in the world:

—
1) EXTERNAL CAUSES

1i) Nature or evolution (e.g., malaria, cancer) -> Potential solutions: technological development, such as medical cures

1ii) Bad luck (e.g., landslides, earthquakes, droughts) -> charity, government programs providing social safety nets

1iii) Scarcity (e.g., insufficient food or water in an area) -> migration away from high scarcity areas, technological development to increase food production

—
2) FAILINGS OF HUMAN NATURE

2i) Highly selfish actions by non-evil people (e.g., some of the crimes that are committed, some of the manipulation that occurs) -> cultural norms discouraging selfishness, cultural norms to punish those taking highly selfish actions

2ii) Harmful actions taken in highly emotional, confused, or desperate mental states (e.g., crimes of passion, harmful, desperate reactions out of fear, harm caused during extreme mental illness) -> widely available and effective mental health treatment, widespread education/training related to mental health and emotional regulation

2iii) Well-intentioned ideologues who are convinced that their simple but wrong model of the world is the absolute truth (e.g., some of the genocides and wars, many harmful yet well-intentioned policies) -> rationality education/training, a robust culture of respectful disagreement and debate

2iv) Cognitive biases leading to actions with severe negative consequences (e.g., greatly misjudging whether a project will bring enough benefit to be worth the cost, excessive fear towards or devaluing of ‘othered’ outsiders leading to mistreatment or harm to outsiders, lack of preparation for likely occurrences that are not salient) -> rationality education/training, careful design of systems to counteract biases, strong moral norms of respect towards all, moral circle expansion

2v) Retaliation or revenge (e.g., cycles of retribution) -> a culture of forgiveness, effective dispute resolution methods and institutions, reliable enforcement of laws

2vi) Evil people acting alone (e.g., serial murder, child abuse) -> effective police forces, high crime clearance rates, enforcement of laws, scientific investigation into the root causes of evil

2vii) Evil people who rally supporters (e.g., some genocides and wars, some extractive government policies) -> strong norms around truth telling and social punishment for lying, a robust culture of respectful disagreement and debate, a culture of empathy toward and acceptance of those who are different than you, a well-educated and informed citizenry, scientific investigation into the root causes of evil, a strong constitution, a strong independent judiciary, strong norms around maintaining freedom and independence of thought

—
3) CHALLENGES OF COORDINATION AND INFORMATION

3i) Negative-sum competition (e.g., fighting over food when there isn’t enough to go around) -> technological innovation to increase abundance, thoroughly enforced laws forbidding negative-sum behaviors

3ii) Unintended side effects of actions that are not innately unethical (e.g., addiction caused by the invention of social media, new promising-seeming medical treatments that turn out to have horrendous side effects) -> a robust and low-transaction cost systems for those who were harmed to be compensated by those who caused the harm, hard to undermine enforced regulation requiring organizations to ameliorate harms once they have been identified

3iii) Collective action problems and negative externalities caused by individually reasonable behavior (e.g., pollution, climate change, overuse of resources) -> methods for assigning prices to negative externalities so that someone bears the cost, regulation to limit negative externalities

3iv) Prisoner’s dilemmas and difficulties of pre-commitment and coordination (e.g., arms races, such as with nuclear weapons) -> technology to facilitate coordination and simultaneous action, public projects by governments and private donors

What other broad causes of bad things or potential types of solutions am I missing?

This piece was first written on November 2, 2025, and first appeared on my website on November 17, 2025.

—
Myth #1: Narcissists don’t know they are narcissistic.

Surprisingly, quite a number do. Since narcissists are rarely able to see their own flaws clearly, there are 2 positions they usually take:

i) I’m narcissistic, but that’s good, actually

or

ii) I’m not narcissistic

In fact, enough highly narcissistic people know they are narcissists that on anonymous surveys, the single-item narcissism scale works reasonably well: “To what extent do you agree with this statement: I am a narcissist. (Note: The word ‘narcissist’ means egotistical, self-focused, and vain.)”

—
Myth #2: Narcissists love themselves and are confident.

While many of them project confidence, and they may feel confident much of the time, they usually have unstable egos and desperately seek attention and admiration. Without it (such as when criticized), their ego can easily collapse, spiraling them into self-loathing.

—
Myth #3: Narcissists have zero emotional empathy.

While this is true of some, usually, they do have empathy, but it’s conditional. Narcissists can be very empathetic when it’s low cost. But if your needs or desires conflict with theirs, their empathy typically vanishes immediately.

—
Myth #4: Narcissists are common.

While many people manifest some narcissistic traits at times, true narcissists (i.e., people with Narcissistic Personality Disorder) are about 1%-6% of the population. You very likely know one or more, but they aren’t as common as some assume.

—
Myth #5: A narcissist wouldn’t be nice, give me compliments, talk about how great other people are, be a victim, or give donations.

Since admiration and attention are major drives for narcissists, they learn behaviors that get them admiration and attention. So…narcissists are nice (sometimes charming) initially, so you admire them, give compliments, so you like them and give compliments back, talk up their “amazing” friends (because it makes them feel special), and donate or tell stories of being victims (for attention/admiration).

—
Myth #6: All narcissists are bad people.

While they’re certainly at elevated risk of acting immorally and harming you, some narcissists are not bad. For instance, some learn to live by healthy, pro-social principles (e.g., they might realize that living by their instincts badly backfires). Some others, fortunately, have compensating traits, such as unusually high empathy, that make them less likely to cause harm. But it’s wise to keep in mind that romantic, friend, and work relationships with narcissists come with a greatly elevated risk of experiencing psychological harm.

—
Myth #7: You’ll spot narcissists immediately because they’ll come across as obnoxious or unlikable.

The reality is that, on average, more narcissistic people actually make better first impressions than the average person. For instance, evidence suggests they tend to dress well and make likable facial expressions that cause them to be instantly liked. It’s only over time that unfavorable qualities come out.

—
Myth #8: There’s no choice but to cut off narcissists.

While some people will very reasonably decide to fully cut narcissists out of their lives – especially if they’ve suffered narcissistic abuse – others will choose to (or have no choice but to) interact with some. To minimize harm to yourself, two strategies (used at the same time) can help:

Strategy (1): If the narcissist steps over your boundaries, assert your boundaries clearly, state what you’ll do if they are violated again, and enforce without fail. Ex: “Sorry, this topic makes me uncomfortable. Please don’t bring it up again, or I’ll leave.”

Strategy (2): Avoid hurting the narcissist’s ego or coming across as “against” them. If you do, they may grow angry or lash out. So, when asserting boundaries, try to do it in a way that leaves their ego unhurt.
Using these strategies is not a panacea and will still expose you to risk. A major challenge is simultaneously enforcing boundaries (as in 1) while not triggering the ego (as in 2). With some extreme narcissists, disconnecting will be the only viable option – for instance, if they continually violate the boundaries you set.

This piece was first written on June 20, 2025 and first appeared on my website on August 12, 2025.

People like to think of things as “good” or “bad,” such as:

• Trans fats are bad for you, and broccoli is good for you.
• Lethargy is bad, but exercise is good.
• Being cowardly is bad, and having courage is good.

A problem with putting something in the “good” bucket of your mind, though, is that this can lead to the belief that the more of it there is, the better.

But most goods don’t work that way. It’s far more common for goods to diminish in value as you get more of them, or to be good up to a certain point and then stop being good at all, or even to harm you when you have too much!

By understanding the different ways that value can change with quantity, you can make more rational decisions. By grasping these concepts, you can optimize the way you allocate resources and efforts, avoid wastefulness, and strike a balance that promotes both personal well-being and efficiency – regardless of what decisions you have to make.

The next time you think about something being good, you can remember this article to add some nuance, go one step further, and think about what type of good it is.

Understanding Different Types of Goods

To help you make more rational choices, in this section, we’re going to give you a rundown of 4 types of goods that it can be helpful to know. They can be represented graphically like this:

You might find it useful to keep looking back at this chart as you read about the concepts below.

1️⃣Satiating Goods

Once you have a reasonable amount of these goods, there is no additional benefit to having more, but it also won’t hurt to have more (in realistic quantities). Although it is well-known that many goods have a point at which you will get no value from any more of them, there doesn’t appear to be a widely-used term for such goods. We like the phrase ‘satiating goods’ because your desire or need for them can be satiated.

For example, consider broccoli. Sure, it is probably healthy to swap 3% of what you eat for broccoli if you’re low in some of the nutrients it provides, but you will actually get no additional net benefit if you go from 20% of your diet being broccoli up to 30%. (Unless, of course, that final ten percent was substituted in place of something unhealthy, like trans fats or mercury-laden food.)

Satiating goods come up quite a bit. They are anything that you only need a certain amount of, and any excess won’t be used, such as:

• Healthy foods: Once you get a certain amount of any healthy food, eating more has no benefit. Yet, people tend to treat healthy foods as though they are unequivocally good.
• Seating in a venue: In a theater or conference venue, having enough seating for the expected audience is essential. But once there are enough seats for everyone, adding more seats doesn’t enhance the experience for attendees, though it doesn’t detract from it either (as long as the extra seating doesn’t spread people out too much).
• Life jackets on a boat: A boat requires enough life jackets for all passengers and crew. Once this number is met, additional life jackets do not enhance safety, as they are unlikely to be used.

2️⃣Diminishing Goods

It’s always good to have more of these goods, but the amount of value each additional unit gives you diminishes as you get more and more, but never reaches zero (for realistic quantities). 

One example is money: evidence suggests that the amount of life satisfaction you would get from doubling your income is fixed, regardless of what your income was before the doubling. This means that the extra life satisfaction you’d experience when going from $30,000 to $60,000 is equal to the extra life satisfaction you’d experience when going from $500,000 to $1,000,000. But the first one of those increases in life satisfaction is much cheaper than the second ($30k vs. $500k). So, the value of $30k to someone whose income is $30k is much higher than the value of that same amount of money to someone whose income is $500k. 

Of course, there’s a sense in which the value of money doesn’t diminish: each $1 you own is worth $1, no matter how many other dollars you have. But we’re talking about a more subjective value here; we’re talking about the value goods bring you in terms of your happiness or how important they are to you. When it comes to money, that kind of value diminishes as you get more of it. 

Diminishing goods are probably the most common. Other examples include: 

• Recreational travel: The initial trips and experiences can be highly rewarding, but over time, the novelty and excitement may diminish, even though they still offer enjoyment.
• Loving relationships: If you’re at 0 loving relationships and then you get to 1, you’ll be getting a much greater amount of value than if you’re at 100 and then you get to 101. However, your 101st loving relationship isn’t of no value at all.
• Hours of practice: If you’re starting a new hobby, you’ll find that your first hours of practice give you a large amount of value (in the form of improvement), but that value drops off over time as you have less to learn and make smaller and smaller improvements.

3️⃣Overdosable Goods

Like satiating goods, these are beneficial up to some amount, but, unlike satiating goods, further amounts of overdosable goods actually become harmful. Examples of this include:

• Medicines: Medicines are helpful in appropriate doses but typically harm you at higher dosages.
• Stretching: Some stretching, especially of body parts with low mobility, may be beneficial, but if you stretch an excessive amount, you might actually significantly increase the chance of injury.
• Courage: It’s good to have courage so that you can get yourself to do difficult things that are valuable – but past a certain point, courage yields no additional benefits and could lead to foolhardiness or getting into danger unnecessarily.

4️⃣Linear Goods

Finally, there are linear goods, so-called because the benefit you get from them increases at a constant (linear) rate as you get more of them. Every additional unit provides the same amount of extra happiness or utility; the marginal benefit does not change as more is acquired or consumed.

These are actually quite rare, and there is often disagreement over whether something counts as such a good. For example, they might include:

• Justice: If you value justice intrinsically, then you might think that more justice is always good, and the value of justice never diminishes or changes as more is acquired. 
• Happy lives: There is a debate over the moral value of bringing happy people into the world. Some people think it is morally good to do so (for example, see here). Other people think it’s morally neutral, while still others think it’s morally bad. Those who think it’s morally good to bring more happy people into existence typically also think that each new person is as valuable as all the others, and their value does not diminish or change as additional happy people come into existence.

The thing we want to point out here is that linear goods are quite uncommon, and their status is often controversial, despite the fact that people tend to think of ‘goodness’ as being linear all the time. But now you know better! Goodness more often gets satiated, diminishes, or even overdoses.

Of course, these are not the only types of goods out there! There are some more complicated goods with more complicated utility functions, but the ones discussed in this article are a great place to start, and reflecting on them will help you make more rational choices.

What should you do with this knowledge? 

Now that you know about different ways that goodness behaves, you can think more rationally about your goals and sources of happiness and avoid the trap of thinking that more of a good thing is always better. 

We suggest that you take some time to consider how these insights might affect your goals. Studies show that goals are more effective if they are approach goals (aiming for something you want) rather than avoidance goals (which focus on the negative), but if your goal is to acquire more of something (e.g., money) or do more of something (e.g., exercise), then you should ask yourself: “What kind of good is it that I’m after?”

• If you’re aiming for an overdosable good: It’s crucial to recognize the limit and avoid crossing it. This means being aware of and respecting recommended dosages, limits, or guidelines, whether it’s for physical activities, medical intake, or emotional states like courage.

• If you’re aiming for a satiating good: It’s not as crucial to know when to stop, but you can save yourself a lot of wasted effort by paying attention to when this good will stop being of value to you. Avoid wasting effort and missing opportunities for other value in your life.

• If you’re aiming for a diminishing good: These goods don’t have points at which they stop providing value, so it’s worth thinking even more carefully about when to call it quits. You should focus on noticing when the additional time, effort, or cost begins to outweigh the enjoyment or benefit you receive.

• If you’re aiming for a linear good: Remember that while they may seem straightforward in providing consistent benefits, they are rare and often subject to debate. It’s important to critically assess whether your pursuit really is a linear good for you and to be aware of the potential complexities. If you’re confident that the good really is a linear one and it has a high value for you, then you might just have found something worth dedicating your life to!

If you want to know more about what makes you happy so that you can better figure out which goods you might want to aim for, you could try our Clearer Thinking tool, Your Greatest Sources of Pleasure.

The next time you notice yourself thinking of something as being good, it may be worth considering what kind of good it is and asking, “When would I have enough?”

This piece was first published on the Clearer Thinking blog on December 20, 2023, and was published on my website on December 27, 2023.

It’s definitely true that some women are attracted to traits like narcissism, callousness, and manipulativeness (and some unusual women even go so far as to write letters to serial killers to get to know them). In my experience, though, attraction to traits like these is actually quite rare (I can only think of two friends who are substantially attracted to those traits in particular).

Much more commonly, I believe, women tend to be attracted to traits that have a tendency to be found among bad guys (but which are not exclusive to bad guys), like:

• confidence (or, at least, the appearance of it)
• lack of neediness (e.g., they aren’t sitting around waiting for the woman to call, they aren’t clingy)
• independence and not being overly concerned with what other people think of you (or, at least, the appearance of not caring)
• self-determination, knowing what you want and going after it intensely
• strength (emotional and physical)
• making the woman feel extremely desired and special
• charisma (intensity, presence, high energy)
• assertiveness
• self-respect (e.g., not letting others take advantage of you)
• power (e.g., you can get things done effectively in the world, others respect you, high status)

I know a lot of women who are attracted to the traits on the list above.
So, yes, many women are attracted to bad boys, but I believe that’s mainly because bad boys have a tendency to have (or, at least, appear to have) a number of these other desirable qualities.
Women are often attracted to traits found among bad guys, but thankfully, these traits are also found among what you might call “powerful good guys.”

The regular (non-powerful) “nice guy” stereotype invokes a sense of:

• low confidence
• weakness, patheticness, neediness
• a sense of entitlement or a lack of responsibility
• low assertiveness
• not knowing what you want or not pursuing what you want
• clingy, in need of constant reassurance
• lack of charisma (e.g., low energy, lack of presence)
• lack of power (e.g., lack of respect, living in their parent’s basement)
• low self-respect (e.g., letting others walk all over you)
• an intensity of interest in a woman (bordering on obsessiveness) that can come across as creepy

On the other hand, there are “powerful good guys” who reflect the traits that women tend to like while not being “bad” at all.

If you are a powerful, good guy, you demonstrate the following:

• a quiet confidence (rather than a bragging narcissistic confidence)
• strength that is used to protect others (not to take advantage of or manipulate others)
• self-determination, knowing what you want (but with pro-social rather than selfish goals), and going after what you want with intensity (but without violating other people’s boundaries)
• strength and charisma
• independence (e.g., strongly desiring to spend time with the woman, but not being clingy or needy, and not being pouty or angry when the woman needs time alone, and having a flourishing and meaningful life outside of your time with the woman)
• making the woman feel extremely desired and special (because you genuinely feel this way, and you are not afraid to show it, rather than this being a tactic to get what you want, but also the self-confidence, self-respect, and kindness to fully accept rejection and not get angry over rejection)
• assertiveness and self-respect reflecting a healthy expression of desires and enforcement of your own boundaries (not a coercive assertiveness that violates the boundaries of others)
• power that comes about through your respect for others and competence (not created through fear or manipulation)
• protectiveness that helps you give your loved ones safety (without any coercive control – a nurturing protectiveness can be very attractive to women, I believe, whether directed at the woman themself or to others like babies, children, and animals)

There is also a major advantage that powerful good guys have over bad guys – they are kind and supportive, two traits that women often report caring the most about in their partners.

These good guys also tend to have much happier, healthier relationships (rather than the damaging, often miserable relationships that highly manipulative, narcissistic people tend to have).

So, if you are a guy who wants to become the sort of person who is more attractive to more women, my advice is:

• don’t aim to become the “nice guy” (who can be viewed as pathetic)
• don’t aim to become the “bad guy” (who is a dick, or worse)
• aim to become the “powerful good guy” (who builds happy, healthy, long-term relationships)

However, if you’re not close to any of these types, that’s also okay, of course! And it’s totally fine not to aspire to be like any of these archetypes.

Women are very far from a monolith. There are women who are attracted to all sorts of different things (just as there are men who want the opposite of what most men want). But, I claim, the “powerful good guy” is a better archetype for thinking about how to be generally attractive than both the “bad guy” and the “nice guy” archetypes. Plus, as a bonus, modeling the “powerful good guy” archetype helps you be a better person in the process.

Women who are attracted to men: I’d be especially interested in hearing what you think of what I’m saying here. Do you agree or disagree with my points? I’d also be really interested to know whether you (or your close friends) are attracted specifically to traits like narcissism, callousness, and manipulativeness, or (insofar as you’re attracted to “bad guys”), do you think you’re mainly attracted to traits that tend to be associated with being a “bad guy” (rather than those potentially harmful traits themselves)?

I’ll add (thanks to commenters who pointed this out!) there are at least a couple of traits more unique to bad guys that some women do find desirable, in particular, ones that inspire thoughts like “He’s an asshole to everyone but me, so that makes me special!”, and “Normally no one woman can satisfy him, that’s why he’s a philanderer, but his desire for me is so strong that he’ll commit just to me!” and “I know he’s bad, but I can fix him!” While some women are, indeed, attracted to these ideas, I think it’s fair to say that most people would acknowledge these are unhealthy desires that typically end in frustration and failure, and they aren’t key components of most women’s attraction to men.

Finally, it’s worth noting that many (but not all) women find sexual dominance attractive (which they may associate with bad boys). But sexual dominance is neither bad nor good and has nothing to do with being good or bad per se (though sometimes people enjoy having it mimic bad behavior, such as with r*pe fantasies). In other words, sexual dominance is a neutral behavior that is equally compatible with being a powerful good guy as with being a bad guy. It can be done ethically (if done with consent and with attention to your partner’s experience) or unethically (if done without consent or with indifference to your partner’s experience).

This piece was first written on October 25, 2023, and first appeared on this site on January 18, 2024.

Of course, this can be very challenging to achieve, and one can debate what “harm” means, how broadly it should be construed, and what to do in cases where there is substantial uncertainty about how to make harm unprofitable. But insofar as it’s unprofitable to cause harm, and companies behave as profit maximizers, companies are basically forces for good.

How to make companies into engines of good: make harm unprofitable. If a machine is designed to do X, it shouldn’t come as a big surprise if it approximately does X. However, we want to make sure that X rules out things that we really don’t want the machine to achieve. If it doesn’t, we might end up hating the machine.

In other words, if we think of companies as an optimizing system that (to some degree of approximation) attempts to maximize profit for shareholders, then if the set of very profitable options includes doing harm, we can predict that companies will sometimes take those harmful options.

Making it unprofitable to do harm is different than, say, punishing bad things companies do in proportion to how bad a crime seems intuitively. It ideally takes into account how much punishment is necessary to offset the average profit that could be made from violating that rule (otherwise, if the profit potential is large enough, even once the potential punishment is accounted for, we can predict the rule will be violated by many companies).

This piece was first written on July 20, 2017, and first appeared on my website on June 10, 2025.

After a little reflection, it is clear that the morality of a person who carries out an action doesn’t just depend on the action itself but rather depends on the state of mind of the person who performs it. This holds for pretty much every commonly used definition of morality. Suppose, for example, that I was tricked into believing that giving money to a certain charity would help the poor when, in fact, the donation was being funneled to gangsters. Generally, Christians, Buddhists, Utilitarians, Kantians, and almost everyone else are in agreement that, although the consequences of my action were bad, I am not bad for carrying out the action because I misunderstood the action’s nature. On the other hand, if I willingly chose to fund gangsters, almost everyone would be in agreement that the action would reflect poorly on my character, even if the net result of such funding was essentially the same as in the case where I thought I was donating to charity. To give another example, there are very few who would say that a person is good for giving money to the poor merely to impress a good-looking date, whereas many would call the person good if they donated out of genuine concern for the welfare of others. Hence, pretty much however one defines ethics, there is widespread agreement that it is not our actions themselves that define how good we are, but rather the intentions underlying our actions. An action (e.g., giving money to charity) is compatible with us being a good person if the thoughts that motivate us to carry it out are considered good (e.g., a desire to help others) but may have no effect on our goodness or even make us a worse person if the motivating thoughts are considered bad (e.g., a desire to help only me at great expense to others).

What is curious is that while there is little dispute that it is legitimate to evaluate the goodness of people based on the goodness of their intentions rather than on the goodness of the consequences of their actions, many people are not willing to carry this logic out to its ultimate, somewhat startling conclusion, namely that a number of people that are generally thought of as “evil” may not really be, and in some cases, may even be “good.”

To illustrate this point, consider the hypothetical case of a person who is schizophrenic and whose delusional thinking has led him to believe that the only way to save the world from unprecedented disaster is to blow up a certain office building while it’s full of workers. If this man were to carry out this terrible act, our instincts would inevitably be to label him as evil, whereas his intentions could demonstrate that he is quite the opposite. If he not only did not want to blow up the building but was, in fact, repulsed by the idea of hurting other people and only carried out the bombing due to his mistaken belief about the action saving the world, then it seems as though he was, in fact, being genuinely good rather than evil since his intentions were very good, and he likely underwent enormous stress and effort (including overcoming his psychological revulsion to murder) only for the purpose of doing what he felt was right.

At this point, some people may object that such a person with schizophrenia should still be blamed for his bad action since he has a responsibility to act in “accord with the truth” and to verify the reality of his beliefs prior to acting. But this argument fails to take into account the experience of people suffering from schizophrenia: in some cases, they have no inkling whatsoever that they are delusional. If a person’s delusion does not seem delusional to them in the least, how can they be blamed for failing to see or question if they’re delusional?

Another objection that may arise relates to the belief some people have that “good cannot come from evil” (or, similarly, that “evil cannot come from good”), which in this context may imply that even though the mentally ill person believes that they are doing a good thing by blowing up a building, the potential goodness of their intention is tainted by the evilness of the consequences. An example can help illustrate the problem with this way of thinking.

Consider a hypothetical situation where we are forced to make the choice of pulling either one of two levers. Suppose that the first lever will lead, with a 90% probability, to the horrifying torture and death of one thousand people and with a 10% probability of us receiving one million dollars in cash. The second lever will lead, with a 90% probability, to us receiving moderate injuries and with a 10% probability of one person being subjected to horrifying torture and death. Pretty much everyone who believes in morality, I think, would agree that pulling the second lever is the moral thing to do (since it makes the torture and death of others much less likely), whereas (psychological consequences aside) it is selfishly better for the individual to pull the first lever (since, that way injuries to our own body are avoided and there is a chance at nabbing the million dollars of cash). On the other hand, if a person were to really pull the second lever, despite that being the obvious ethical choice, there is still a 10% chance that a stranger would be subjected to horrifying torture and death because of that decision. To argue that “good cannot come from evil” (in the way discussed above) is to imply that the morality of my choice depends on whether (due to random chance alone) pulling the second lever led to bad consequences. When attempting to act ethically, however, all I can do is act in a way that (probabilistically) maximizes the amount of good that I believe my action tends to do. To hold me accountable for the actual realized consequences of my action, even though those consequences could never be known to me in advance, is to effectively determine how good I am based on the random roll of a die. The implication would be that ten people could carry out the same action for precisely the same reason, and yet nine of them would be labeled good, and the tenth labeled bad, simply because the tenth was unlucky. This is a conclusion that I think few people are willing to live with.

But what are the practical, real-world consequences of goodness being based on intentions rather than actions? We have seen already that it may alter our assessment of the insane. More bizarrely, though, it may influence our opinion of the deeply religious as well. People who commit acts that (they genuinely believe) are inspired by God’s will but (according to those who do not believe in the same religion) are of a heinous and destructive nature and are very often labeled as “evil.” But in many cases, religious fanatics are absolutely convinced that their actions are “right” and even good for humankind. In such circumstances, it seems that “delusional” would be a fairer label to apply than “bad.” Going a step further, it seems likely that many extraordinarily good people who devoted their lives to doing what they knew was right were, in fact, doing great harm because of false religious or spiritual beliefs. Take, for example, the case of Christian witch burners, some of whom must have genuinely believed that by murdering (what we know to be) innocent people, they were removing a great evil from the earth.

This piece was first written on July 29, 2009, and first appeared on my website on July 3, 2025.