That's a very good point. Actually, I just thought about something in the context of this conversation: one's absolute top priority, both in life and tech, should be to stop the bleeding[1] that emerges from problematic circumstances.
Whether those problematic circumstances, harm, arise due to happenstance, ignorance, negligence, malice, mischievousness, ill intentions or any other possible reason is ancillary to the initial objective and top priority of stopping the bleeding. Intent should be of no interest to first respondents, rather customers or decision makers in our case, when harm has materialized.
Establishing intent might be useful or even crucial for the purposes of attribution, negotiation, legislation, punishment, etc. All those, however, are only of interest, in this context, when the company in question hasn't completely damaged their brand and the public, us, hasn't become unable to trust them.
All this to say, yes, this is a terrible situation to be in, how are we going to solve it?
Do I care if Google is doing harm to the web due to being wilfully ignorant, negligent, ill-intentioned, etc? no, not an iota, I care about solving the problem. Whether they do harm deliberately or for other reasons should be of no interest to me in the interest of stopping the bleeding.
I agree with your sentiment. Modeling intent is useful in two cases: (1) predicting the future, and (2) in court. When modeling intent has no predictive power, it’s generally irrelevant, as you said.
That's a very good point. Actually, I just thought about something in the context of this conversation: one's absolute top priority, both in life and tech, should be to stop the bleeding[1] that emerges from problematic circumstances.
Whether those problematic circumstances, harm, arise due to happenstance, ignorance, negligence, malice, mischievousness, ill intentions or any other possible reason is ancillary to the initial objective and top priority of stopping the bleeding. Intent should be of no interest to first respondents, rather customers or decision makers in our case, when harm has materialized.
Establishing intent might be useful or even crucial for the purposes of attribution, negotiation, legislation, punishment, etc. All those, however, are only of interest, in this context, when the company in question hasn't completely damaged their brand and the public, us, hasn't become unable to trust them.
All this to say, yes, this is a terrible situation to be in, how are we going to solve it?
Do I care if Google is doing harm to the web due to being wilfully ignorant, negligent, ill-intentioned, etc? no, not an iota, I care about solving the problem. Whether they do harm deliberately or for other reasons should be of no interest to me in the interest of stopping the bleeding.
[1] https://isc.sans.edu/diary/Making+Intelligence+Actionable/41...
I agree with your sentiment. Modeling intent is useful in two cases: (1) predicting the future, and (2) in court. When modeling intent has no predictive power, it’s generally irrelevant, as you said.