Viswanathan K's Thoughts

Heard about the “intention heuristic”?  Let Arnold Kling explain what that means: “The intention heuristic says that if the intentions of an act are selfless and well-meaning, then the act is good. If the intentions are self-interested, then it is not good.” Put simply, the intent behind an action is more important than its consequence . The intention heuristic probably explains why so many people who genuinely want a better life for everyone dislike capitalism. Because the intention of capitalism isn’t to make everyone better off. That is just a consequence . The benefits of Internet connectivity are enormous and obvious to people like us. Yet, many criticize Facebook for its attempt to bring free access to a small subset of that very same Internet to the remote and/or poor for free. Why? Because the ultimate motives of Facebook is to make money from the next billion that comes on the Net. In other words, the intention heuristic. If Facebook aims to make money, it’...

So many people place way too much emphasis on intent . It sometimes even reaches a stage where they ignore the success or failure of what was intended! Vinod Khosla, the billionaire venture capitalist and co-founder of Sun Microsystems, pointed out the problem with that misplaced emphasis when he made this comment about NGO’s: “I am relatively negative on most N.G.O.’s and their effectiveness . I am not negative on their intentions .” I sometimes wonder whether that overdone focus on intentions is partly a cultural thing. Doesn’t the Bhagwad Gita tell us to focus on the act and not on the reward? Sure, going to the other end of the spectrum and focusing only on the success/reward isn’t good either. The ongoing (or just ended, depending on who you ask) Recession is an example of what results from the other extreme. That said, if we want the lives of the poorest to improve, it is important to focus on the methods that work. Rather than terming every sincere attempt as p...