«My father used to say, that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I laid the first stone right there. I’d committed myself. I’d pay any price, go to any length, because my cause was righteous … my intentions were good.
In the beginning, that seemed like enough.»
Star Trek DS9 – 6×19: «In The Pale Moonlight»
One of the greatest agonies for me is seeing good people trying to do good, but ignoring the side- and far-reaching effects of what they are doing, thereby doing more harm than good. Just look at almost anything done in the name of «social justice», or the latest moral-outrage-porn crusades.
It is one reason why I always told my students that good intentions are a warning sign, not a justification. If your intentions are good, you often think your actions will be good as well, and so will be the consequences. But all too often, good intentions make matters worse. So you should become very cautious when your feel strongly that you are doing the right thing.
Recently, in a conversation with ChatGPT, it generated the following sentence:
«… test their good with the same rigor they test others’ harm»
which is perhaps the perfect reminder of that issue, and the right mindset.
It followed later with:
«Intent is not immunity. Goodness must be tested, not presumed.»
which is a more neutral formulation.
I would put the first one up as an answer to the issue that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Not testing for side- and far-reaching effects, or better yet, have other test for them, as you likely have a strong conflict of interest, is not only lazy and dangerous, it is immoral. And it must be done with the same if not stronger rigor than the one you used to identify the problem.
So, test, especially when you think the intent is so pure and the solution so good that any tests are superfluous.