# Understandable vs justifiable vs useful

_This is a quickly written post, just sharing a rough conceptual distinction that I’ve found useful in everyday life and that I think others might find useful too._

Your boss just _expected_ you to stay late yesterday. Your partner just shot you a pretty damn sharp comment. Someone just cut you off in traffic.

Are these actions intrinsically, incomprehensibly evil?

Or can you at least _comprehend_ what led these people to such sins, despite there clearly being no adequate _justification_ for them?

Or are these actions in some sense _justified_ \- perhaps from some sort of common sense or deontological perspective - but still just not _helpful_ or not what _should’ve_ been done?

For another example, maybe _you’re_ about to shoot your partner a pretty damn sharp comment. _Anyone_ would surely understand why you’d say it, in the circumstances - and it seems fair enough, really, given what they just said about The Event, _which you’ve already apologised for_. But is saying it going to make either of you any happier, or just spark another spiral upwards through the decibel charts?

* * *

Since I was a teenager, I’ve regularly leaned on a rough distinction between _understandable,_ _justifiable_, and _useful_ actions. I’m not sure when I “came up with it”, or if I stole it from somewhere. It’s also very possible everyone already uses something like this distinction themselves. But in case not everyone does, I thought I’d share the distinction, as I’ve found it very helpful.

I won’t define my terms; their standard definitions work quite well here, and I’ll let examples do the rest.

Examples
========

Let’s say someone’s complaining about something their boss did. I might respond with something like:

> To be honest, I do think I can _understand_ why your boss did that, because of incentive X and norm Y. _But_, I still think it was uncalled for and unfair on you \[unjustifiable\], and that it just made things worse \[not useful\].

Or I might say:

> To be honest, I do think I can _understand_ why your boss did that, because of incentive X and norm Y. In fact, I can even see how, from a certain angle, it might have been ‘fair enough’, given past-bad-behaviour-of-yours Z \[justifiable\]. But I still think it was just fighting fire with fire and making things worse \[not useful\], and I can see why it’s pissed you off. And I think a better and more mature boss would’ve recognised that and taken a more positive approach.

I also use the distinction quite similarly I’m just _thinking_ about others’ behaviours, rather than _discussing_ others’ behaviours.

Perhaps most importantly, I sometimes use this distinction when thinking about my _own_ behaviours - either reflecting on what I’ve done or deciding what I should do. For example, let’s say I’m in a discussion that’s getting heated, where fingers are beginning to be pointed - a fairly sharp reply swims to mind and is just about to escape my lips, but then I think:

> Actually, wait, should I say this? I think it’s totally understandable that I’d feel this way and that I’d make make that known, given the circumstances. And to be honest I think it’s totally fair - what they just said _was_ unreasonable, and did hurt me, and I _did_ try to let them know this situation might come up \[justifiable\]. But I think maybe I’m getting too heated, and this is just slinging negativity back at them, and it’ll sound like a told-you-so - and I _did_ tell them so, but still, saying that right now is just going to make them even angrier \[not useful\], for pretty natural human reasons.

When that last sort of example comes up, I feel very glad I have this distinction in mind. I think it _substantially_ improves communication and happiness for (in particular) both me and my partner.

Though note that there are _some_ times when I think the distinction collapses, or becomes perhaps counterproductive - specifically, times when I think it’s quite important for me to just simply report what I’m feeling, with as few filters as possible, rather than running it through a check first, moderating my tone, etc. But it’s easy to set the distinction aside in those times, and I sometimes make explicit that I’m doing so and why, partly so there can be an awareness that I might not 100% endorse everything I’m about to say.

What this is good for
=====================

Roughly speaking, here’s what I think this distinction helps me do:

1.  Temper blame with understanding, nuance, and empathy
2.  Avoid the view in which “bad people” are _monsters_ who we _cannot_ understand - or who we must _refuse_ to understand, because to do so is to partially accept their deeds
3.  Predict people, and recognise my ignorance

*   I’d say that anything a person does is, in principle, _understandable_. Some machinery led them to do that; some combination of genes and environment, of disposition and circumstance. It is often the case that _I_ can’t _currently_ understand someone’s action, but [“that is a fact about my own state of mind, not a fact about the phenomenon itself.”](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6i3zToomS86oj9bS6/mysterious-answers-to-mysterious-questions)
*   If I had to see “bad people” as incomprehensible monsters, I couldn’t even _begin_ to predict or prevent their bad deeds, or what leads others to a habit of such bad deeds.

5.  Do 1-3 even in social situations that naturally push me towards the [fundamental attribution error](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error), and [groupthink](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink), and the cherished conclusion that my conversational partner is _definitely_ right and the other person (who’s not there) was _definitely_ being _utterly_ unreasonable
6.  Do 4 _without_ having to be too obnoxious or contrarian in the process, and _while_ still letting people have space to vent, which I think is valuable in itself and to maintain relationships
7.  Manage _my own_ behaviour in social situations, where it’d be very easy - and _very justified_, thank you very much! - to get into a spiral of negativity

I’ve not really tried to make this distinction precise and rigorous, or to integrate or compare it with various philosophical concepts or debates. I just find it a useful, simple, pretty common-sense tool for my own thinking, and I hope it can be for yours as well.

Unnecessary postscript
======================

In my informal usage, I implicitly mean this as a sort of hierarchy, where basically all actions are (in principle) understandable, some subset of understandable actions are justifiable, and some subset of _justifiable_ actions are useful. But when I came to actually writing this post, I realised that, depending on how you operationalise each of the three key terms, there might be cases that deviate from that. In particular, there might be things that _aren’t_ justifiable (in some sense) but _are_ useful, such as:

*   a “bad action” done “for the greater good”
*   a totally weird action that has “no rational basis”, but is good from a game-theoretic perspective