alt Hacker NewsI will propose that you are wrong.
1. We must ignore the intentions of the designers (your claim), and instead see what the outcomes are
2. Therefore we should ignore Beer's intentions when designing the phrase POSWID, and instead see how it is used.
3. The overwhelming majority of people using it on the internet (including the GP comment) is to imply that the people perpetuating the system actually desire the outcome.
So the purpose of POSWID is clearly to imply intent.
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There are plenty of cases where you absolutely can/should discuss outcomes in a way where the intention is not factored in because it can often be straight up irrelevant.
If a gun is developed with the intention of hunting only bears and someone uses it to shoot people, you don’t have to constantly preface things by talking about how it’s supposed to be used only on bears. Sometimes that fact, depending on the context of the conversation, is simply not relevant.
To cover my bases here: yes it often is relevant and maybe even critical info, but it often isn’t either of those things.
Whose intent? POSWID Is about structural incentives not personal intent, and these can be, and likely are, an emergent behavior. It’s about reframing away from intents, treating the system as a structure and removing the whole structure for replacement. As opposed to localized reforms which are exposed to the same prior emergent behaviors leading to constant backsliding.