How you actually define good is a very sticky ethical topic that can lead one down a deluge of philosophical questions: is it good to change someone else’s behavior? What if they asked you to? What is free will? Who even am I?

If you care about impact, our intuitions regarding goodness just kind of suck: When you ask most people to picture someone environmentally conscious they will conjure up an image of a garden, a detached home, maybe an electric car, buying local, etc...

Charlie Munger famously said, “Show me a man’s incentives, and I will show you his outcomes.” It’s a line that gets quoted endlessly in business schools and boardrooms, usually with knowing nods about how perfectly it captures human behavior. And it’s true—incentives are powerful predictors of what people will do.

But here’s what doesn’t get quoted:... See more