[joshuamorton]

This gets more complex in the realm of, let's call it politics, where the quest for knowledge may be adversarial, and is played over long periods. With fraud and crimes of intent, you often have very clear evidence where the person was unguarded (they said a slur as they committed the crime, making it a hate crime, for example).

I'm not saying reliably discovering intentions is always impossible. I'm saying that it is not always possible.