= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Adaptive comments on Honesty: Beyond Internal Truth - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (85)
The problem, as I see it, is that it's not possible to lie to people and simultaneously act in their interests.
Lying to someone is an inherently hostile act, and indicates that (at least in regard to the matter at hand) you're enemies. There may be very special cases in which it's the act of an ally or friend (in the same way that semi-hostile microorganisms may be beneficial to our immune functioning) but they must be quite rare.
Even if some of the consequences of the lie are 'good', you're reinforcing the other person's tendencies towards irrationality by getting them to believe untruths and profiting by it.
It seems to be a questionable assumption that other people's interests are best served by
I am reminded of the Buddhist terms upaya and prajna which I believe are commonly translated as "insight" and "means" respectively, but which I first encountered as "truth" and "utility". The principle, as I understood it when studying the subject, was that while one may feel in possession of a truth, it is not always useful to simply communicate that truth directly. I have personally taken true/useful as dual criteria for my own interpersonal (though not intrapersonal) communication.
I'll leave the ends-justifies-the-means implication of such a truth/utility formulation for a separate time and place.