Maybe I'm just deluding myself, or as Michael Vassar would put it, expressing codes of morality that I learned by being socialized by fantasy novels as a kid...
...but for me, one of the primary motivations against lying is "Once a man gets a reputation for lying, he might as well be whistling in the wind." At least if you get a reputation for Not Technically Lying, your words still mean things, they just have to be carefully double-checked. Depending on how much trouble you go to in order to Not Technically Lie, when anyone else would just lie and be done with it, it expresses an odd sort of respect for the truth. A lot of that would depend on context and motivation, I expect. And maybe if you aren't socialized by fantasy novels you just don't care about the difference at all.
I think there are grades of Not Technically Lying, too. For example, there's Not Literally Lying According To Sentence Syntax But Lying If You Added Words That Appear By Gricean Implication, like the missing "because" in the opening paragraph. In contrast, Subtly Changing the Subject or Not Answering the Original Question, actually seem to me substantially less similar to outright lies - the original sentence becomes a lie if an implied word "because" is said out loud; Subtly Changing the Subject is more... semantic.
It seems likely to me that a reputation for Not Technically Lying, being highly unusual, would be highly salient, and so might lead to less trust than a reputation for lying at an average frequency – i.e., the null reputation, not salient at all.
I'm pretty sure that this is correct.
More precisely, I'm pretty sure that one simply doesn't want to have ANY reputation regarding trustworthyness, truth, or whatever. Make issues of truth salient and you loose. Even a reputation for always communicating honestly (no efforts at deception) costs you status because it makes you a less valuable ally, less capable of desirable forms of partiality, and above all, weird. Being seen as a trusted neutral third party is at best a weak consolation prize, and one that is only possible if you are also seen as either a) not having your own agenda, or b) not having an agenda that anyone is allowed to question.
By contrast, politicians who are caught in lies repeatedly pick themselves up and go back to being high status politicians after wiping the dirt off their faces.
Is it actually possible to get a reputation for NTL?
Yes. I have such a reputation amongst some of my friends. In fact, one time I was hanging out with two friends, one of which knew of this reputation (Amy) and one of which didn't (Beth), and so the following conversation occured:
In fact, people will probably remember you saying what you misled them to believe instead of the technically true thing you actually said.
There's an anecdote in Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman in which as a frat brother in college Feynman stole a door off someone's room and hid it in the basement. After two or three days, the head of the frat house called everyone to a meeting and asked them all one after another, "Did you take the door?" When Feynman was asked, he replied in a sarcastic tone of voice, "Yes, I took the door." People heeded his tone instead of the literal meaning of his words, and when he finally relented a couple of days later, no one recalled the phrasing of his technically true reply.
Feynman didn't want to set himself up for the NTaL; his idea wasn't the honor pledge but a plea for the anonymous thief to return the door as secretly as it was taken, with a heaping of praise for the thief's ingenuity. (Feynman was honest, but nobody ever accused him of humility.)
But when someone else came up with the honor-pledge solution, he did the only thing that comported with his ethic of literal honesty.
"Jack, did you take the door?"
"No, sir, I did not take the door."
"Tim: Did you take the door?"
"No, sir! I did not take the door!"
"Maurice. Did you take the door?"
"No, I did not take the door, sir."
"Feynman, did you take the door?"
"Yeah, I took the door."
"Cut it out, Feynman, this is serious! Sam! Did you take the door..."— it went all the way around. Everyone was shocked. There must be some real rat in the fraternity who didn't respect the fraternity word of honor!
. . .
Sometime later I finally admitted to taking the other door, and I was accused by everybody of lying. They couldn't remember what I had said. All they could remember was their conclusion after the president of the fraternity had gone around the table and asked everybody, that nobody admitted taking the door. The idea they remembered, but not the words.
It probably comes from reading too many fantasy novels and from playing Ultima IV during my formative years, but I somehow acquired a strong aversion to telling literal lies, to the point where I basically can't do it at all. On the other hand, using the truth with an intent to deceive feels fine; it doesn't trigger the same "OMG this is bad and wrong" emotional reaction I get when I think about lying outright to someone. It's like the restrictions on Aes Sedai in Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series.
I also tell people this.
Among lawyers, this can show high status. Lying to a court is completely unacceptable, and can make an advocate useless to future clients. However NTL is OK.
The pupil barrister: "To be honest..."
Head of Chambers: Lawyers are always honest. The lawyer will say, "To be frank..."
(taken from the BabyBarista blog)
Lots of people say "don't talk to the police--they'll take things out of context"; that is, they'll NTL about the conversation (and substantively lie about their interpretation). Some people say "don't talk to the police--they'll fabricate an incriminating remark." But such people never say that the police will fabricate a conversation. Is there some magic line that the police won't cross that tells us more about how most people operate than the concept of NTL in this post?
(an alternate explanation is that police don't fabricate incriminating remarks; they just take things out of context and the victim lies about having stumbled into the trap; the person recounting the story doesn't want to accuse the victim, an ally, of lying, so he accuses the police.)
I would be interested to see what people think of some other options:
4) "I'll tell you later." [Fails to answer the question; is neither a Technical Lie nor actively misleading; may lead the patient to believe it's a painkiller or similar anyway]
5) "I'm doing everything I can to help you; please don't distract me." [True statement and a request; may lead the patient to believe it's a painkiller or similar anyway]
6) "It's a 300-osmolarity isotonic solution of chloridated alkali metal." [Technobabble; the average patient will have no clue what this means. Unless I'm misusing chemical terms found on Wikipedia, it's completely accurate. Will probably discourage further questions, especially if stated rapid-fire in a curt tone.]
3+4+5+6:
"It's a 300-osmolarity isotonic solution of chloridated alkali metal -- the strongest painkiller I have. I'll explain the details later, but now please don't distract me -- I'm doing everything I can to help you." (stated rapid-fire in a curt tone.)
Very few people retain a high school chemistry background. Fewer retain it when in intense pain.
I would say that making an unnecessary injection for the purposes of creating a false belief is already going way past lying. What do words count for compared to actions?
The example introduces a difficulty unrelated to the topic of the article. The statement "this is the strongest painkiller I have", or even better "This will help your pain" is such that its truth value depends on it having been pronounced. This complicates the issue of whether it's true, because "platonically", taken outside the context of being pronounced, it's "not technically a lie", while when it's actually pronounced, it becomes true to the situation, less misleading.
This is an intuitive difficulty akin to tha...
I think there's a significant difference in having a reputation for lying, and a reputation for truth but Not Technically a Lie. The difference is, it is meaningless to converse with a person with a reputation for lying on a subject they are likely to lie about. One can however converse with someone with a reputation for NTL, because you know they will answer truthfully -- but you have to avoid filling in vagueness like you would for an honest person. If need be, you can choose an exact wording and ask them to repeat it. Note: my presumption is that you ca...
It occurs to me that NTL may be a safer deception technique than outright lying for another reason: an honest person may fail to disclose relevant information purely by accident - they did not realize that their audience was ignorant of it - and thereby leave a false impression. Intent is therefore harder to demonstrate in NTL cases.
Perhaps I'm just arguing for the conclusion I want, and thus digging myself deeper, but in your example, 3 seems entirely truthful to me. You're administering saline, sure, but you're administering it in order to treat pain. If you had a better means of treating pain, you would be using that. Given those circumstances "The strongest painkiller I have." actually seems accurate.
I agree with this. It's closely related to the saying "Promoting less than maximally accurate beliefs is an act of sabotage. Don't do it to anyone unless you'd also slash their tires.", which I've always interpreted to be about much more than just lying.
My main objection to NTLs is that they seem to be generated when a person is trying to convince themselves that they're not the type of person who lies, even though they are (where misleading == lying). If you want to be the type of person who never misleads people, you can't NTL. If you think you...
Much of this is academic once you realize that in communication, especially effective communication (and, really, if we're rationalists concerned with "winning communication" what other sort are we concerned with?), the truth value of a statement from our internal interpretation is irrelevant, and, indeed our intention is also irrelevant unless it is indicated over some other channel during our communication, because none of these are accessible to the people we are communicating with.
Your statement may be accurate and come from honest intent w...
Feynman's Who Stole the Door? story is a great example of NTL and demonstrates that "can be accused of having intended to deceive" is a very low standard.
i think people who (think they) are frequently misinterpreted are more likely to be sympathetic to not technically lying. I have had to go out of my way quite a lot to stop myself accidentally not technically lying to people, some of whom would, when I explained what I meant, not believe me. This at first caused me to take the attitude: "LISTEN TO THE WORDS IM SAYING, YOUR HEURISTICS OBVIOUSLY AREN'T WORKING." Now that I know, to some extent, how people will misinterpret me, I don't feel at all guilty about talking as I naturally do, in a manner ...
From my personal observations, it seems very hard for the human brain to live with lies which are not technically lies, and at the same time remain un-damaged in other ways. I have this concept marked as one of the major leading causes of "pretzel-brain".
The most interesting example I have found so far is of an individual who thinks of himself as always honest - and he maintains this image by never lying at the meta-level. He introduces himself as a liar to all new people he meets, and, if asked directly if a statement he's made is a lie, he will answer truthfully, to the best of his ability. It's not technically a lie if people know you're honest, and can catch you in the act if they try.
The one thing that stands out for me in this is that it seems to go from the same "figures don't lie but liars sure can figure" assumption that NTL is much easier fool people with than making stuff up.
But, in my experience, that's not true. There are indicators when someone is NTL, versus actually being honest, just as I've noticed over the years that there are indications when a statistic is being taken out of context.
Most forms of deceit are either very short term, or fall quite rapidly to logic of the form "If this is true as it stands, w...
I wonder if being literally honest but willing to tell Not Technically Lies serves culturally in the same way that being willing to tell "little white lies" but not break an official oath/vow does. People know you're willing to be deceptive, so you're not going to be cornered into spilling any secrets they tell you, you're not going to make a tactless ass of yourself, etc. But they also know that they can trust you if they're willing to spend the time and effort to corner you on anything that's exceptionally important to them.
The NTL restrictio...
I guess this is where I come down on this:
Whether you say 2 or 3, you are deliberately encouraging false beliefs in your patient.
Assuming that your patient is not an abnormal human decision maker, he would probably prefer less pain over some trivial but accurate information about what substance is in a bag.
If you are a utility-maximizer or a volition-extrapolator you would tell the guy whatever lie seems most likely to mitigate his suffering.
From an ethical perspective, there is little difference between L and NTL. If we define a lie as 'an attempt to deceive' (as Michael Vassar puts it), they are just the same.
In practice though, for people it does seem to make a significant difference; it seems that many people avoid plain lying, and instead try some NTL or some related class of non-truth. E.g., not answering 'No, I did not do that', but instead saying 'Where could I have found the time to do that?'. For some reason, that's easier.
But again, from an ethical viewpoint it seems not very useful...
I know that this is simply an exercise but I think it points out my epistemic belief that there are no such things as gray areas in deceit.
The doctor could have easily have said "It's the weakest painkiller I have," or "It's the strongest sedative I have," or any other number of technically true but misleading statements
In reality the Saline IV is neither a painkiller nor a sedative whatsoever therefore:
The strongest painkiller I have
is actually as much of a lie as the morphine statement.
Now of course you go on to say this:
...Bec
I'm sorry I took so long to post this. My computer broke a little while ago. I promise this will be relevant later.
A surgeon has to perform emergency surgery on a patient. No painkillers of any kind are available. The surgeon takes an inert saline IV and hooks it up to the patient, hoping that the illusion of extra treatment will make the patient more comfortable. The patient asks, "What's in that?" The doctor has a few options:
-The first explanation is not only true, but maximizes the patient's understanding of the world.
-The second is obviously a lie, though, in this case, it is a lie with a clear intended positive effect: if the patient thinks he's getting morphine, then, due to the placebo effect, there is a very real chance he will experience less subjective pain.
-The third is, in a sense, both true and a lie. It is technically true. However, it's somewhat arbitrary; the doctor could have easily have said "It's the weakest painkiller I have," or "It's the strongest sedative I have," or any other number of technically true but misleading statements. This statement is clearly intended to mislead the hearer into thinking it is a potent painkiller; it promotes false beliefs while not quite being a false statement. It's Not Technically Lying. It seems that it deserves most, if not almost all, the disapproval that actually lying does; the truth does not save it. Because language does not specify single, clear meanings we can often use language where the obvious meaning is false and the non-obvious true, intentionally promoting false beliefs without false statements.
Another, perhaps more practical example: the opening two sentences of this post. I have been meaning to write this for a couple weeks, and have failed mostly due to akrasia. My computer broke a few months ago. Both statements are technically true,1 but the implied "because" is not just false, but completely opposite the truth - it's complex, but if my computer had not broken, I would probably never have written this post. I've created the impression of a quasi-legitimate excuse without actually saying anything false, because our conventional use of language filled in the gaps that would have been lies.
The distinction between telling someone a falsehood with the intention of promoting false beliefs and telling them a truth with the intention of promoting false beliefs seems razor-thin. In general, you're probably not justified in deceiving someone, but if you are justified, I hardly see how one form of deception is totally OK and the other is totally wrong. If, and I stress if, your purpose is justified, it seems you should choose whichever will fulfill it more effectively. I'd imagine the balance generally favors NTL, because there are often negative consequences associated with lies, but I doubt that the balance strictly favors NTL; the above doctor hypothetical is an example where the lie seems better than the truth (absent malpractice concerns).
For what common sentiment is worth, people often see little distinction between lies and NTLs. If I used my computer excuse with a boss or professor, and she later found out my computer actually broke before the paper was even assigned, my saying, "Well, I didn't claim there was a causal connection; you made that leap yourself! I was telling the truth (technically)!" is unlikely to fix the damage to her opinion of me. From the perspective of the listener, the two are about equally wrong. Indeed, at least in my experience, some listeners view NTL as worse because you don't even think you're lying to them.
Lying does admittedly have its own special problems, though I think the big one, deception of others, is clearly shared. There is the risk of lies begetting further lies, as the truth is entangled. This may be true, but it is unclear how Not Technically Lying resolves this; if you are entirely honest, the moment your claim is questioned seriously, you either admit you were misleading someone, or you have to continue misleading them in a very clever manner. If you were actually justified in misleading them, failing to do so does not appear to be an efficient outcome. If you're able to mislead them further, then you've further separated their mind from reality, even if, had they really understood what you said, you wouldn't have. And, of course, there's the risk that you will come to believe your own lies, which is serious.
Not Technically Lying poses a few problems that lying does not. For one, if I fill in the bottom line and then fill in my premises with NTL's, omitting or rephrasing difficult facts, I can potentially create an excellent argument, an investigation of which will show all my premises are true. If I lied, this could be spotted by fact-checking and my argument largely dismissed as a result. Depending on the context (for example, if I know there are fact-checkers) either one may be more efficient at confounding the truth.
While it may be a risk that one believes their own lies, if you are generally honest, you will at least be aware when you are lying, and it will likely be highly infrequent. NTL, by contrast, may be too cheap. If I lie about something, I realize that I'm lying and I feel bad that I have to. I may change my behaviour in the future to avoid that. I may realize that it reflects poorly on me as a person. But if I don't technically lie, well, hey! I'm still an honest, upright person and I can thus justify visciously misleading people because at least I'm not technically dishonest. I can easily overvalue the technical truth if I don't worry about promoting true beliefs. Of course, this will vary by individual; if you think lying is generally pretty much OK, you're probably doomed. You'd have to have a pretty serious attachment to the truth. But if you have that attachment, NTL seems that much more dangerous.
I'm not trying to spell out a moral argument for why we should all lie; if anything, I'm spelling out an argument for why we shouldn't all Not Technically Lie. Where one is immoral, in most if not all cases, so is the other, though where one is justified, the other is likely justified as well, though perhaps not more justified. If lying is never justified because of its effect on the listener, then neither is NTL. If lying is never justified because of its effect on the speaker, well, NTL may or may not be justified; its effects on the speaker don't seem so good, either.
To tie this into AI (definitely not my field, so I'll be quite brief), it seems a true superintelligence would be unbelievably good at promoting false beliefs with true statements if it really understood the beings it was speaking to. Imagine how well a person could mislead you if they knew beforehand exactly how you would interpret any statement they made. If our concern is the effect on the listener, rather than the effect on the speaker, this is a problem to be concerned with. A Technically Honest AI could probably get away with more deception than we can imagine.
1-Admittedly this depends on your value of a "little while," but this is sufficiently subjective that I find it reasonable to call both statements true.
As a footnote, I realize that this topic has been done a lot, but I do not recall seeing this angle (or, actually, this distinction) discussed; it's always been truth vs. falsity, so hopefully this is an interesting take on a thoroughly worn subject.