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Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on Great Product. Lousy Marketing. - Less Wrong
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Someone believes that the Singularity is a sack of absurdities and is sad about the fact that we're all deluded into believing it. To help pry us loose from our little cult, they post an argument that's really persuasive on a gut level: A photoshopped picture of me killing Meredith Kercher. (Shortly after, I am arrested by the Italian police.)
Is there a moral difference between that and what you're proposing besides, "Oh, but they're wrong and we're right?" If so, what do you think it is?
They have vastly different consequences. Why should a consequentialist seriously consider the possibility that there is no moral difference?
To lay out the dark-arts debate a little, we can discuss:
So you're asking about 2b and 3.
I'll make another comment to dive into that specific path.
That's quite an important difference.
Yes, fabricating evidence of a murder is morally worse than almost any other type of lie.
Ok, here is a different example not framing anyone for murder:
Someone believes that cryonics could not possibly work, and uses the dark arts to convince people already signed up not to go through with it, effectively killing them (though the persuader does not believe this, and in their expectations, have produced only good effects).
Sadly, the scenario you describe is very realistic.
Stripping each of the two examples down to the point where all you have left to compare them with is the principle of "ends justifies the means", then sure, they're the same. If our categorical imperative was "the ends never justifies the means" then we could stop gathering information. However, I think the specific means and specific ends matter.
You've constructed your example - or in any case could clearly construct such an example - such that the value of the end in both examples is equivalent from the perspective of the person conducting dark arts. However, the, means are clearly different. Framing someone for murder is far worse. That's the moral difference. If you changed the example to radically reduce the heinousness of the means, then I think the moral case is equivalent in both examples, from the perspective of the person conducting the dark arts.
My final thought is that there's a grand hidden "ethical prior" that we're ignoring here. Regardless of the particular end in question, we should take into account the degree to which rational processes were used to justify that end. We can legitimately claim the moral high ground if the opposing side fails to provide any rational justification for the end they are promulgating.