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Nornagest comments on Really Extreme Altruism - Less Wrong
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Comments (87)
Optimizing your decisions so that other people will form less accurate beliefs is dishonesty. Making literally false statements you expect other people to believe is just a special case of this.
If you decide not to reveal info because you predict that info will enable another person to accurately predict your behavior and decline to enter an agreement with you, you are being dishonest.
I'm not entirely comfortable with this line of thinking. Drawing a distinction between withholding relevant information and providing false information is such a common feature of moral systems that I can't help but think any heuristic that eliminates the distinction is missing something important. It all has to reduce to normality, after all.
That said, biases do exist, and if we can come up with a plausible mechanism by which it'd be psychologically important without being consequentially important then I think I'd be happier with the conclusion. It might just come down to how difficult it is to prove.
I agree that a distinction should be drawn but I disagree about where. I think the morally important distinction is not between withholding information and providing false information, but why and in what context you are misleading the other person. If he's trying to violate your rights, for example, or if he's prying into something that's none of his business, then lie away. If you are trying to screw him over by misleading him, then you are getting into a moral gray area, or possibly worse.
Nah, that's just standard deontological vs. consequential thinking. If dishonesty is approached in consequential terms then it becomes just another act of (fully generalized) aggression -- something you don't want to do to someone except in self-defense or unless you'd also slash their tires, to borrow an Eliezer phrase, but not something that's forbidden in all cases. It only becomes problematic in general if there's a deontological prohibition against it.
Looking at it that way doesn't clarify the distinction between lying by commission vs. lying by omission, though. There's something else going on there.
I don't know what you just said. For example you wrote: "that's just standard deontological vs. consequential thinking." What does that mean? Does that mean that I have in a single comment articulated both deontological and consequentialist thinking and set them at odds, simultaneously arguing both sides? Or are you saying I articulated one of these? If so, which one?
For my part, I don't think my comment takes either side. Whether your view is deontological or consequentialist, you should agree on the basics, which includes that you have a right to self-defense. That is the context I am talking about in deciding whether the deception is moral. So I am not saying anything consequentialist here, if that's your point. A deontologisr should agree on the right to self defense, unless his moral axioms are badly chosen.
I think your comment describes a consequentialist take on the subject of dishonesty and implicitly argues that the deontological version is incorrect. I agree with that conclusion, but I don't think it says anything unusual on the subject of dishonesty in particular.
You think the right to self defense is consequentialist? That's the first I've heard about that.
In this context, and as a heuristic rather than a defining feature. Most systems of deontological ethics I've ever heard of don't allow for lying in self-defense; it's possible in principle to come up with one that does, but I've never seen a well-defined one in the wild.
I was really looking more at the structure of your comment than at the specific example of self-defense, though: you described some examples of dishonesty aimed at minimizing harm and contrasted them with unambiguously negative-sum examples, which is a style of argument I associate (pretty strongly) with a pragmatic/consequential approach to ethics. My mistake if that's a bad assumption.
It's no different in principle from killing in self defense. If these systems don't allow lying in self defense, then they must not allow self defense at all, because lying in self defense is a trivial application of the general right to self defense.
Anyway, the fact that my point triggered a memory in you of a consequentialist versus deontological dispute does not change my point. If we delete everything you said about deontologists versus consequentialists, have you actually said something to deflect my point?
I don't think that follows. These are deontologists we are talking about. They are in the business of making up a set of arbitrary rules and saying that's what people should do. Remembering to include a rule about being allowed to defend yourself physically doesn't mean they will remember to also allow people to lie in self defense.
We can't assume deontologists are sane or reasonable. They are humans talking about morality!
'Rights' are most usefully thought of in political contexts; ethically, the question is not so much "Do I have a right to self-defense?" as "Should I defend myself?".
For Kant (the principal deontologist), lying is inherently self-defeating. The point of lying is to make someone believe what you say; but, if everyone would lie in that circumstance, then no one would believe what you say. And so lying cannot be universalized for any circumstance, and so is disallowed by the criterion of universalizability.
I don't disagree with your point. I just don't see it as relevant to mine.
There are any number of ways we can slice up a moral question: initiation of harm's one, protected categories like the "not any of your business" you mentioned are another, and my omission/commission distinction is a third. Bringing up one doesn't invalidate another.
The pragmatic distinction is that lies are easier to catch (or make common knowledge), so the lying must be done more carefully than mere withholding of relevant information. Seeing withholding of information as a moral right is a self-delusion part of normal hypocritic reasoning. Breaking it will make you a less effective hypocrite, all else equal.
I assert that moral right overtly, embracing all relevant underlying connotations. I am in no way deluding myself regarding the basis for that assertion and it is not relevant to any hypocrisy that I may have.
You haven't unpacked anything, black box disagreements don't particularly help to change anyone's mind. We are probably even talking about different things (the idea of "moral right" seems confused to me more generally, maybe you have a better interpretation).
It seems to be your black box. I just claim the right to withhold information - and am not thereby deluded or hypocritical. (I am deluded and hypocritical in completely different ways.)
It isn't language I use by preference, even if I am occasionally willing to go along with it when others are using it. I presented my rejection as a personal assertion for that reason. While I don't personally place much stock in objectively phrased morality I can certainly go along with the game of claiming social rights.
Should people in general withhold relevant information more or less? There is only hypocrisy here (bad conduct given a commons problem) if less is better and you act in a way that promotes more, and self-delusion if you also believe this behavior good.
It is no coincidence that one of the most effective solutions to a commons problem is the assignment of individual rights.
People in general should not be obliged to share all relevant information with me, nor I with them. In the same way they should not be obliged to give me their stuff whenever I want it. Because that kind of social structure is unstable and has a predictable failure mode of extreme hypocrisy.
No, my asserted right, if adhered to consistently (and I certainly encourage others to assert the same right for themselves) reduces the need for hypocrisy. This is in contrast to the advocation of superficially 'nice' sounding social rules to be supported by penalty of shaming and labeling - that is where the self delusional lies. I prefer to support conventions that might actually work and that don't unduly penalize those that abide by them.
Agreed that it's practical.