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Nominull comments on White Lies - Less Wrong
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You favor lying to people to scam money out of them because it would be inconvenient for your education plans to not be able to scam money out of them? That seems unethical.
This seems like a wilfully unfair description of Chris's position.
It's a scam if you take someone's money intending to do something other than what you tell them you'll do with it, or (maybe) intending to do it for very different reasons from the ones you give them, or with very different prospects of success. But Chris's hypothetical youngster is doing with the money exactly what his/or her parents expect (getting educated), with the same purpose and the same likely outcomes as if s/he were straight. Where's the scam?
And the donors in question aren't generic "people". They're hypothetical-youngster's parents. Maybe that makes it worse ("you'd lie to your own flesh and blood?"), maybe it makes it better (arguably they owe him/her an education, if they can afford it and s/he would genuinely gain from it), but it certainly makes a difference.
I think there is an argument to be made against Chris's position along those lines, but such tendentious language isn't the way to start it.
The parents are presumably intending to support their child along a particular path, which leads through college, and involves a good career, marriage to a nice woman, and grandchildren.
Another factor is that the student is protecting their parents from doing something that they will likely later regret.
I've known a number of folks who came out to their parents and got fearful and hostile responses — which the parents later apologized for and tried to make amends for. This seems to be a pretty common pattern, in fact. Broadly, people want to have good relations with their families, but they may not always act that way in the moment — and they come to regret actions that harm those relations.
Putting people in situations where they will predictably behave in ways they will later regret is widely regarded to be pretty crappy social behavior. It's certainly not the sort of thing that people endorse doing to those they love. If avoiding that situation requires a certain amount of narrowly targeted deception, so be it.
Adopting a deontological-style rule of not explicitly lying (using evasion or refusing to answer, for instance) may be worthwhile. Avoiding deception in general is a good idea for consensual relationships willingly entered and willingly left. Parent/child is not that kind of relationship, though — not in our society and economy. Even though it would be desirable to cultivate a world in which there were no violent outbursts in response to true facts, it would be negligence to the point of malice to advise people in dependent social situations to pretend that they live in such a world.
Um. Think about that statement for a second, if you don't see what's wrong with it try replacing "gay" with "pedophile" or "rapist" in your example.
People whose families eventually realized the error of their ways are probably rather more comfortable talking about their experiences than people whose families really did reject them permanently. Suspecting there may be some availability bias going on here.
You present a compelling argument that "scamming money out of people because it would be inconvenient not to" can be an entirely ethical and appropriate course of action.
Lumping a particular scenario already analysed on merit seems reasonable into a despised reference class serves to change the reference class, not the instance.
Really, where? Or does "analysed on merit" now mean asserted?
And the worst argument in the world rears its ugly head once more.
Is there a named fallacy of using words which radically downplay or upplay the seriousness of a situation?
Teenagers sometimes get thrown out of their families for coming out. This is more than an inconvenience, and affects more than their educational plans.
If there is a fallacy here, I would say it's the fallacy of the "loaded question" or the use of "loaded language." Here, the question presupposes that it's a "scam" to lie to one's parents about sexual orientation in order to obtain their financial support for college.
Nominull makes an interesting argument but he ruins it by loading by his use of the word "scam."
Here's a charitable interpretation of the point:
You don't have an entitlement to educational support from your parents and your parents have the right to withhold that support for any reason. So by lying to them about your sexual orientation, you are fraudulently depriving them of their rights; in effect you are scamming your own parents.
I still disagree with this argument but I think it's a close call. Part of the problem is that in determining financial aid, colleges assume there will support from one's parents. If you tell the college financial aid office that your parents have cut you off because they disapprove of homosexuality, chances are the college won't step up and help you. So there is kind of a quasi-right to college support from one's parents.
The other thing is that the parents probably already know at some level that their child is a homosexual just like fat people already know that they are fat and cheated-on spouses often know that they are being cheated on. So there's something to be said for allowing the person to continue in their state of denial or at least not reminding them of things they prefer not to know.
And last, there is an idea that it's wrong to discriminate based on sexual orientation. I'm not sure how strong this argument is in the context of personal and family relations.