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Alicorn comments on White Lies - Less Wrong
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I find being generally known to be unwilling to lie highly useful in many situations. Less than a week ago I spontaneously volunteered a compliment to someone who politely thanked me, only to then double-take and remark that she thought that I wouldn't have said it if I hadn't meant it. Consequentialists who think that consequentialists should be able to solve the precommitment problem and be effectively honest nonetheless, in real life, cite my deontological prohibition on lying as a good reason to trust me. I am fairly good at omission, and have successfully avoided outing closeted people of my acquaintance who make that preference known to me, though I never felt the need to go through a similar period myself.
Arbitrary people are not obligated to trust me to handle the truth correctly. If for some reason I'm giving the impression that I'm the equivalent of a Nazi at the door or a homophobic parent, I see no reason from their perspective that they should confess to me these secrets even if I ask. This does not mean that we will be friends if I learn that this has been happening. There are plenty of things people might choose to do for reasonable or even unavoidable reasons that mean we will not be friends.
This post makes me less interested in inviting you over for dinner again. What has to happen in your head for you to be willing to come to my house and eat food I cook and participate in charming conversation and then blithely slash our tires if we ask the wrong question because you think we're going to become hysterical or behave immorally should we gain access to information or be told that we cannot have it? Why does that sound like a welcoming environment you'd like to visit, with us on such a supposed hair trigger about mere true facts? Why should you sound like a guest I'd prefer when you say this? Whatever it is, I don't like or want it closer to me. You may make that tradeoff, but imploring the people around you to "accept" others' "right" to lie to them seems like a kind of fucked-up way to attempt to cheat the tradeoff.
There are some communities I consider incredibly welcoming where I don't imagine by any means that anything I say will be received well just because it's true. On the other hand, a subculture that not only has idiosyncratic social norms but aggressively shuns anyone who follows mainstream norms, likening violations of their idiosyncratic norms to slashing people's tires... that sounds incredibly unwelcoming to me.
"Hair trigger about mere true facts" is hyperbole. But the truth is that the overwhelming majority of the human race consists of people who sometimes respond badly to being told "mere true facts." Insisting you are an exception is quite a brag. It's possible, but the prior is low. I'd give members of the LessWrong community better odds of being such an exception than I'd grant to most people, but I don't think every member of the community, or even every prominent member of the community, qualifies. In some cases I think I've seen strong evidence to the contrary. (For reasons that should be obvious, please do not ask me to name names.) Because of this, I'm not going to default to treating most members of the LessWrong community radically differently than how I treat non-LessWrongers.
Not really my business, but a reaction like this may give people an incentive to lie to you.
I think that reaction is walking her talk. She could have changed her preference for inviting him over for dinner silently. Being truthful about her position is an example of being radically honest.
That doesn't, however, make the response incorrect.
It depends on her reputation for being good at detecting when people lie to her.
If she has a reputation for being good at it and openly makes it known that she punishes people for lying to her, people will less likely lie to her. She only has a problem if people believe that she can't effectively punish people for lying to her because she doesn't spot the lies.
It doesn't make sense to adopt a policy where a person sharing information about what it is like to interact with them must never affect how likely you are to interact with them. If someone tells me they've taken up smoking, they have contracted tuberculosis, they have decided that punching people in the arm is affectionate behavior, etc., then it's kind of them to warn me and they could achieve short-term gains by deceiving me instead until I inevitably notice, but I will not reward the kindness of the warning with my company. The case of lying recurses here where the other examples don't, but my goal is not, "make sure that people who have a tendency to lie don't lie about having that tendency". It's "don't hang out with people who are going to lie to me, like, at all".
Good luck with that.
Has his post offended you or something? You employ pretty strong language, and "this post makes me less interested in inviting you over for dinner again" is a kinda public way of breaking off a friendship, which (regardless of cause) is somewhat socially humiliating for the person on the receiving end. Is that really necessary? Settle such personal details via PM?
I don't see it as a sort of grey fallacy argument to note that "lying" isn't much of a binary property (i.e., either you lie, or you don't). There may be simple enough definitions on the surface level, but when considering our various facets of personality, playing different roles to different people in different social settings, context-sensitivity and so on and so forth, insisting on anything remotely like being able to clearly (or at all) and reliably distinguish between "omitting a truth" and "explicitly lying" versus "telling the truth" loses its tenability. There are just too many confounders; nuances of framing, word choice, blurred lines between honesty and courtesy, the list goes on.
Yes, there are cases in which you can clearly think to yourself that "saying this or that would be a lie", but I see those as fringe cases. Consider your in-laws asking you whether the soup is too salty. Or advertising. Or your boss asking you how you like your new office. Or telling a child about some natural phenomenon. The whole concept on Wittgenstein's ladder ("lies to children") would be simplistically denounced as "lying" in an absolute framework.
"Hair trigger about mere true facts" is disregarding all these shades of "lies" (disparity between internal beliefs and stated beliefs), there are few statements outside of stating mathematical facts for which a total, congruent correspondence between "what I actually believe" and "what I state to believe" can be asserted. Simply because it's actually extremely hard to express a belief accurately.
Consider you were asked in a public setting whether you've ever fantasized about killing someone. Asked in an insistent manner. Dodge this!
It upset me. I don't like to see lying defended. I would react about the same way to an equally cogent "Defense of Pickpocketing" or "Defense of Throwing Paint On People", though I imagine those would be much more difficult to construct.
I think there should be negative social consequences to announcing one's willingness to lie and that there should be significant backlash to issuing a public request that people put up with it.
I think you're exaggerating the difficulty both of identifying lies and of omitting/deflecting.
"I think about killing my characters off pretty regularly, though often I come up with more creative things to do instead. As far as I know I'm an average amount of susceptible to intrusive thoughts, if that's what you're asking, but why are you asking?"
Or if I don't even trust them with that answer I can just stare at them in silence.
Thanks for telling the truth. But downvoted for "I dislike this position, don't want to hear it defended, and will punish those who defend it." This is a much stronger rationalist anathema than white lies to me.
I think it's worth distinguishing between punishing discourse in general and personal social consequences. Chris, the OP, has literally been physically in my house before and now I have learned that he endorses a personal social habit that I find repellent. I'm not trying to drive him out of Less Wrong because I don't like his ideas - I didn't even downvote the OP! - but it seems weird that you feel entitled to pass judgment on the criteria I have for who is welcome to be in my house.
Edit: separated these two quotes. LessWrong comment formatting stuck them together.
I don't care whether you let him in your house. You've publicly shamed him, and you are saying that this kind of status-attack is the just response to a particular argument, regardless of how it's presented. You also seem to be vilifying me and dodging my complaint by portraying my judgement as against your home-invitation policy, rather than against your public-backlash policy, which I resent as well.
"Vilifying you"? Because I didn't understand the thrust of your criticism because you didn't understand the point of my post? I'm tapping out, this is excessive escalation.
Sorry, that was uncharitable. Tapping out is a good idea.
If you want to share arguments for socially unacceptable ideas you can wrap them into an abstract layer.
When you however call for people changing their action in a way that causes harm I see no reason why that shouldn't be punished socially.
This is a forum for discussing ideas, it's not a forum for playing social games. (I'm saying this as someone who is extremely reluctant about white lies and who hates the idea that they are socially expected to lie. Asking a question when one doesn't want an honest answer is just silly.)
If you are just want to discus ideas, keep out words like I.
Don't say: "But I will implore you to do one thing: accept other people's right to lie to you."
Say: "Here are reasons why you might profit from accept other people's right to lie to you."
Maybe even: "Here are reasons why a person might profit from accept other people's right to lie to them"
You have a point there.
Except when you're looking for the social / mental equivalent of a shibboleth.
Okay. Asking as question and then being offended and/or hurt when one gets an honest answer is just silly (alternatively, evil).
Except when acting offended and/or hurt signals solidarity and prompts your allies to attack the alien who got the shibboleth wrong. (You can argue that that's evil, of course, but then you're trying to break away from some very, very deeply ingrained instincts for coalition politics.)
I think that's covered by "alternatively, evil". ;) More seriously, though: how is "knowing what the preferred answer is and either agreeing with it or being willing to lie" a reasonable criterion by which to filter your group?
What if it doesn't really cause that much harm? What if it does more good than harm? Then this sort of punishing behaviour entraps us in our mistake.
(In the role of a hypothetical interlocutor)
"See this here?" (Pulls out his Asperger's Club Card) "I have trouble distinguishing what's socially acceptable to ask from what isn't, and since you're such a welcoming host, I hope you also welcome my honest curiosity. I wouldn't want to lie -- or suppress the truth -- about which topic interests me right this moment.
As for the reason for my interest, you see, I'm checking whether your deontological barrier against lying can withstand the social inconvenience of (ironically) telling the truth about a phenomenon (fantasizing about killing someone) which is wildly common, but just as wildly lied about.
Your question answered, allow me to make sure I understood you correctly: My question was referring to actual people. Have I inferred correctly that you did in fact fantasize about killing living people (non-fictional) on multiple occasions?"
ETA:
I see. Unfortunately, unlike "pleading the fifth", not answering when one answer is compromising is kinda giving the answer away. The symmetrical answering policy you'd have to employ in which you stare in silence regardless of whether the answer would be "yes" or "no" is somewhat hard to sell (especially knowing that silence in such a case is typically interpreted as an answer*). Unless you like to stare in silence, like, a lot. And are known to do so.
* "Do you love me?" - silence, also cf. Paul Watzlawick's "You cannot not communicate."
You or your character or both have confused "not lying" with "answering all questions put to one". And for that matter "inviting people who ask rude questions indiscriminately to parties in the first place".
I'd hoped I addressed this in the edit, "cannot not communicate" and such.
You may find yourself in situations (not at your parties, of course) in which you can't sidestep a question, or in which attempts to sidestep a question (ETA: or doing the silent stare) will correctly be assumed to answer the original question by the astute observer ("Do you believe our relationship has a future?" - "Oh look, the weather!").
Given your apparently strong taboo against lying, I was wondering how you'd deal with such a situation (other than fighting the hypothetical by saying "I won't be in such a situation").
Sorry, I didn't see your edit before.
Questions I really can't sidestep are usually ones from people who, for reasons, I have chosen to allow to become deeply entangled in my life. If one of my boyfriends or my fiancé decides to ask me if our relationship has a future I will tell him in considerable and thoughtful detail where I'm at on that topic, and because I choose to date reasonable human beings, this will not be an intolerable disaster. Occasionally if I'm really wedged (at a family holiday gathering, parent asks me something intrusive, won't back off if I say it's none of their business) I can solve the problem by deliberately picking a fight, which is usually sufficient distraction until I am not in their physical presence and can react by selectively ignoring lines in emails, but I don't like doing that.
I don't stare at people in silence a lot, but I do often give the visual appearance of wandering attention, and often fail to do audio processing such that I do not understand what people have said. Simply not completing the steps of refocusing my overt attention and asking people to repeat themselves can often serve the purpose when it's not someone I have chosen to allow to become deeply entangled in my life; if we're the only people in the room it works less well, but if I know a person well I'll only be in a room alone with them if I trust them yea far, and if I don't know them well and they start asking me weird questions I will stare at them incredulously even if the answer is in fact completely innocuous ("Have you ever committed grand theft auto?"; "are you a reptilian humanoid?").
I think of such tactics as Aes Sedai mode :-)
I knew you were a deontologist (I am a cosequentialist), but I had sort of assumed implicitly that our moralities would line up pretty well in non-extreme situations. I realized after reading this how thoroughly alien your morality is to me. You would respond with outrage and hurt if you discovered that someone had written a defense of throwing paint on people? Or pickpocketing? Although I have never practiced either of those activities and do not plan to ever do so, my reaction is totally different.
Pickpocketing is a perfectly practical technique which, like lockpicking, might be used for unsavory purposes by shortsighted or malicious people, but is probably worth knowing how to do and makes a great party trick. And throwing paint on people? Hilarious. It's not a terribly nice thing to do, especially if the person is wearing nice clothes or is emotionally fragile, but I think most people who can compose a cogent philosophical essay can also target their prankstering semi-competently.
Pickpocketing-as-theft is to lying-in-general as pickpocketing-as-consensual-performance-art is to, say, storytelling, I suppose I should clarify. I think we legitimately disagree about throwing paint on people unless you are being facetious.
In terms of pickpocketing, I agree that we seem to pretty much agree; I think that pickpocketing for the purposes of stealing what doesn't belong to you is rarely justified. I was not being facetious about the paint part, though.
A more realistic example would be something like "In Defense of Taxation to Fund the Welfare State" - which would be different from "In Defense of Lying", because even if I think that taxation to fund the welfare state is immoral, I don't think that someone who holds the opposite position is likely to hold me at gunpoint and demand that I give money to a beggar, but if someone who thinks lying is okay to the degree that OP does, there is a real risk of them lying to me in personal life. More generally, advocating something bad in the abstract isn't as bad as advocating something bad that I'm likely to experience personally.
You should try not paying your taxes on the grounds that you don't want to support the welfare state. If you persist, I'm quite sure at some point men with guns will show up at your doorstep.
Yes, but my friend who is advocating for a welfare state will not be among them. I have nothing to fear from him.
Other than that he probably votes for people who pass laws telling you how much of your money will be taken "for the beggars" and who have no problems sending men with guns to enforce their commands.
He only has one vote out of the many necessary to send men with guns after me. Even if he changed his mind and voted against the welfare state, the probability that anything would change is minuscule. The expected harm from him voting for the welfare state is smaller than that of him sitting next to me after not showering for a couple of days.
But if the pool of voters were much smaller, I'd take a more negative view of his actions.
There's still cash, right? Might have to change your line of work from bits to bricks too for that to work though.
There is, of course, cash, and the grey economy is not small. But it certainly has its limitations :-/
You lost me there so hard that I am wondering if we're talking about the same thing - throwing paint at people doesn't seem to happen in my corner of the world and I've never known anyone who got paint thrown at them, so maybe I'm misunderstanding something. So, to be sure, are we talking here about throwing paint, as in the stuff you paint walls with, at people, ruining their clothes, pissing them off, interrupting their day to get washed and changed and all? Is that what you find funny and defensible?
Why is this is problem? I'm not Alicorn but I wouldn't have any issues admitting in public that yes, I've fantasized about killing someone. And the situation is very easy to steer towards absurd/ridiculous if the asker starts to demand grisly details :-)
Well, "asked in an insistent manner" does seem to count as evidence that there's some ulterior reasoning behind the question. Ordinarily I expect a lot of people (though maybe not most people) would be happy to admit that they've e.g. fantasized about running over Justin Bieber or whoever their least favorite pop star is with a tank, but I for one would be a lot more inclined to dodge the question or lie outright if my conversational partner seemed a little too interested in the answer.
If the conversational partner seems too interested, I'm likely to start inquiring about his/her fantasies... :-D
Heh. Dunno. Many of these other people (vaguely waves towards society) like to insist they wouldn't. Not even while they're in the bathroom, you know, producing rainbows. Makes it a good example.
If I'm interpreting your euphemism correctly: this fetish is not as common as you think it is.
The easiest way is to go meta. Ask the other person why they asked the question. If a person asks a question that's inappropriate to ask in public you can put the burden to come up with a good answer on them.
It's generally high status behavior not to directly answer question whether you engaged in bad activity X but punish the person who asks the question for asserting that you might be a person who engages in bad activity X but making them justify their bad faith in yourself.
I think it's a mistake to interpret "I will sometimes do (extreme thing)" as "my threshhold for doing (extreme thing) is low enough that I'd be likely to do it in everyday situations".
If I visited your house, ate your food, and then you asked me "I want to kill my son by running him over with my car because he told me he's gay. What's the best way to do this without being caught by the police?", depending on circumstances, I might slash your tires, or do things that cause as much damage to you as slashing your tires.
So if you asked me if I would slash your tires if you told me something bad, I'd have to say "yes". But it doesn't mean that if you invited me to your house you would have to watch what you say to me in fear that I might slash your tires, because the kinds of things that would lead me to do that would also imply that you're seriously messed up. Nobody would just say those things by accident.
I see this fallacy a lot in rational idea discussions.,
It seems like this is an example of my new favorite conversational failure mode: trying to map an abstraction onto the reference class of your personal experience, getting a strange result, and getting upset instead of curious.
ChrisHallquist said there are some circumstances in which he feels compelled to lie. It seems like Alicorn assumed both that this must include some circumstances she'd be likely to subject him to, and that what he thinks of as a lie in that circumstance is something that will fall into the category she objects to. Of course, either of those things or both could be true - but the way to find out is to consider concrete examples (whether real or fictional).
Personally I used to make this mistake a lot when women complained (in vague abstract terms) about being approached by strangers in coffeeshops, and talk about how they're not obligated to be polite or nice in those cases. Once I got curious and asked questions, and found out that "approached" meant a guy persistently tried to engage her in conversation with no affirmative encouragement from her, and "not polite" didn't mean "fuck off and die, asshole" but just failing to throw a lot of warmth and smiling into the conversation, it made perfect sense, though I was surprised that it wasn't already obvious to everyone that no such obligation exists.
I really really like this comment. I really want more clarification now. But from my perspective, someone who has a categorical rule against lying is like learning I'm being graded on everything I say. I suddenly have the massive cognitive burden of making sure everything I say is true and that I mean all the implications or I can suddenly be shunned and outcast.
Lying is saying something false while you know better. Not lying doesn't imply only saying true things or knowing all implications.
The added burden should be minimal as between friends most people already assume that they are not lied to without making it an explicit rule.
I'm curious. Is telling the truth really a cognitive burden?
It seems more like the opposite to me. Telling the truth involves keeping track of what is going on in my head, but lying involves keeping track of what is going on in my head and keeping track of what appears to be going on in my head (and making sure they aren't identical).
Saying whatever is in my head is easier than making up lies is easier than picking the phrasing of the truth that doesn't offend or scare people.
Ah, okay. That sounds about right.
This has been my experience as well. Telling the truth requires just saying what's on your mind, sometimes adjusting to avoid making people mad or to be better understood. Lying requires a lot of effort and is stressful.
This is often true, but often the opposite is true. If telling the truth requires extensive evaluation of actual facts, but lying just requires figuring out is the best thing to say, then lying can be less stressful.
As used here, "lying" means "intentional deception", so if you say something, believing it to be true, but it's actually false, it's not lying. The contrast is not saying what's true vs saying what's false, but saying what you believe to be true vs saying what you believe to be false.
Depends on cognitive style.
Walking is not a cognitive burden. Walking on a tightrope is. Being able to say whatever I feel like saying without having to analyze it constantly for punishment is the equivalent of simple walking. I may tell the truth in 90-99 percent of the statements I make, but when I get put into a context of punishment, suddenly I have to worry about the consequences of making what would otherwise be a very small step away from the straight and narrow.
Well, I feel like I'm walking on a tightrope much less when I'm allowed to be honest about everything than when I feel like there are things I'd be supposed to lie about.
My confusion increases. If you say whatever you feel like, you sometimes lie?
yes of course. Someone asks how I'm doing. I'm having a terrible day but say fine because I don't want to talk about it. Is this example clear enough for you?
As noted elsewhere, that's not really a lie, because "How are you?" isn't actually a question, it's more of a greeting protocol.
That statement only makes the web of lies/things that technically don't count as lies I have to keep in my head to stay on Alicorn's good side even more complicated.
I think there's something missing there.
If someone were to put me in imminent fear for my life, I would feel justified in killing them. Now that you know that, would you be able to spend time with me without a massive cognitive burden of making sure that you don't put me in imminent fear for my life?
And it's not even like Chris is saying he'd kill anyone. He didn't say "shunned and outcast". He'd just lie to them. You consider being lied to such a horrifying prospect that you would devote massive cognitive resources to making sure it didn't happen?
you've completely misread what I said
To be fair, the sentence he's quoting is ungrammatical or at least weirdly phrased ("person is like learning", I had to read that twice), and that may make it more confusing.
Fairness has nothing to do with whether someone is able to accurately read what someone else means.
When being faced with weirdly phrased writing in most cases the effective thing is to simply ignore the point or be open about the fact that you don't understand what someone means and if you care about understanding it, ask for clarification.
It's a figure of speech.
And confusion sometimes takes the unfortunate shape of someone thinking they understood and not realizing that they didn't - they can't ask to clarify then, can they? Since I believe that, purely as a matter of cause and effect, avoiding poorly formed sentences leads to this happening less often (even in cases when after the fact we would blame the reader more than the writer) I offered that remark as possibly helpful, that's all.
Do you really believe that someone doesn't already know that avoiding poorly formed sentences improves understanding of messages? If you don't then why do you consider it worth saying?
Some day I really should get around to writing the post I've been thinking of for about a year.
Write the bad version now. Don't worry about the good version until you have a complete bad one.
K. opens gedit
Just don't lie to yourself.
You know, unfortunately I'm so much worse at not lying to myself than at not lying to others. (Then again, I've found a way to put this to a good use: if promising myself I won't eat junk food from the vending machines doesn't work, I promise that to my girlfriend instead. See also Beeminder. Yvain's “fictional deities” approach also sounds interesting.)
I think behaviorly I act almost exactly as you do in terms of trying never to lie but often to evade questions. But for some reason the comment I'm responding to rubs me incredibly negatively. I'm reflecting on why, and I think the difference is that you actually have it easy. You're trying to live radically honestly in, if I'm not mistaken, the middle of an enclave that has far more of the sort of people that would appreciate Lesswrong in your immediate vicinity than most people do. So you can basically choose to be extremely choosy about your friends in this regard.
Try holding everyone around to the same standard you live by when most of your neighbors and colleagues are not associated with the rationalist movement at all, and let's see how far you get. Let me tell ya, it's a wee bit harder. For most of us, "be lenient with others and strict with thyself" is a pretty natural default.
I suspect, from Chris' perspective, if his choices are "be invited to Alicorn's parties" and "be friends with other people at all," he may go with the latter.
I believed lying was wrong during times of my life when I didn't live in a rationalist enclave, too. Curating your friends is easier when you are willing to maintain friendships online. Dinner parties are a luxury I am happy to avail myself of, that's all.
I find the reaction to this comment, both in the downvotes and some of the responses, interesting in light of the recent discussion about Tell Culture. That post was highly upvoted, but some people in the comments expressed the opinion that even the people who claim to endorse Tell culture really don't, and that people who actually consistently operated on Tell Culture would end up getting punished, even in a community where most people claimed to endorse Tell.
As far as I can tell, the reactions to this comment are support for that hypothesis, as I see you as a person who consistently operates on Tell, and then (as in this case) occasionally gets censured for that, even in a community where a lot of people previously claimed that Tell sounds awesome.
I think you have it backwards. Chris Told, Alicorn punished him for it, and the community retaliated. This is a great victory for Tell culture and radical honesty, as long as you don't believe Alicorn embodies them.
A key difference is that the community is incrementalist and consequentialist, while Alicorn is absolutist and deontologist. A lot of the comments don't believe that Alicorn accurately identifies liars. Expelling him is a step backwards from her claimed goal of honest associates. And, indeed, she did specify it was instrumental to this goal and not just a rule she follows without regards to consequences. But it's probably also that. The community's failure to grasp the deontological aspects may make its reaction unfair; but I cannot judge for the same reason. The basic reaction is that she is a very strong instance of Guess culture, where her associates have to guess how much to lie to her and are strongly discouraged from talking about it.
I don't think that follows. The fact that we punish people for telling others about X, and we don't punish them if we don't, doesn't mean we're punishing them for telling; it means we're punishing them for X. We'd really like to punish them for X whether they tell or not, it's just that telling makes it easier.
It may be more understandable to think about it as cheating. You can either lose, or cheat and win. If you lose, you suffer all the effects of a loss. If you cheat, you may not suffer at all. But we don't describe that as "punishment for not cheating". It's the same here: you can lose (have your opinions judged poorly) or cheat (conceal your opinions by not telling anyone, and escape being judged for them).
My instant urge when you compared polite lies to slashing your tires is to insult you at length. I don't think this would be pleasant for anyone involved. Radical Honesty is bad for brains running on human substrate.
I do not and have never endorsed indiscriminate braindumping.
I advocate refraining from taking actions that qualify as "lying". Lying does not include, among other things: following Gricean conversational maxims, storytelling, sarcasm, mutually-understood simplification, omission, being choosy about conversational topics, and keeping your mouth shut for any reason as an alternative to any utterance.
There is no case where merely refraining from lying would oblige you to insult me at length. I don't know why everyone is reading me as requiring indiscriminate braindumping.
An emotional response to your statement is not indiscriminate braindumping. I'm not talking about always saying whatever happens to be in my mind at any time. Since I've probably already compromised any chance of going to a rationalist dinner party by being in favor of polite lies, I might as well elaborate: I think your policy is insanely idealistic. I think less of you for having it. But I don't think enough less of you not to want to be around you and I think it's very likely plenty of people you hang out with lie all the time in the style of the top level post and just don't talk to you about it. We know that humans are moist robots and react to stimuli. We know the placebo effect exists. We know people can fake confidence and smiles and turn them real. But consequentialist arguments in favor of untruths don't work on a deontologist. I guess mostly I'm irate at the idea that social circles I want to move in can or should be policed by your absurdity.
I don't think the above constitutes an indiscriminate braindump but I don't think it would be good to say to anyone face to face and I don't actually feel confident it's good to say online.
Upvoted for the entire comment, but especially this.
And this.
This is a summary reasonably close to my opinion.
In particular, outright denouncement of ordinary social norms of the sort used by (and wired into) most flesh people, and endorsement of an alternative system involving much more mental exhaustion for the likes of people like me, feels so much like defecting that I would avoid interacting with any person signalling such opinions.
Incidentally (well after this thread has sort of petered out) I feel the same sort of skepticism or perhaps unenthusiasm about Tell Culture. My summarized thought which applied to both that and this would be, "Yes, neat idea for a science fiction story, but that's not how humans work."
Depending on the context, lies of omission can be as bad as, if not worse than, blatant lies (due to being all the more convincing).
Imagine that I ask you, "did you kill your neighbour ?", and you answer "no". The next week, it is discovered that you hired a hitman to kill your neighbour for you. Technically, you didn't lie... except by omission.
Personally, I'd categorize putting a hit on somebody as killing them, but if you really, sincerely didn't think of the words as meaning that, and I asked you that question, and you told me 'no', then I wouldn't add lying to your list of crimes (but you'd already be behaving pretty badly).
The thing I'm measuring here is not, actually, the distance traveled in the audience towards or away from omniscience. It's something else.
Something perplexes me about the view you describe, and it's this:
What is the point?
That is to say: You say lying is bad. You describe a certain, specifically circumscribed, view of what does and does not count as lying. The set of conditions and properties that define lying (which is bad) vs. things that don't count as lies, in your view, are not obvious to others (as evidenced by this thread and other similar ones), though of course it does seem that you yourself have a clear idea of what counts as what.
So my question is: what is the point of defining this specific set of things as "lying, which is bad"? Or, to put it another way: what's the unifying principle? What is the rule that generated this distribution? What's the underlying function?
Ok, that's fair; so what would be an example of an omission that, in your model, does not count as a lie and is therefore acceptable ?
What kind of scope of omission are you looking for here? If someone asks "what are you up to today?" or "what do you think of my painting?" I can pick any random thing that I really did do today or any thing I really do think of their painting and say that. "Wrote a section of a book" rather than a complete list, "I like the color palette on the background" rather than "...and I hate everything else about it".
Also, not speaking never counts as lying. (Stopping mid-utterance might, depending on the utterance, again with a caveat for sincere mistake of some kind. No tricks with "mental reservation".)
Ok, that makes sense. But still, from my perspective, it still sounds like you're lying; at least, in the second example.
I don't see the any difference between saying, "I think your painting is great !"; and saying something you honestly expect your interlocutor to interpret in the same way, whereas the literal meaning of the words is quite different. In fact, I'd argue that the second option involves twice the lies.
What, never ? Never is a long time, you know. What if your friend asks you, "let me know if any of these paintings suck", and you say nothing, knowing that all of them pretty much suck ?
I would understand it if your policy was something like, "white lies are ok as long as refusing to engage in the would cause more harm in the long run"; but, as far as I can tell, your policy is "white lies are always (plus or minus epsilon) bad", so I'm not sure how you can reconcile it with the above.
If your friend asks you to serve as a painting-reviewer and you say you will and then you don't, that's probably breach of promise. If your friend asks you to do them this service and you stare blankly at them and never do it, you're probably being kind of a jerk (it'd be nicer to say "I'm not gonna do that" or something) but you are not lying.
I understand your point, but I still do not understand the motivation behind it. Are you following some sort of a consequentialist morality, or a deontological one that states "overt lies are bad, lies of omission are fine", or something else ?
As I see it, if a friend asks you "do you like this painting ?" and you reply with "the background color is nice", the top most likely outcomes are:
Similarly, if your friend asks you to review his paintings and you refuse, you'd better have a good reason for refusal (i.e., the truth or some white lie); otherwise, anyone of average intelligence will interpret your response as saying "I hate your paintings but I won't tell you about it".
None of what I wrote above matters if you only care about following prescribed rules, as opposed to caring about the effects your actions have on people. Perhaps this is the case ? If so, what are the rules, and how did you come by them ?