Alicorn comments on White Lies - Less Wrong

38 Post author: ChrisHallquist 08 February 2014 01:20AM

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Comment author: V_V 08 February 2014 08:18:10PM *  18 points [-]

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?

Not really my business, but a reaction like this may give people an incentive to lie to you.

Comment author: Alicorn 08 February 2014 08:56:04PM 6 points [-]

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".

Comment author: V_V 09 February 2014 01:23:11AM 20 points [-]

It's "don't hang out with people who are going to lie to me, like, at all".

Good luck with that.