Weiner's book is descriptive of the problem, and in the same section of the book, he states that he holds little hope for the social sciences becoming as exact and prescriptive as the hard sciences.
I believe that the singularitarian view somewhat contradicts this view.
I believe that the answer is to create more of the kinds of minds that we like to be surrounded by, and fewer of the kinds of minds we dislike to be surrounded by.
Most of us dislike being surrounded by intelligent sociopaths who are ready to pounce on any weakness of ours, to exploit, rob, or steal from us. The entire edifice of "legitimate law enforcement" legitimately exists in order to check, limit, minimize, or eliminate such social influences. As an example of the function and operation of such legitimate law enforcement, I recommend the book "Mindhunter" by John Douglas, the originator of psychological profiling in the FBI (not the same thing as "narrow profiling" or "superficial racial profiling," the "profiling" of serial killers takes a look at the behavior of criminals, and infers motives based on a statistical sampling of similar past actions, thus enabling the prediction and likely prevention of future criminal actions via the detection of the criminal responsible for leaving the evidence of the criminal action.)
However, most of us like being surrounded by productive, intelligent empaths. The more brains that surround us that possess empathy and intelligence, the more benevolent our surroundings are.
Right now, the primary concern of sociopaths is the control of "political power" which is a threat-based substitute for the ability to project force in the service of their goals. They must, therefore, be able to control a class of willfully ignorant police officers who are ready and willing to do violence mindlessly, in service of any goal that is written in a lawbook, or any goal communicated by a superior. Mindless hierarchy is a feature of all oppressive systems.
But will super-intelligent minds have this feature? Sure, some sociopaths are intelligent, but are they optimally intelligent? I say, "no."
As Lysander Spooner wrote, in "No Treason #6, The Constitution of No Authority":
"NT.6.2.23 The ostensible supporters of the Constitution, like the ostensible supporters of most other governments, are made up of three classes, viz.: 1. Knaves, a numerous and active class, who see in the government an instrument which they can use for their own aggrandizement or wealth. 2. Dupes – a large class, no doubt – each of whom, because he is allowed one voice out of millions in deciding what he may do with his own person and his own property, and because he is permitted to have the same voice in robbing, enslaving, and murdering others, that others have in robbing, enslaving, and murdering himself, is stupid enough to imagine that he is a “free man,” a “sovereign”; that this is “a free government”; “a government of equal rights,” “the best government on earth,”2 and such like absurdities. 3. A class who have some appreciation of the evils of government, but either do not see how to get rid of them, or do not choose to so far sacrifice their private interests as to give themselves seriously and earnestly to the work of making a change."
The third group of people accurately describes most of the Libertarian Party, and most small-L libertarians and politically-involved "libertarian republicans" or "libertarian democrats." The sociopaths ("knaves") are earnestly dedicated to maintaining the systems that allow them to steal from all of society. Although their theft deteriorates the overall level of production, this doesn't bother them, because it allows them to live a life that is relatively wealthier and more comfortable than the lives of those who "honestly" refuse to steal. Their private critique of the "honest man" as a rube or "dupe" is very different from their public praise of him as a "patriot" (willing tax chattel).
To think that ultra-intelligences will not see through these obvious contradictions is to counter the claim of ultra-intelligence. I. J. Good's ultra-intelligences will be capable of comprehending the dishonesty of sociopaths, even if it's initially only at the level of individual lies, and contextual lying. (They lie when they're around people who are trying to hold them accountable, they tell the truth when they are discussing what course of action to take with people who share their narrow interests.)
All honesty is a tool for accomplishing some goal. It is a valuable tool, which indicates a man's reliability and "character" when applied to important events, and high-level truths, in a context where those truths can accomplish cooperation.
In other situations, it makes zero sense to be honest, and actually indicates either a dangerous lack of comprehension (ie: talking one's way into a prison sentence, by mistakenly believing that the police exist to "serve and protect") or actual willing cooperation with abject evil (telling the Nazi SS that Anne Franke is hiding in the Attic).
It is the great and abject failure of western civilization that we have allowed the government-run schools to stop educating our young about their right to contextual dishonesty, in the service of justice. This, at one point, was a foundational teaching about the nature and proper operation of juries. In discussing the gradual elimination of this hallmark of western civilization, jury rights activist Red Beckman has a famous quote: "We have to recognize that government does not want us to know how to control government." —Martin J. "Red" Beckman" (Systems that protect themselves are internally "honest" but not necessarily "honest" in their interpretation of reality.)
The American system of government had, at its core, a sound foundation, combined with many irrelevant aspects. The irrelevant aspects detracted from the core feature of jury rights (building random empathy into the punishment decision process). Now, as Weiner notes in "Cybernetics,"
"Where the knaves assemble, there will always be fools; and where the fools are present in sufficient numbers, they offer a more profitable object of exploitation for the knaves. The psychology of the fool has become a subject well worth the serious attention of the knaves. Instead of looking out for his own ultimate interest, after the fashion of von Neumann's gamesters, the fool operates in a manner which, by and large, is as predictable as a rat's struggles in a maze. This policy of lies —or rather, of statements irrelevant to the truth— will make him buy a particular brand of cigarettes; that policy will, or so the party hopes, induce him to vote for a particular candidate —any candidate—or join in a political witch hunt. A certain precise mixture of religion, pornography, and pseudo-science will sell an illustrated newspaper. A certain blend of wheedling, bribery, and intimidation will induce a young scientist to work on guided missiles or the atomic bomb. To determine these, we have our machinery of radio fan ratings, straw votes, opinion samplings, and other psychological investigations, with the common man as their object; and there are always the statisticians, sociologists, and economists available to sell their services to these undertakings.
Luckily for us, these merchants of lies, these exploiters of gullibility, have not yet arrived at such a pitch of perfection as to have all things their own way. This is because no man is either all fool or all knave. The average man is quite reasonably intelligent concerning subjects which come to his direct attention and quite reasonably altruistic in matters of public benefit or private suffering which are brought before his own eyes."
Hence, the reliability of the jury! The direct suffering of the innocent defendant cannot escape the attention of randomly-selected empaths! They have emotional intelligence.
continuing on, Weiner writes:
...In a small country community which has been running long enough to have developed somewhat uniform levels of intelligence and behavior, there is a very respectable standard of care for the unfortunate, of administration of roads and other public facilities, of tolerance for those who have offended once or twice against society. After all, these people are there, and the rest of the community must continue to live with them. On the other hand, in such a community, it does not do for a man to have the habit of overreaching his
Background: As can be seen from some of the comments on this post, many people in the LessWrong community take an extreme stance on lying. A few days before I posted this, I was at a meetup where we played the game Resistance, and one guy announced before the game began that he had a policy of never lying even when playing games like that. It's such members of the LessWrong community that this post was written for. I'm not trying to encourage basically honest people with the normal view of white lies that they need to give up being basically honest.
- Rational!Quirrell, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality
This post isn't about HMPOR, so I won't comment on the fictional situation the quote comes from. But in many real-world situations, it's excellent advice.
If you're a gay teenager with homophobic parents, and there's a real chance they'd throw you out on the street if they found out you were gay, you should probably lie to them about it. Even in college, if you're still financially dependent on them, I think it's okay to lie. The minute you're no longer financially dependent on them, you should absolutely come out for your sake and the sake of the world. But it's OK to lie if you need to to keep your education on-track.
Oh, maybe you could get away with just shutting up and hoping the topic doesn't come up. When asked about dating, you could try to evade while being technically truthful: "There just aren't any girls at my school I really like." "What about _____? Why don't you ask her out?" "We're just friends." That might work. But when asked directly "are you gay?" and the wrong answer could seriously screw-up your life, I wouldn't bet too much on your ability to "lie with truths," as Quirrell would say.
I start with this example because the discussions I've seen on the ethics of lying on LessWrong (and everywhere, actually) tend to focus on the extreme cases: the now-cliché "Nazis at the door" example, or even discussion of whether you'd lie with the world at stake. The "teen with homophobic parents" case, on the other hand, might have actually happened to someone you know. But even this case is extreme compared to most of the lies people tell on a regular basis.
Widely-cited statistics claim that the average person lies once per day. I recently saw a new study (that I can't find at the moment) that disputed this, and claimed most people lie rather less often than that, but it still found most people lie fairly often. These lies are mostly "white lies" to, say, spare others' feelings. Most people have no qualms about those kind of lies. So why do discussions of the ethics of lying so often focus on the extreme cases, as if those were the only ones where lying is maybe possibly morally permissible?
At LessWrong there've been discussions of several different views all described as "radical honesty." No one I know of, though, has advocated Radical Honesty as defined by psychotherapist Brad Blanton, which (among other things) demands that people share every negative thought they have about other people. (If you haven't, I recommend reading A. J. Jacobs on Blanton's movement.) While I'm glad no one here is thinks Blanton's version of radical honesty is a good idea, a strict no-lies policy can sometimes have effects that are just as disastrous.
A few years ago, for example, when I went to see the play my girlfriend had done stage crew for, and she asked what I thought of it. She wasn't satisfied with my initial noncommittal answers, so she pressed for more. Not in a "trying to start a fight" way; I just wasn't doing a good job of being evasive. I eventually gave in and explained why I thought the acting had sucked, which did not make her happy. I think incidents like that must have contributed to our breaking up shortly thereafter. The breakup was a good thing for other reasons, but I still regret not lying to her about what I thought of the play.
Yes, there are probably things I could've said in that situation that would have been not-lies and also would have avoided upsetting her. Sam Harris, in his book Lying, spends a lot of arguing against lying in that way: he takes situations where most people would be tempted to tell a white lie, and suggesting ways around it. But for that to work, you need to be good at striking the delicate balance between saying too little and saying too much, and framing hard truths diplomatically. Are people who lie because they lack that skill really less moral than people who are able to avoid lying because they have it?
Notice the signaling issue here: Sam Harris' book is a subtle brag that he has the skills to tell people the truth without too much backlash. This is especially true when Harris gives examples from his own life, like the time he told a friend "No one would ever call you 'fat,' but I think you could probably lose twenty-five pounds." and his friend went and did it rather than getting angry. Conspicuous honesty also overlaps with conspicuous outrage, the signaling move that announces (as Steven Pinker put it) "I'm so talented, wealthy, popular, or well-connected that I can afford to offend you."
If you're highly averse to lying, I'm not going to spend a lot of time trying to convince you to tell white lies more often. But I will implore you to do one thing: accept other people's right to lie to you. About some topics, anyway. Accept that some things are none of your business, and sometimes that includes the fact that there's something which is none of your business.
Or: suppose you ask someone for something, they say "no," and you suspect their reason for saying "no" is a lie. When that happens, don't get mad or press them for the real reason. Among other things, they may be operating on the assumptions of guess culture, where your request means you strongly expected a "yes" and you might not think their real reason for saying "no" was good enough. Maybe you know you'd take an honest refusal well (even if it's "I don't want to and don't think I owe you that"), but they don't necessarily know that. And maybe you think you'd take an honest refusal well, but what if you're lying to yourself?
If it helps to be more concrete: Some men will react badly to being turned down for a date. Some women too, but probably more men, so I'll make this gendered. And also because dealing with someone who won't take "no" for an answer is a scarier experience with the asker is a man and the person saying "no" is a woman. So I sympathize with women who give made-up reasons for saying "no" to dates, to make saying "no" easier.
Is it always the wisest decision? Probably not. But sometimes, I suspect, it is. And I'd advise men to accept that women doing that is OK. Not only that, I wouldn't want to be part of a community with lots of men who didn't get things like that. That's the kind of thing I have in mind when I say to respect other people's right to lie to you.
All this needs the disclaimer that some domains should be lie-free zones. I value the truth and despise those who would corrupt intellectual discourse with lies. Or, as Eliezer once put it:
I worry this post will be dismissed as trivial. I simultaneously worry that, even with the above disclaimer, someone is going to respond, "Chris admits to thinking lying is often okay, now we can't trust anything he says!" If you're thinking of saying that, that's your problem, not mine. Most people will lie to you occasionally, and if you get upset about it you're setting yourself up for a lot of unhappiness. And refusing to trust someone who lies sometimes isn't actually very rational; all but the most prolific liars don't lie anything like half the time, so what they say is still significant evidence, most of the time. (Maybe such declarations-of-refusal-to-trust shouldn't be taken as arguments so much as threats meant to coerce more honesty than most people feel bound to give.)
On the other hand, if we ever meet in person, I hope you realize I might lie to you. Failure to realize a statement could be a white lie can create some terribly awkward situations.
Edits: Changed title, added background, clarified the section on accepting other people's right to lie to you (partly cutting and pasting from this comment).
Edit round 2: Added link to paper supporting claim that the average person lies once per day.