First, I'm not sure what it means to say that "There are no Jews in my basement" is unlikely to spread.
The Gestapo member is likely to have forgotten all about that specific lies by the time he finishes asking everyone on the block.
I can see an isomorphism (in terms of how the lie spreads) between "There are no Jews in my basement" and "There are no embezzled charity funds in my basement". Obviously this isomorphism doesn't extend to the morality of the lies, which makes it hard for me to see a connection between spreadability and immorality.
Disagree, the lies themselves are comparable, the difference in morality comes from the difference between the goals the lies are being used for.
Scott, known on LessWrong as Yvain, recently wrote a post complaining about an inaccurate rape statistic.
Arthur Chu, who is notable for winning money on Jeopardy recently, argued against Scott's stance that we should be honest in arguments in a comment thread on Jeff Kaufman's Facebook profile, which can be read here.
Scott just responded here, with a number of points relevant to the topic of rationalist communities.
I am interested in what LW thinks of this.
Obviously, at some point being polite in our arguments is silly. I'd be interested in people's opinions of how dire the real world consequences have to be before it's worthwhile debating dishonestly.