Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on Protected From Myself - Less Wrong

23 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 19 October 2008 12:09AM

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Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 19 October 2008 06:34:44PM 8 points [-]

I'm confused, you aren't really arguing that people hiding Jews from the Nazis should answer to the SS honestly? Sometimes honesty is unethical.

Yes, I was planning to mention that today - as an illustration of when you would willfully take on the unsimplicity and unforeseen pathways of lies.

If statements I make shift a listener's priors then we can evaluate the statements I choose to make based on how much they shift the listener's priors towards which truths.

That's a dangerous sort of path to go down - the idea that anything that persuades someone of what you believe to be true must be a good argument to make, without further restriction. It doesn't just take us toward the clever arguer; it takes us into the realm of manipulating people "for their own good", using lies for the sake of what is argued to be a greater epistemic good. This is the rationalization brought to me by many of the foolish advisors.