This ties into the general phenomenon of not acting being considered less wrong (no pun intended) than acting. It's not just lies and secrets - not actively going out to save people's lives is fine, while killing people is wrong. Yet in both cases, people die.

The reason for that philosophy is easily understood, however. People are dying all the time, and if you're considered responsible for every death that you fail to prevent, then you should be spending all of your time saving people (or at least working on the most effective way of saving people in the long run). Obviously, folks would rather concentrate on living their own lives and not worry about saving everybody else, so they have manufactured "acting is worse than not acting" as a convenient rationalization. "Not revealing a secret isn't as bad as lying" is just a special case of the general principle.

One might think that the general principle doesn't fully apply in this example. But if you genuinely thought omitting things was as bad as telling a lie, then you should logically spend all of your time going around telling people everything you thought they didn't know, even complete strangers. If we narrow it down to the specific case of discussing a specific matter with someone, in a situation where you're expected to provide accurate information? Well, in that case the general principle doesn't apply as much, but you have to remember that it's a rationalization created to avoid taking true responsibility of things. You'll automatically want to avoid closely examining rationalizations such as those, to avoid noticing them as flawed.

Another problem that make lies worse than keeping secrets is that lies are tailored to be believable - they are often more believable than the truth is unless and until they are specifically investigated.

Also, "The truth is a valuable commodity that we do not automatically owe anyone." From memory from Smith's "Forge of the Elders" - not an argument from fiction, just that I cannot think of a better way of putting it. Of course there are often, I'm tempted to say usually, good reasons to make accurate information available to others, when their actions being based on accurate knowledge improves your well being.

But I think a major part of it has to be that ignorance heals better than confusion when placed in a bigger pool of evidence. Do you agree? Do you think "lies" are worse than "secrets", and if so, why?

I certainly prefer secrets to lies. In most cases I have all the information I require and more, and when I don't, I tend to trust my ability to acquire it by means fair or foul. However, a few faulty pieces of information can cause all sorts of unpredictable impact on reasoning. This either leads to confusion, restarting from scratch or in some cases drastically poor decisions.

I suspect another part of my distaste for lies is that most lies tend to involve people. I hate being lied about so instinctively advocate the 'punish defectors and also somewhat punish those who do not punish defectors' strategy.

Although of course there are scenarios where it applies, the assumption that information increases people's perceived utility is unjustified in most normal social interactions.

I have several times had access to information that could dramatically change someone's perception of a situation, and been told by others - including, in some cases, the person themselves - that it would be morally wrong to reveal the information to them.

I think their viewpoint is that although they might realize that their ultimate utility would be greater if they accepted disturbing information, they like to control when and how they confront that information. In most situations, people can obtain all the information they want without much effort, and if they don't have information, it is usually by choice. Therefore, they feel violated when somebody imposes information on them that they have not sought out.

So, if somebody actively and clearly seeks specific information, I would feel just as bad for concealing as lying. However, if I don't know that somebody wants information, I feel I must consider carefully whether I will - in their view - harm them by revealing it. It seems likely, to me, that our moral reflexes evolved in this sort of social information context rather than one where truth often had direct adaptive value.

"This is a puzzle, because on the face of it, the effect is the same."

If both (A OR B) imply C then A and B are both the same?

Or "actions are morally equivalent if (by some measure) they lead to the same result?"

A surgeon operates on Bob -> Bob dies. A thief stabs Bob with a knife -> Bob dies. The surgeon and the thief are morally equivalent?

The case of the Walrus and the Carpenter is only problematic if we assume that the Walrus is somehow obliged to actually help the Carpenter; but, with that assumption explicit, then Walrus is morally in error in both scenarios.

I think most people, at least in Western society, do not consider their help is owed. As humans, they will often cooperate but they get to choose with whom, when, and to what extent they will cooperate. Sometimes the cooperation is a "random act of kindness"; sometimes they expect reciprocation.

To intentionally do things with intent to harm another is usually discouraged unless in self-defense; to decline to help someone become better off -- is not only morally neutral, it's also necessary. (Consider that every moment that you are helping someone specifically, there exist billions of people whom you are declining to help.)

Everyone must make choices about how they will expend the effort of their day. Some of that effort must go to help themselves else they will not survive and their help will be available to none.

Seems to me that the choice not to provide information is not "less wrong," rather, it is not "wrong" at all.

G.

One thing to consider in the moral judgement of behavior is the role of intention. If a person's behavior is intended toward a specific outcome that is benificent, then it should be considered less wrong than behavior that is intended toward a specific outcome that is malicious, regardless of the actual outcome. In the context of misinforming vs uninforming, if the intended outcome is the same for either behavior, then why should either behavior be deemed as less wrong than the other (especially when the actual outcome is the same)?

In the Walrus and Carpenter scenarios, both scenarios involve Walrus intentionally and successfully obscuring the truth with the same outcome. Whether or not Walrus's intentions are ultimately beneficent or malicious is undetermined. Regardless, I would not consider Walrus's behavior in either scenario less wrong than that of the other scenario.

"A banal one is that misinforming takes effort and not informing saves effort."

I agree with others that this is not banal. In many cases it may take significant effort to not inform as the information may be contrary to the wishes of those receiving it.

This is especially true in hierarchical situations in which lower echelon workers fear reprisal for giving the boss bad news.

This in my mind would make lies and secrets on an even playing field if the impact of the information being withheld was equal to a similar case in which there was misinformation spread. Both can be malicious and both show a control of information towards biased ends.

They are two sides of the same coin.

The main difference is the action and effort involved, but other differences are the possible intent involved, and consequences. Very few moral systems demand action, except perhaps in very limited circumstances, while every moral system I know forbids some actions. The difference is quite obvious: requiring positive action will consume your entire life, while forbidding negative action leaves people free to do as they like, for the most part, and is also far easier to enforce.

There are circumstances where keeping secrets is roughly equivalent to lying in people's minds. For example, as a witness in court, when being advised by an expert to do something that might have negative consequences (even if they deem it the best course of action), if there's something obviously wrong but easily correctable (eg about your appearance, or you forgot your purse) you'd expect your friends to correct you and would be angry if you thought they noticed and said nothing. These seem to have in common that 1) there is clear information asymmetry, and 2) someone has been singled out.

I would also like to point out that proper lying by omission usually involves more effort than plain lying (if your objective was to change someone's beliefs), because it will require a whole lot of true statements and misinterpretable statements to have the same level of effect as a blatant lie. And it would take even more effort to do this in a way such that it wouldn't be obvious what you did if your mark found out the truth.

In both scenarios, the Walrus chose for the Carpenter's probability to be 60% when he could have chosen for it to be 80%. So what's the difference?

When you provide a Bayesian agent information in order to shift its assessment of the probability of some statement S, you do not only affect its assessment of P(S). You also affect its assessment of the probability of various other statements. The two scenarios are not equivalent because they describe different choices between assessments of the probabilities of various statements beyond the statement that pigs have wings (e.g. statements about evolution).

In addition, a Bayesian agent's knowledge about a statement S is not completely captured by its current assessment of P(S); it is captured by all evidence it has accumulated that is relevant to S, and it is not a priori clear whether or not it is possible to do better than this (although it is; see Chapter 18 of Jaynes).

For example, suppose a Bayesian agent is trying to reason about a coin. Consider the following two pieces of prior knowledge:

• "The coin is fair."
• "There is a 50% chance that both sides of the coin are heads and a 50% chance that both sides of the coin are tails."

Both pieces of prior knowledge lead to an assessment of 50% for the probability that the coin will show heads if the agent flips it. However, after observing such a coin flip, the agent's assessment of the probability that the coin will show heads if the agent flips it is still 50% with the first piece of prior knowledge but will either be 100% or 0% with the second piece of prior knowledge, depending on whether or not the first flip was heads or tails. Hence, before the outcome of the first coin flip, the agent's assessment of P(heads) does not capture everything the agent knows about the coin.

If one perpetrates falsehood, the territory evidently reflects the truth. If one perpetrates silence, the territory evidently reflects the truth. In either case, the territory is there for whoever has eyes and wits to look at it.

What about if the falsehood is unknown to be such to the speaker, a counter-fact offered in firm belief and good intention?