Whether or not lying is wrong, I find myself surrounded by untrue statements. Making untrue statements seems to be part of the human condition, as is omitting crucial facts, and making meaning-free statements intended to produce emotional reactions.
My preferred examples of false statements fall in the domain of advertising rather than politics; only extremely die hard right wing Americans seem to reflexively defend random specific advertisers, whereas it seems that most of us tend to reflexively defend people who support the same political side.
"Lie" should perhaps be defined similarly to "murder". The latter is *unlawful* killing, or perhaps premeditated unlawful killing. The former might be better defined as making *immoral* (or unethical, if you prefer) false (and perhaps misleading) statements.
Of course that immediately gets you into a circular definition. But that's my point. Selling "half and half" containing neither cow's milk nor cow's cream is not a "lie" in America, even if you package it identically to the real thing. When I last lived in Canada, where the term would be different ("15% cream"), the term for non-dairy liquids resembling cream would have been "coffee whitener", and calling them "cream" would have been illegal (false advertising) as well as being considered to be lying.
I prefer to define a lie as an untruth intended to deceive. That eliminates false statements by people who believe them and true statements intended to deceive. It also eliminates false statements by people who know they are false but are not trying to deceive because they do not intend the statement to be taken literally. I think that describes a good deal of advertising puffery, although certainly not all.
But I think it is worth separating the question of whether something is a lie from whether the purpose of it is moral, as I do above in the case of Global Winter.
For all I know, the marketing team that chose to package no-fat coffee creamer in containers with identical colours, size and shape to their table cream, labelling them both "half and half" didn't intend to trick customers who wanted cream into purchasing their coffee creamer. But it had that effect on me, and presumably on others.
I'll assume they were in the common grey area - legal (in the US) marketing falsehood that's nonetheless immoral, even if these particular marketers were in fact unable to predict the likely result.
OTOH, there's the question of what they were trying to accomplish: increasing revenue by tricking customers into buying things those customers did not want. Perhaps the one (MBA) commandment - increase shareholder value - justifies these means. Maybe the immoral action would be to NOT do everything possible to increase revenue. At least by the ethics I've come to expect from the average MBA.
And yes, I wish I were sure the previous paragraph would be taken as parody, sarcasm etc., rather than a serious question. (Obviously I have a very low opinion of executives. Your opinion is probably different.)
Seriously speaking, in a sea of falsehood, why presume that people ostensibly trying to motivate others to prevent some evil (by exaggerating its extent, omitting mention of uncertainty, etc.) have higher motives than "I want what I want; how can I get others to go along with me"?
I'm a utilitarian (perhaps the title Bentham's bulldog gave it away), and I quite agree with the article. Lying is super dangerous--the only case in this article where I think it might be worth lying is the nuclear winter case, but even then, I think it's likely to backfire.
The way I like to put the backfiring is to blame Fauci for the fact that about half of Republicans believe Trump really won the election. Once you have correctly concluded that the authoritative sources of information, such as Fauci or the NYT, are willing to lie to you, it's natural enough to ignore them and believe what you and your friends want to believe. It isn't as if the average voter can be expected to verify for himself all of the court decisions and other evidence on the election, or figure out for himself which sources of information can be trusted on what subjects.
And if you ask Walter Block--you know four, for he claims (falsely) that Michael Huemer is a utilitarian, because he's opposed to causing vast amounts of pain and suffering for the sake of trivial gains. Though I think Scott Alexander is a utilitarian too, and you've probably met some others at Berkeley meetups.
I should also add that I don't think the dishonesty about climate change and many other matters will backfire, that is perhaps amongst reasonable and intelligent people interested in the truth of the matter, they will discount what experts think and rightly so but among the general public probably not.
All of this however is mostly orthogonal to the question of whether you should lie to the general public, maybe if their is a risk of backfire then you should consider not just the good consequences of actions in the present against the cost of lying but also the bad consequences of people ignoring expert advice in the future (assuming you are found to be lying and people actually do discount experts based on past failure, which I don't think is the case a lot of the time).
I misunderstood what you were saying, I thought you were referencing the case where you are in fact correct about your belief and are interested in whether or not you should lie for consequentialist reasons, which is what David asks about at the very end.
But the nuclear winter case hasn't seemed to backfire, that is almost literally every person I have spoke to seems to confidently buy into the usual story about nuclear winter without any degree of scepticism.
As I said, the nuclear winter case is one where I think there's a better case for dishonesty. But if one lies repeatedly about nuclear winter, their credibility will be shot.
Whether or not lying is wrong, I find myself surrounded by untrue statements. Making untrue statements seems to be part of the human condition, as is omitting crucial facts, and making meaning-free statements intended to produce emotional reactions.
My preferred examples of false statements fall in the domain of advertising rather than politics; only extremely die hard right wing Americans seem to reflexively defend random specific advertisers, whereas it seems that most of us tend to reflexively defend people who support the same political side.
"Lie" should perhaps be defined similarly to "murder". The latter is *unlawful* killing, or perhaps premeditated unlawful killing. The former might be better defined as making *immoral* (or unethical, if you prefer) false (and perhaps misleading) statements.
Of course that immediately gets you into a circular definition. But that's my point. Selling "half and half" containing neither cow's milk nor cow's cream is not a "lie" in America, even if you package it identically to the real thing. When I last lived in Canada, where the term would be different ("15% cream"), the term for non-dairy liquids resembling cream would have been "coffee whitener", and calling them "cream" would have been illegal (false advertising) as well as being considered to be lying.
I prefer to define a lie as an untruth intended to deceive. That eliminates false statements by people who believe them and true statements intended to deceive. It also eliminates false statements by people who know they are false but are not trying to deceive because they do not intend the statement to be taken literally. I think that describes a good deal of advertising puffery, although certainly not all.
But I think it is worth separating the question of whether something is a lie from whether the purpose of it is moral, as I do above in the case of Global Winter.
I have no ability to read minds.
For all I know, the marketing team that chose to package no-fat coffee creamer in containers with identical colours, size and shape to their table cream, labelling them both "half and half" didn't intend to trick customers who wanted cream into purchasing their coffee creamer. But it had that effect on me, and presumably on others.
I'll assume they were in the common grey area - legal (in the US) marketing falsehood that's nonetheless immoral, even if these particular marketers were in fact unable to predict the likely result.
OTOH, there's the question of what they were trying to accomplish: increasing revenue by tricking customers into buying things those customers did not want. Perhaps the one (MBA) commandment - increase shareholder value - justifies these means. Maybe the immoral action would be to NOT do everything possible to increase revenue. At least by the ethics I've come to expect from the average MBA.
And yes, I wish I were sure the previous paragraph would be taken as parody, sarcasm etc., rather than a serious question. (Obviously I have a very low opinion of executives. Your opinion is probably different.)
Seriously speaking, in a sea of falsehood, why presume that people ostensibly trying to motivate others to prevent some evil (by exaggerating its extent, omitting mention of uncertainty, etc.) have higher motives than "I want what I want; how can I get others to go along with me"?
I'm a utilitarian (perhaps the title Bentham's bulldog gave it away), and I quite agree with the article. Lying is super dangerous--the only case in this article where I think it might be worth lying is the nuclear winter case, but even then, I think it's likely to backfire.
The way I like to put the backfiring is to blame Fauci for the fact that about half of Republicans believe Trump really won the election. Once you have correctly concluded that the authoritative sources of information, such as Fauci or the NYT, are willing to lie to you, it's natural enough to ignore them and believe what you and your friends want to believe. It isn't as if the average voter can be expected to verify for himself all of the court decisions and other evidence on the election, or figure out for himself which sources of information can be trusted on what subjects.
So I now know three utilitarians — Quang Ng, a very bright economist, my younger son, and you. Glad to know the species is not yet extinct.
And if you ask Walter Block--you know four, for he claims (falsely) that Michael Huemer is a utilitarian, because he's opposed to causing vast amounts of pain and suffering for the sake of trivial gains. Though I think Scott Alexander is a utilitarian too, and you've probably met some others at Berkeley meetups.
I should also add that I don't think the dishonesty about climate change and many other matters will backfire, that is perhaps amongst reasonable and intelligent people interested in the truth of the matter, they will discount what experts think and rightly so but among the general public probably not.
All of this however is mostly orthogonal to the question of whether you should lie to the general public, maybe if their is a risk of backfire then you should consider not just the good consequences of actions in the present against the cost of lying but also the bad consequences of people ignoring expert advice in the future (assuming you are found to be lying and people actually do discount experts based on past failure, which I don't think is the case a lot of the time).
Well, even if you convince people to be more alarmed about climate change, for example, it's not clear that that's a good thing.
I misunderstood what you were saying, I thought you were referencing the case where you are in fact correct about your belief and are interested in whether or not you should lie for consequentialist reasons, which is what David asks about at the very end.
But the nuclear winter case hasn't seemed to backfire, that is almost literally every person I have spoke to seems to confidently buy into the usual story about nuclear winter without any degree of scepticism.
https://youtu.be/eTgLae8wKto?t=1038
As I said, the nuclear winter case is one where I think there's a better case for dishonesty. But if one lies repeatedly about nuclear winter, their credibility will be shot.