What you are describing is my native way of thinking. My mind fits large amounts of information together into an aesthetic whole. I took me a while to figure out that other people don't think this way, and they can't easily just absorb patterns from evidence.
This mode of thinking has been described as Introverted Thinking in Ben Kovitz's obscure psychology wiki about Lenore Thomson's obscure take on Jungian psychology. Some of you are familiar with Jungian functions through MBTI, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Introverted Thinking (abbreviated Ti) is the...
My understanding of consequentialism is similar to yours and TheOtherDave's. In a chain of events, I consider all events in the chain to be a consequence of whatever began the chain, not just the final state.
My views on lying are similar to your friend's. Thanks for having a charitable reaction.
After reading some of the attitudes in this thread, I find it disconcerting to think that a friend might suddenly view me as having inscrutable or dangerous psychology, if they found out that I believe in white lies in limited situations, like the vast majority of humans. It's distressing that upon finding this out, that they might so confused about my ethics or behavior patterns... even though presumably, since they were friends with me, they had a positive impression...
Certain interactions with the government (assuming you are behaving peacefully) seem like a special case of dealing with an adversarial or exploitative agent. When an agent has social power over you, they might easily be able to harm or inconvenience you if you answer some questions truthfully, whereas it would be hard for you to harm them if you lied. Telling the truth in that case hurts you, but lying harms nobody (aside from foiling the exploitative plans of the other agent, which doesn't really count).
A more mundane example would be if a website form a...
Yes. There are also questions which interviewers are legally prohibited from asking during job interviews, which probably have good moral reasons behind them, not just legal ones.
In my recent comments, I've been developing the concept of a "right to information," or "undeserving questions."
Good questions.
If you know that the other person believes that the information isn't private, then you know that they aren't knowingly doing something which they believe is prying. So they don't have mens rea for being an asshole by their own standards. (Yes, I believe that sometimes people are assholes by their own standards, and these are exactly the sort of people who don't deserve the truth about my private matters.)
If they don't know my feelings about privacy, then they are not knowingly intruding. But if they do know my views on the privacy of that i...
The thing is that the prying person likely considers the private affair to potentially involve wrongdoing.
Maybe. There are several scenarios:
A prying person might believe that you might be engaged in actual wrongdoing.
A prying person believes that you are engages in something that they think is wrong, but actually isn't wrong.
A prying person doesn't believe that you are doing anything wrong. They are just trying to get on your case because they are controlling or malicious. Or they think it's fun.
In SaidAchmiz's example of a nosy relative, it'...
These are good questions. It seems like deontologists have difficulty reconciling seeming conflicting rights.
In my main reply to the original post, I discuss some of the conflicts between truthfulness and privacy. If people have a right to not be lied to, and people also have privacy rights, then these rights could clash in some situations.
I think this is a great post. I fully agree about accepting other people's right to lie... in limited circumstances, of course (which is how I interpreted the post). I figured it was primarily talking about situations of self-defense or social harmony about subjective topics.
I think privacy is very important. Many cultures recognize that some subjects are private or personal, and has norms against asking about people's personal business without the appropriate context (which might depend on friendship, a relationship, consent, etc...). Some "personal&...
Indeed. And will be fully justified in feeling insulted; after all, that lie communicates the sentiment "I think there's a non-trivial possibility that you will turn hostile/abusive/violent if I reject your advances". I'd sure feel insulted at having such a sentiment expressed toward me.
There's a lot of possibilities here, which are potentially less insulting. To add some:
If she reveals the true reasons for rejecting him, then he might might express judgmentalness about them, or some other reaction which is negative, but not actually hosti
I think the big thing to remember is that the meaning of something isn't the dictionary definitions of the words combined with the rules of syntax. If someone asks you what you though of a play, wanting to know what you thought of them, and you know this, saying "the acting was bad" is intentionally misinterpreting their question. It is an example of lying with truth.
Yes, understanding the question being asked is important.
"What did you think of the play" does not necessarily mean "what was your entire critical view of the play?...
However, not everybody in the world is like us. Other people place a very high value on comfort and positive reinforcement. When they talk to their friends, they do so not in order to Bayes-adjust their beliefs, but in order to reinforce their feeling that they valued, needed, and cared about.
This observation fits my model of others. Most people are not perfectionists, over-achievers, or ravenous truth-seekers above all. Consequently, I believe that people aren't those things unless they specifically give me reasons to believe they are. And I treat them...
If someone wants to pry into your affairs and berate you about them, then you are perfectly justified in lying to avoid them getting on your case. And moreover, if they know they will get on your case if you tell them the truth, then they shouldn't even expect you to tell the truth.
In this view, if they are clearly defecting on you by trying to get into your business, then you are justified in defecting on them. If they are laying a trap, and you walk into it, then you may encourage them to engage in that behavior in the future. Tit-for-tat.
To be extra cl...
Depends on cognitive style.
...Last note: I see the saying the truth but bending the meaning to be polite as signaling to someone that you don't quite mean what you're saying subtly enough that if (and only if) they care about your true opinion enough to pay attention to what you say and ask a followup question you'll tell them the full story. If they were just looking for a generic nicity, they either won't notice your slightly careful wording, or should not request information they do not want. This is useful for people who may have reason to want your true opinion, and as a way of a
Continuing a bit…
It’s truly strange seeing you say something like “Very high level epistemic rationality is about retraining one's brain to be able to see patterns in the evidence in the same way that we can see patterns when we observe the world with our eyes.” I already compulsively do the thing you talking about training yourself to do! I can’t stop seeing patterns. I don’t claim that the patterns I see are always true, just that’s it’s really easy for me to see them.
For me, thinking is like a gale wind carrying puzzle pieces that dance in the air and a... (read more)