Lying and moral choice in private and public life – an amplification (2013) | Hacker News Reader

Lying and moral choice in private and public life – an amplification (2013)

infed.org

49 pointsputzdown34 comments

I don't know if there a better argument in the book for why you shouldn't lie but the one mentioned in the article in kinda weak.

> against lying? The answer: a simple egalitarianism. You can’t see any reason why you are special, why you are different from all the rest of mankind.

This wouldn't convince people not to lie. In fact I'd say most people find themselves special in some matter if only for the fact that they get to experience their own life constantly while merely knowing about other people's life even when interacting with them.

This argument (in the article) also leaves space for some kind of an is/ ought argument as well. No one should be special, but may be it was luck of the dice or some reasons that someone is special. And because I believe I am special, I can break the rule. This doesn’t resolve that line of thinking.

Yes. There’s also a temporal axis to this: maybe I’m not special in general, but this particular moment, this situation is special.

Why is it obvious that only special people can break rules? Why can't ordinary and plain people also do so?

My statement was descriptive, not normative. I was describing a common justification how people act when they break rule (I break this due to …). I didn’t mean to discuss whether the justification makes any sense by itself

Because of the power dynamic. People are suckers for it.

If, life being temporary, and no afterlife being apparent, there is nothing to be gained from good or evil in the end, why not refrain from violating your conscience just because you can?

Because a strained conscience isn't the only sort of suffering one gets to experience.

I don't know why you would think it is or think I think it is.

"Why not refrain from violating your conscience" implicitly is in the context of having an opportunity for a choice, and being in immediate physical pain is not having a free choice, wherever you may draw the line.

Because it is not just about you. What of a white lie to protect the feelings of a loved one, lying to tell someone who is about to die something good, a lie to hopefully escape punishment? People do it all the time balancing their conscience with the weight of consequences and implications.

We're complicated.

>What of a white lie to protect the feelings of a loved one, lying to tell someone who is about to die something good

If you choose to do that, it might be the right thing, but it also might be the most monstrous thing you ever did, and nobody will ever tell you because it's not socially acceptable.

Some (but not all) doctors will falsely tell a terminal cancer patient she is recovering and not tell anyone this is a "white lie". A doctor that does that may never get any feedback on how horrific it can be to be deceived like that. Some other doctor is honest, and nobody has time to educate the younger man, he may change eventually.

Conscience is a shortcut to relative peace of mind when you can't pretend it's possible to analyze a situation fully or satisfy everyone.

Oliver Cromwell once said (and never mind the context): "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, to think it possible you may be mistaken"...

And from Maus: "Yes, life always takes the side of life, and somehow the victims are blamed..."

Lying encumbers your mind with false thoughts. When such thoughts reach a critical mass, they completely obscure the reality and you can no longer tell what's true and what's false. It's like drawing on your glasses with a black marker. Saying any lie, even the most innocent, requires you to create a thought, and that thought is going to stay for long time.

Public lying has turned out well for Elon Musk. It is really up to the rest of us to make public lying turn out less well.

Agreed. That's because of the power dynamic. People are suckers for it.

If most of us regularly lie at work or with our partners, we get sacked.

And all of the other powerful and influential business and political figures?

Unless Elon is some kind of special new liar?

Only those in power that aren't part of the neo-liberal order are liars. Everybody knows that.

You think the world’s richest man isn’t part of the neoliberal elite?

I think he has been outcast from the in group for showing that Twitter was essentially ran by the FBI.

Elon is a bigger and more public liar than people are used to. It seems hard to believe such big lies could be got away with, so are believed.

More usually, the biggest liars are more vague about what and when to expect any supposed benefit if you back them. Thus, "keep out illegals", "trickle-down prosperity", "keep brown-skinned people away". How these would be benefits, if delivered, is carefully not explained.

Agreed.

My opinion is that most person learn during childhood that relying on mere lies alone just does not work that well. We are better lie detectors than we are good liers.

That seems a very poor argument. I think the simplest one is that lying takes more energy and effort to support, the truth takes none.

This is only true if the choices you have to make have trivial consequences.

It's the simplest one, not the easiest one

Spoken like someone who has never been asked whether a dress makes someones butt look big.

There are plenty of situations where lying is considerably easier in both the short and the long term than telling the truth. In addition, in our society lying is not just accepted but expected and encouraged in certain situations.

Until her best friend says it does and she turns to you asking why you lied?...

being truthful is often a privilege of the powerful

in an unjust world deceit maybe the only thing that saves you

see the incarnation of folks for weed, that’s no longer illegal.

generally it’s very negative to be found out a liar, which is why people tend to at least try to be honest.

the one curse / beauty of liars is they lie and they can’t stop so it’s only matter of time u til you find out

This is gross oversimplification.

The powerful can just as easily lie without consequences as they can tell truth without consequences.

This power imbalance does not start or stop with truth and lies.

> being truthful is often a privilege of the powerful

I strongly disagree. Being truthful naturally follows when one stands on a foundation of principle.

Do you live by a code? If the answer is no, then maybe you should figure out what that looks like so that you may live an honest life and operate without fear.

One of the best books I've ever read.

Lying has been a source of controversy for Christians since the beginning. The Old Testament recounts at least two instances of righteous Gentiles: women who lied for the sake of Israel. The Egyptian midwives save the Hebrews' male progeny from death, and Rahab the harlot hides spies in the heart of Jericho. It's unambiguous that God deals kindly with them, and Rahab becomes an ancestor of Jesus.

The most frequently cited technique is that of mental reservation. If Nazis knock on your door and ask, "Are there any Jews here?" you can stand in your foyer and say "There are no Jews here." because "here" means the foyer, not your attic or closet.

Fast-forward to the present day. The Catechism of the Catholic Church revised a few paragraphs on lying: #2483 and #2508. While this doesn't constitute a change in teaching or doctrine, it makes the present stance stricter and less permissive, as well as obscuring the controversial history of the thing, and now we're unable to reconcile the OT pericopes with what the Catechism says.

https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?rec...

"To lie is to speak or act against the truth in order to lead into error s̶o̶m̶e̶o̶n̶e̶ ̶w̶h̶o̶ ̶h̶a̶s̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶r̶i̶g̶h̶t̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶k̶n̶o̶w̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶t̶r̶u̶t̶h̶."

That's a pretty major change. (and I would argue that while telling people who don't have a right to know "Mind Your Own Business" is the best course of action, in some power dynamics that is much riskier than lying. In the latter case, I was prepared to argue here that there is almost an affirmative obligation to lie, from the same "what if the behaviour was generalised" argument as TFA)

(idle query: are rationales for catechism changes public?)

[Edit: I am impressed that 2493-2499 cover "The Use of the Social Communications Media". and at least this change to 2483 and the blanket 2508 seem to be subordinate to 2510, which posits using the golden rule to discern whether or not it would be appropriate to reveal the truth to someone who asks. cf 2511

https://www.usccb.org/sites/default/files/flipbooks/catechis... ]

That’s a fascinating take, given that much of what Catholicism actually is is defined by the lies it’s routinely using for all kinds of purposes, from providing a safe heaven to child groomers to spreading the hate speech.

It's generally better to avoid taking a position based on extreme or hypothetical scenarios.

> If Nazis knock on your door and ask, "Are there any Jews here?" you can stand in your foyer and say "There are no Jews here." because "here" means the foyer, not your attic or closet.

That is some next level tortured reasoning. So if they first ask "Who lives here?" should the answer be "Nobody", because nobody lives in the foyer? Or does the meaning of "here" vary from second to second? If they say "To the best of your knowledge, do you know the location of any Jews or other minorities that the state considers unwelcome within this house or in a 100 meter radius around it?" should a devout Christian just give up the Jews hiding in the closet/cellar/shed because they couldn't find a way to twist the question, and lying would be wrong?

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