Eliezer also mentions it here, saying that if you’re willing to lie to someone, you should be willing to slash their tires or lobotomize them. But I want to point out the Fallacy of Gray here—there are different degrees of lying, of its implications, and of the implications. I may hide the truth from my teacher about my friend cheating on a test (trying to stop the friend is a different discussion, but I would), but I wouldn’t go so far as to outright violence in order to protect the secret.
I think the vast majority of people will gladly slash your tyres or lobotomize you without a second thought if the alternative is to go to the effort of debating you for any length of time with a genuinely truth-seeking attitude. Only if they fear you may they attempt to fake the latter.
Yes, Eliezer agrees with that and wrote about it in Meta-Honesty: Firming Up Honesty Around Its Edge-Cases (also using the hiding someone from a Nazi example)
Eliezer also mentions it here, saying that if you’re willing to lie to someone, you should be willing to slash their tires or lobotomize them. But I want to point out the Fallacy of Gray here—there are different degrees of lying, of its implications, and of the implications. I may hide the truth from my teacher about my friend cheating on a test (trying to stop the friend is a different discussion, but I would), but I wouldn’t go so far as to outright violence in order to protect the secret.
I think the vast majority of people will gladly slash your tyres or lobotomize you without a second thought if the alternative is to go to the effort of debating you for any length of time with a genuinely truth-seeking attitude. Only if they fear you may they attempt to fake the latter.