The problem, as I see it, is that it’s not possible to lie to people and simultaneously act in their interests… There may be very special cases in which it’s the act of an ally or friend...but they must be quite rare.
This would be true if we lived in a world in which there was always plenty of time to communicate before action needed to be taken. But we don’t; occasionally action is urgent and a lie is the only thing that can induce an urgent action in a small number of syllables.
If you yell fire when there is none, and people take your word for it and rationally respond appropriately, then it’s overwhelmingly likely that their reaction would not be what they would perceive to be their optimal or appropriate response to the real situation. You presumably benefit from their reaction, profiting from their inappropriate response.
If there was a real situation where the best response is approximately what the response to a fire would be, there was no pre-awareness of the possibility of this situation, and there wasn’t enough time to explain, yelling “Fire!” might truly be in everyone’s interests. But that would be an exceptional and highly unlikely (a priori) circumstance.
Should I take this to mean that you think the advice to yell “fire” instead of “rape” or something else more accurate than “fire”, when one is assaulted, is ethically misguided and indicates hostility to people who hear the exclamation, or do you just think that it’s an “exceptional and highly unlikely” situation? For example. Not every possible situation is a weird fringe case where you could accurately yell “Godzilla!” but, to avoid people thinking you’re making a joke, you go with “fire”.
Not at all. But that’s just another example of other people’s interests not being compatible with your own, and choosing to trick them into actions that they wouldn’t take if they knew the truth.
In that situation, you are their enemy, and vice versa.
Actually, what yelling “fire” in that situation does most effectively is get the attention of a group. Fire individually endangers every passerby, so they’re motivated to assess the situation and call the fire department. Whereas in a moderately well-traveled area, the bystander effect can yield tragedy.
It’s (probably) not against a passerby’s interest to join a dozen other people in calling the fire department and/or serving to scare off a would-be attacker with excess attention, unless the passerby is a sociopath (or unless the passerby is never going to find out about the assault and you agree with pjeby on preferences being about the map only). It’s only against their interests to stop and see what’s going on and try to help if, in so doing, they put themselves in danger, and they don’t care about the victim in particular. Yelling “fire” gets the attention of multiple people and reduces the danger.
So every helpful passerby gets to think, “Well, I am certainly a good person and would have helped even if she had yelled “rape”, but it’s a good thing she yelled “fire”, because if she hadn’t, these other self-interested jerks would have just walked right by and then I would have been in trouble and so would she.” No enmity is required, just psychological facts.
Or people want to avoid the personal risk without gain of confronting a potentially violent rapist, and would choose to not become involved if they knew the reality of the situation.
I’m sure few people want to consider the possibility that such considerations motivate them, and I’m equally sure that many people are in actuality motivated by them.
But we don’t; occasionally action is urgent and a lie is the only thing that can induce an urgent action in a small number of syllables.
The ends justify the means—how delightfully consequentialist!
Further, of course, sometimes, the situation is severe enough that the business end of a weapon is the only thing that can effectively induce action. The heart of the question is how to choose the least bad approach that is sufficient to attain the necessary results when you may not even have enough time to follow Yudkowsky’s exhortation to “shut up and multiply”.
This would be true if we lived in a world in which there was always plenty of time to communicate before action needed to be taken. But we don’t; occasionally action is urgent and a lie is the only thing that can induce an urgent action in a small number of syllables.
If you yell fire when there is none, and people take your word for it and rationally respond appropriately, then it’s overwhelmingly likely that their reaction would not be what they would perceive to be their optimal or appropriate response to the real situation. You presumably benefit from their reaction, profiting from their inappropriate response.
If there was a real situation where the best response is approximately what the response to a fire would be, there was no pre-awareness of the possibility of this situation, and there wasn’t enough time to explain, yelling “Fire!” might truly be in everyone’s interests. But that would be an exceptional and highly unlikely (a priori) circumstance.
Should I take this to mean that you think the advice to yell “fire” instead of “rape” or something else more accurate than “fire”, when one is assaulted, is ethically misguided and indicates hostility to people who hear the exclamation, or do you just think that it’s an “exceptional and highly unlikely” situation? For example. Not every possible situation is a weird fringe case where you could accurately yell “Godzilla!” but, to avoid people thinking you’re making a joke, you go with “fire”.
Not at all. But that’s just another example of other people’s interests not being compatible with your own, and choosing to trick them into actions that they wouldn’t take if they knew the truth.
In that situation, you are their enemy, and vice versa.
Actually, what yelling “fire” in that situation does most effectively is get the attention of a group. Fire individually endangers every passerby, so they’re motivated to assess the situation and call the fire department. Whereas in a moderately well-traveled area, the bystander effect can yield tragedy.
It’s (probably) not against a passerby’s interest to join a dozen other people in calling the fire department and/or serving to scare off a would-be attacker with excess attention, unless the passerby is a sociopath (or unless the passerby is never going to find out about the assault and you agree with pjeby on preferences being about the map only). It’s only against their interests to stop and see what’s going on and try to help if, in so doing, they put themselves in danger, and they don’t care about the victim in particular. Yelling “fire” gets the attention of multiple people and reduces the danger.
So every helpful passerby gets to think, “Well, I am certainly a good person and would have helped even if she had yelled “rape”, but it’s a good thing she yelled “fire”, because if she hadn’t, these other self-interested jerks would have just walked right by and then I would have been in trouble and so would she.” No enmity is required, just psychological facts.
Or people want to avoid the personal risk without gain of confronting a potentially violent rapist, and would choose to not become involved if they knew the reality of the situation.
I’m sure few people want to consider the possibility that such considerations motivate them, and I’m equally sure that many people are in actuality motivated by them.
The ends justify the means—how delightfully consequentialist!
Further, of course, sometimes, the situation is severe enough that the business end of a weapon is the only thing that can effectively induce action. The heart of the question is how to choose the least bad approach that is sufficient to attain the necessary results when you may not even have enough time to follow Yudkowsky’s exhortation to “shut up and multiply”.
Ethics is difficult.