Agreed, but for me the intuition that “lying” is less wise than “keeping secrets” doesn’t fully disappear when I assume that I don’t care about consequences for my reputation or other punishments, so I don’t think this can be the whole story.
Also, I sort of skirted over the issue by calling it “bad faith”, but I don’t think there’s necessarily a contradiction between “lying” to someone and looking out for their best interests (consider that pigs don’t in fact have wings, so the Walrus is manipulating the Carpenter toward a true conclusion), though there often is in practice.
(In case anyone is wondering why I’m putting scare quotes around “lies” and “secrets”, it’s because I’m thinking more in terms of misleading contributions and non-contributions to an intellectual debate than in terms of more everyday examples. I don’t think my comments apply well to things like privacy issues, for example.)
Agreed, but for me the intuition that “lying” is less wise than “keeping secrets” doesn’t fully disappear when I assume that I don’t care about consequences for my reputation or other punishments, so I don’t think this can be the whole story.
Also, I sort of skirted over the issue by calling it “bad faith”, but I don’t think there’s necessarily a contradiction between “lying” to someone and looking out for their best interests (consider that pigs don’t in fact have wings, so the Walrus is manipulating the Carpenter toward a true conclusion), though there often is in practice.
(In case anyone is wondering why I’m putting scare quotes around “lies” and “secrets”, it’s because I’m thinking more in terms of misleading contributions and non-contributions to an intellectual debate than in terms of more everyday examples. I don’t think my comments apply well to things like privacy issues, for example.)