I liked this post a lot more than I expected to, but I’m disappointed the only examples of lying are a combination of people who have no right to the information and people who are better off for you lying (in a way that gives them truer beliefs than if you’d told the literal truth).
The hard cases are much more interesting. What about lying to my landlord about renting a room on airbnb? What about saying your class will make people millionaires for the low low price of $1,000 (hey, it could happen)? What about hiding the rats from the health inspector?
I’m not so much of a pragmatist to say that you should run naked scams (for several reasons including that your students will notice when they don’t become millionaires later and possibly be vengeful about it, other smarter people will notice the obviously fraudulent offer and assume everything else you offer is some kind of fraud too, the greater prevalence of fraud in the economy will make everyone less willing to buy anything ever until the whole economy stops, etc.) but I am enough of a pragmatist to demand actual reasons about why it isn’t wise or why it will have negative consequence.
As for the landlord airbnb case, well I’d want to first ask questions about circumstance. You claimed a bandit doesn’t have the right to the information, do you have a moral theory by which to say whether the landlord has a right to the information or not? Is the landlord already basically assuming you’ll do this because everybody else does and they’ve factored it into the price of the rent, or would they spend resources trying to stop you? How much additional wear and tear would it cause, and would it be unfair to the landlord to impose those damages without additional compensation?
The health inspector rats case, I’d similarly think it depends on whether the rats are a real safety hazard likely to make customers sick, or just a politically imposed rule that doesn’t really matter that you’re arbitrarily being forced to comply with anyway (in which case sure cover it up).
The hard cases are much more interesting. What about lying to my landlord about renting a room on airbnb? What about saying your class will make people millionaires for the low low price of $1,000 (hey, it could happen)? What about hiding the rats from the health inspector?
None of these seem like hard cases to me. Lying is wrong (and pretty obviously so) in all three of these cases.
I liked this post a lot more than I expected to, but I’m disappointed the only examples of lying are a combination of people who have no right to the information and people who are better off for you lying (in a way that gives them truer beliefs than if you’d told the literal truth).
The hard cases are much more interesting. What about lying to my landlord about renting a room on airbnb? What about saying your class will make people millionaires for the low low price of $1,000 (hey, it could happen)? What about hiding the rats from the health inspector?
I’m not so much of a pragmatist to say that you should run naked scams (for several reasons including that your students will notice when they don’t become millionaires later and possibly be vengeful about it, other smarter people will notice the obviously fraudulent offer and assume everything else you offer is some kind of fraud too, the greater prevalence of fraud in the economy will make everyone less willing to buy anything ever until the whole economy stops, etc.) but I am enough of a pragmatist to demand actual reasons about why it isn’t wise or why it will have negative consequence.
As for the landlord airbnb case, well I’d want to first ask questions about circumstance. You claimed a bandit doesn’t have the right to the information, do you have a moral theory by which to say whether the landlord has a right to the information or not? Is the landlord already basically assuming you’ll do this because everybody else does and they’ve factored it into the price of the rent, or would they spend resources trying to stop you? How much additional wear and tear would it cause, and would it be unfair to the landlord to impose those damages without additional compensation?
The health inspector rats case, I’d similarly think it depends on whether the rats are a real safety hazard likely to make customers sick, or just a politically imposed rule that doesn’t really matter that you’re arbitrarily being forced to comply with anyway (in which case sure cover it up).
None of these seem like hard cases to me. Lying is wrong (and pretty obviously so) in all three of these cases.