Comments on: The Best Big Lies?

By: Tobias Schmidbauer

Tobias Schmidbauer — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 23:57:12 +0000

Playing devil’s advocate: Some people will have problems to think positively and stay relaxed and may worry all the time “OMG I’m thinking too negatively: I will stay ill.”. Some sort of nocebo effect. Taking pills is a no-brainer, there’s not that much you can do wrong.

By: Jarno Virtanen

Jarno Virtanen — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 20:47:57 +0000

You have free will and can make choices.

I suggest this too. I think it has been shown that not believing in free will, for whatever reason, increases all sorts of aggressive and destructive behaviors.

By: John

John — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 05:18:21 +0000

The lie that . . . well, come to think of it, better you don’t know.

By: Err

Err — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 17:24:10 +0000

Affirmative action is a funny thing. Why do we really have it from purely theoretical perspective? To level the playing field by providing opportunities by giving certain people access to things which we have a limited supply of. That last part is the real problem. Why is there such a limited supply of opportunity? Why so few spots in schools? Why so few jobs of pay grade X? Direct all resources to fixing those problems. AA is a flimsy band-aid that covers up the real issue: too little opportunity in the first place. So while I think the idea of AA "comes from the right place" as far as intent goes, it's addresses the wrong problem.

By: NR

NR — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 23:53:52 +0000

“The most common of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.”
– H. L. Mencken

By: Tim Tyler

Tim Tyler — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 20:54:08 +0000

There seems to be lots of ridiculous PC nonsense about race in this thread. Strange to see it here.

By: Tim Tyler

Tim Tyler — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 20:49:22 +0000

It is not so useful for the scientists that lose their jobs over telling the truth:

http://timtyler.org/political_correctness/

By: Eliezer Yudkowsky

Eliezer Yudkowsky — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 17:13:06 +0000

It would depend on the exact circumstances, who was asking, and how I’d become party to the secret. If I’d been told in confidence then I would lie. Otherwise: if the person asking me had no need-to-know and I had promised them no loyalty, then I would lie. If the situation were such that I needed the other to be able to trust me, I would tell the truth – e.g. if I were actually being consulted on cold-fusion-coverup policy or some such. To me this seems like moral common sense, more or less; ideally, the circumstances under which you lie should be such as to create no doubt in your honesty when you actually want and need to be trusted, nor any doubt in your ability to keep a secret when someone is considering telling you a confidence. If these two forces were brought into conflict, the second would win, I think.

By: Steve

Steve — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 14:09:16 +0000

It is extremely important for society to believe that “Natural Human Rights” (and most other metaphysical concepts) have some kind of independent Platonic reality. It would probably be very difficult to build a modern industrial nation-state from scratch where all of your citizens held nihilistic or existential belief systems.

By: a soulless automaton

a soulless automaton — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 10:22:49 +0000

Psychohistorian: So, is it wrong to forcibly take stolen goods back from a thief and return them to their original owner?