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Lying to someone for their benefit is treating them as an object because you're not respecting their right to honesty or dignity, you're just treating them as a

Lying to someone for their benefit is treating them as an object because you're not respecting their right to honesty or dignity, you're just treating them as an object that might or might not get run over and deceptive technology as just another input. You're optimizing them without their consent like they're some code you're trying to speed up. In the same way that PUAs is objectifying women because you're not respecting them as sentient humans with a right to honesty, you're treating your interactions with them as arbitrary code to be optimized. re this century, maybe this has always been the attitude but I think you see it in "nudge" ideas which came about within the last 20 years. Govt/Corp application of applied behavioural psychology combined with (at least the UK and I think Europe) an acceptance of a nanny state to a degree that would have been unthinkable previously.

claudiawerner 8y ago
Isn't the whole market based on things like this? The way supermarkets are organised, how advertising works at all, the government applying import tarrifs to dissuade you from buying from abroad, etc. I don't think there's anything wrong with incentivizing the behaviour you want to see. In the end, every modern corporation does the exact same thing as what you claim nanny states do: try to make your desire align with theirs, and making it hard to resist by exploiting superego affinity (e.g your boss presents herself as your friend so you feel bad disobeying or refusing to work overtime).
- zimablue 8y ago
  Yeah and markets are notoriously immoral, so are manipulative bosses. We banned subliminal imaging remember. There's some blurred territory I totally agree, in between egregious deception and "expected, competitive" deception eg. make-up, presenting yourself well on a date, moderating your opinions, but this example isn't even close. Noone expects buttons to not work and there's no unavoidable competitive marketplace in public infrastructure providers where there's some massive pressure to be immoral or die.
  - ghostbrainalpha 8y ago
    I agree with your sentiment, but I think the extreme of your tone might put some people off. These buttons have bothered me for a long time because it just illustrates how short sited the thinking is in our government institutions. This small lie may reduce jaywalking by 3%, in the short term. But for the future generations growing up in a world where the government makes buttons that don't work, public trust will erode, conspiracy theories will seem more reasonable, and most importantly government employees will have a new standard to weigh their decisions against. If lying was permissible in this case for a slight benefit the maybe a slightly more egregious lie would be acceptable in a different situation. And on a separate note, once you expect these buttons to be fake people stop pressing them. When you then encounter a "real" button you miss an entire cycle on the crosswalk because you have been trained to ignore the buttons, and this results in people getting absolutely furious.
- InitialLastName 8y ago
  To add, everyone's boss everywhere pretending the economic value their workers create is approximately in line with what those workers get paid.

claudiawerner 8y ago

Isn't the whole market based on things like this? The way supermarkets are organised, how advertising works at all, the government applying import tarrifs to dissuade you from buying from abroad, etc. I don't think there's anything wrong with incentivizing the behaviour you want to see. In the end, every modern corporation does the exact same thing as what you claim nanny states do: try to make your desire align with theirs, and making it hard to resist by exploiting superego affinity (e.g your boss presents herself as your friend so you feel bad disobeying or refusing to work overtime).

zimablue 8y ago
Yeah and markets are notoriously immoral, so are manipulative bosses. We banned subliminal imaging remember. There's some blurred territory I totally agree, in between egregious deception and "expected, competitive" deception eg. make-up, presenting yourself well on a date, moderating your opinions, but this example isn't even close. Noone expects buttons to not work and there's no unavoidable competitive marketplace in public infrastructure providers where there's some massive pressure to be immoral or die.
- ghostbrainalpha 8y ago
  I agree with your sentiment, but I think the extreme of your tone might put some people off. These buttons have bothered me for a long time because it just illustrates how short sited the thinking is in our government institutions. This small lie may reduce jaywalking by 3%, in the short term. But for the future generations growing up in a world where the government makes buttons that don't work, public trust will erode, conspiracy theories will seem more reasonable, and most importantly government employees will have a new standard to weigh their decisions against. If lying was permissible in this case for a slight benefit the maybe a slightly more egregious lie would be acceptable in a different situation. And on a separate note, once you expect these buttons to be fake people stop pressing them. When you then encounter a "real" button you miss an entire cycle on the crosswalk because you have been trained to ignore the buttons, and this results in people getting absolutely furious.
InitialLastName 8y ago
To add, everyone's boss everywhere pretending the economic value their workers create is approximately in line with what those workers get paid.