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It's been a while since I read the essay and I don't exactly remember the distinctions drawn. I'll venture my own opinions: Lying is necessary when trying to

It's been a while since I read the essay and I don't exactly remember the distinctions drawn. I'll venture my own opinions: Lying is necessary when trying to move through the world. Governments lie for the same reason people lie. Governments restrict information just like people have internal opinions and thoughts we keep hidden. Governments need to act, which involves imagining the world as it doesn't exist and spreading that imaginary world in order to create a consensus. This is very similar to lying and the boundaries aren't obvious. People don't want a government that tells the truth and will not vote for a candidate who tells the truth. See McGovern vs. Nixon.

coldtea 7y ago
>Governments need to act, which involves imagining the world as it doesn't exist and spreading that imaginary world in order to create a consensus. This is very similar to lying and the boundaries aren't obvious. I think that's a very stretched analogy. Governments lie in much more obvious, and less noble, ways than "imagining a future world and spreading it"...
- leftyted 7y ago
  > Governments lie in much more obvious, and less noble, ways than "imagining a future world and spreading it"... Perhaps but what I'm attempting to describe is something that all governments necessarily do. Also I'm not arguing that this is "noble". Whether you think it's "noble" depends on what you think of the government's ends and means.
- Bartweiss 7y ago
  I think the reconciliation here might be that "imagining a future world and spreading it" isn't necessarily noble or different from blatant lying. An example: the UK government has been playing chicken with the EU over a Brexit deal. As Johnson tells it, the goal is to prepare for and commit to a successful no-deal Brexit in order to gain leverage for a better deal. (There's some debate about whether a deal is actually being pursued, but let's assume it is.) The UK government, then, is imagining a world where it can pass and succeed at no-deal Brexit, and is consequently able to negotiate a good deal. If the real state of affairs is "it'll be a disaster and so our MPs won't let us"... well, spreading that imaginary world would require lying in a very mundane, "knowingly making false statements" manner. A move like releasing the Operation Yellowhammer documents would interfere with that consensus-building. Of course, that's far from the only reason governments lie. Continuing the example, the Brexit process has been absolutely full of lying that was not even slightly in the public interest. But the point is that governments lie for selfish reasons by invoking the arguments and mechanisms they justify with public-interest lying. It's fundamentally the same problem as government secrecy: the intent of the system is compromised by scrutiny, so it becomes an obvious channel for abuses of power. It's possible, I suppose, that a government could solve this by simply not ever lying. A crisis like Brexit was self-inflicted by committing to the outcome before doing the planning, and you can just not do that. But it becomes a much stickier issue with questions like "should we lie about our military readiness, or admit what we're unable to resist to our hostile neighbors?" (And saying "only lie about military stuff" still leaves you with politicians lying about war to get elected, pass kickbacks, and so on.) At the very least, it seems like you'd need military security and relative economic stability before you could try to demand total honesty. (None of this is an endorsement of governments lying, though. To me it's mostly a justification for extremely constrained state power to minimize the threat of those lies.)

coldtea 7y ago

>Governments need to act, which involves imagining the world as it doesn't exist and spreading that imaginary world in order to create a consensus. This is very similar to lying and the boundaries aren't obvious. I think that's a very stretched analogy. Governments lie in much more obvious, and less noble, ways than "imagining a future world and spreading it"...

leftyted 7y ago
> Governments lie in much more obvious, and less noble, ways than "imagining a future world and spreading it"... Perhaps but what I'm attempting to describe is something that all governments necessarily do. Also I'm not arguing that this is "noble". Whether you think it's "noble" depends on what you think of the government's ends and means.
Bartweiss 7y ago
I think the reconciliation here might be that "imagining a future world and spreading it" isn't necessarily noble or different from blatant lying. An example: the UK government has been playing chicken with the EU over a Brexit deal. As Johnson tells it, the goal is to prepare for and commit to a successful no-deal Brexit in order to gain leverage for a better deal. (There's some debate about whether a deal is actually being pursued, but let's assume it is.) The UK government, then, is imagining a world where it can pass and succeed at no-deal Brexit, and is consequently able to negotiate a good deal. If the real state of affairs is "it'll be a disaster and so our MPs won't let us"... well, spreading that imaginary world would require lying in a very mundane, "knowingly making false statements" manner. A move like releasing the Operation Yellowhammer documents would interfere with that consensus-building. Of course, that's far from the only reason governments lie. Continuing the example, the Brexit process has been absolutely full of lying that was not even slightly in the public interest. But the point is that governments lie for selfish reasons by invoking the arguments and mechanisms they justify with public-interest lying. It's fundamentally the same problem as government secrecy: the intent of the system is compromised by scrutiny, so it becomes an obvious channel for abuses of power. It's possible, I suppose, that a government could solve this by simply not ever lying. A crisis like Brexit was self-inflicted by committing to the outcome before doing the planning, and you can just not do that. But it becomes a much stickier issue with questions like "should we lie about our military readiness, or admit what we're unable to resist to our hostile neighbors?" (And saying "only lie about military stuff" still leaves you with politicians lying about war to get elected, pass kickbacks, and so on.) At the very least, it seems like you'd need military security and relative economic stability before you could try to demand total honesty. (None of this is an endorsement of governments lying, though. To me it's mostly a justification for extremely constrained state power to minimize the threat of those lies.)