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> Let’s say however, that your doctor actually lied to you – everything is not okay. Perhaps they lied for your own good; because they don’t know what will happ

> Let’s say however, that your doctor actually lied to you – everything is not okay. Perhaps they lied for your own good; because they don’t know what will happen to you or what to do about it; or perhaps they lied for monetary gain. But does the reason really matter? The inherent doctor-patient trust has been broken and we fervently and unequivocally condemn deceit of any kind in the medical field. Yes, of course it matters! Suppose there was a rare form of brain cancer that could only kill you if you found out you had it. In that case we would rapidly rethink what medical ethics requires of doctors. Surely it would not be beyond the pale to argue that a doctor is not only ethically in the clear to not tell you that you had this form of cancer, but in fact might have a moral obligation not to tell you. This is exactly the position some people believe that economists are in vis-à-vis markets. Markets are basically dumb amalgamations of human choices and sometimes react to information pathologically. According to the argument, certain people have an obligation to project confidence in the market if that will lead to better outcomes, even if logically the market should start ignoring you if it expects that you'd lie. I don't know whether I buy the argument or not, but it's certainly not stupid!

austincheney 6y ago
This is subjective reasoning (nonsense). It only matters so far as a customer is disappointed and shops around for a favorable opinion contrary to reality. A lie is still a lie even if a person isn't adult enough to appreciate the difference and the harms are the same either way.
- bscphil 6y ago
  I don't follow your argument, can you make it clearer? Also "subjective reasoning" isn't a meaningful thing to accuse me of. If you want to say I'm wrong just say that!
florencebuzz 6y ago
Wild false equivalency. Markets don’t react to mere knowledge of them, like in your magical thought experiment. Markets react to actions determined not by the knowledge itself but by discrete reactions to the knowledge called thoughts. If economists hadn’t given up on knowledge oh about a century ago or so, we might not be so addicted to this pattern of spiraling anti-intellect.
- bscphil 6y ago
  > Wild false equivalency. My comparison is intentionally exaggerated. The post claims that it doesn't matter what reason the doctor has for telling you a lie, that it's just obviously wrong. I think this is ludicrous. If it's sometimes permissible for a doctor to lie, then it might also be permissible for an economist to lie. I don't really follow the rest of what you're claiming, perhaps because you're responding to some point that I haven't made. In particular you seem to have a bone to pick with economists, and this is very vague: > Markets react to actions determined not by the knowledge itself but by discrete reactions to the knowledge called thoughts.
  - zests 6y ago
    That still seems like a wild literal over-interpretation. If we think like a physicist we can say that prosocial lying is wrong yet still understand that the mathematician will consider it okay in the limit case.
- skrebbel 6y ago
  > If economists hadn’t given up on knowledge oh about a century ago or so, You're writing this as if everybody knows what you're referring to, but I really don't. What are you referring to? What does it mean for someone to "give up on knowledge"?
watwut 6y ago
I mean, the doctor example is completely out there. Such disease simply does not exist and is extremely unlikely to ever exist. And I think that economist situation is pretty similar in that regard in the long term.
- bscphil 6y ago
  I'll grant the former claim. It's intended to be a thought experiment, not anything that's likely (or even possible). And I have no quarrel with you taking the latter position either - the point I'm making in my comment is merely that the argument against prosocial lying is a bad one, not that I think my defense of economists lying is particularly strong. Since multiple people have thought my point hinges on whether the example is reasonable, let me reconstruct the argument given in the post. 1. It's always morally unacceptable for a doctor to lie to a patient, regardless of his / her reasons for doing so. 2. The economist's profession is like that of the doctor in certain important respects: "The central problem with allowing for, and consenting to, any untruthfulness is that it undermines essential trust between professionals of the field and the rest of us." 3. Therefore pro-social lying by economists is wrong (just as it's wrong in the case of the doctor). I think the claims in the article rely quite heavily on our intuition that it's never acceptable for a doctor to lie to us, even for "prosocial" reasons. (We don't have such intuitions for economists, apparently, and that's why our intuitions about doctors are so important for the argument.) But this claim is basically not defended, and my point is that it's very easy to come up with cases in which it's not only morally acceptable for a doctor to lie to you, but in fact might be morally obligatory. This means that the argument fails. The fact that the argument fails doesn't mean that it is okay (in any real life situation) for a doctor (or an economist) to lie to you. But the fact that the argument fails is something worth noting, I think, in comments about the article.
  - watwut 6y ago
    > But this claim is basically not defended, and my point is that it's very easy to come up with cases in which it's not only morally acceptable for a doctor to lie to you, but in fact might be morally obligatory. This means that the argument fails. I don't find that easy at all. That is the thing, all those doctors examples are either super unlikely to ever happen or happen due to non-medical reason. I mean, ok, if I am SS man and it is WWII and doctor is saving someone ... but I don't live in country with current genocide and the core issue is not doctor specific. The doctors in fact used to routinely lie to patient and family to "protect" their feelings. In generation of my parents/grandparents, the doctor would not tell you about bad prognosis. And that generation do not trust doctors when they tell them it is going to be ok. Current doctors (at least here) are routinely acting more confident then they should when they are more of guessing. Or they just don't explain. And result is predictable - people turn to internet and word of mount from friends to fill the gaps.
hnracer 6y ago
Later in the article he tones it down and says there's exceptional cases where it's okay for a doctor to lie.
- bscphil 6y ago
  You're right - snip for the lazy: > Just as doctors must be honest, so too must we. Deception is not always wrong – there are extraordinary cases when we understand a doctor’s need to lie. I imagine doctors overstate their confidence to children before a particularly complicated surgery. Sometimes – very rarely – it may be the best option among only very bad options. Deception should be a last resort, not the rule. As we look to the future, the field of economics must cease it’s cavalier compliance with lying – even with perceived prosocial lying. I find this statement rather odd and clearly incompatible with the very specific claim that "we fervently and unequivocally condemn deceit of any kind in the medical field". Well, do we or don't we? In any case, you're correct that the article taken as a whole is a bit more careful. In my comment I'm telescoping in a bit on the one claim about doctors and the role our intuitions about honesty in the medical field are supposed to play in the argument.
  - tomp 6y ago
    We lie to children because children aren't capable of long-term risk-benefit-adjusted decision making. But lying to the parents in this example should still be condemned.
tomp 6y ago
Of course. And if you have an ever rarer form of brain cancer, where only shooting part of your brain out will save your life, the doctor is ethically obliged to shoot you in the head to save your life! But my Bayesian prior is that when the doctor is trying to shoot me, s/he's trying to kill me. And when an economist is lying to me, they're trying to defraud / manipulate me.
johbjo 6y ago
A doctor treating a patient is not a scientist. Neither is an academic economist that passively permits government officials to lie using scientific language. The issue here is not the lying. The issue is the status of economics as a science. Once that status is gone, no one is obliged to listen to them any more than astrologists.

austincheney 6y ago

This is subjective reasoning (nonsense). It only matters so far as a customer is disappointed and shops around for a favorable opinion contrary to reality. A lie is still a lie even if a person isn't adult enough to appreciate the difference and the harms are the same either way.

bscphil 6y ago
I don't follow your argument, can you make it clearer? Also "subjective reasoning" isn't a meaningful thing to accuse me of. If you want to say I'm wrong just say that!

florencebuzz 6y ago

Wild false equivalency. Markets don’t react to mere knowledge of them, like in your magical thought experiment. Markets react to actions determined not by the knowledge itself but by discrete reactions to the knowledge called thoughts. If economists hadn’t given up on knowledge oh about a century ago or so, we might not be so addicted to this pattern of spiraling anti-intellect.

bscphil 6y ago
> Wild false equivalency. My comparison is intentionally exaggerated. The post claims that it doesn't matter what reason the doctor has for telling you a lie, that it's just obviously wrong. I think this is ludicrous. If it's sometimes permissible for a doctor to lie, then it might also be permissible for an economist to lie. I don't really follow the rest of what you're claiming, perhaps because you're responding to some point that I haven't made. In particular you seem to have a bone to pick with economists, and this is very vague: > Markets react to actions determined not by the knowledge itself but by discrete reactions to the knowledge called thoughts.
- zests 6y ago
  That still seems like a wild literal over-interpretation. If we think like a physicist we can say that prosocial lying is wrong yet still understand that the mathematician will consider it okay in the limit case.
skrebbel 6y ago
> If economists hadn’t given up on knowledge oh about a century ago or so, You're writing this as if everybody knows what you're referring to, but I really don't. What are you referring to? What does it mean for someone to "give up on knowledge"?

watwut 6y ago

I mean, the doctor example is completely out there. Such disease simply does not exist and is extremely unlikely to ever exist. And I think that economist situation is pretty similar in that regard in the long term.

bscphil 6y ago
I'll grant the former claim. It's intended to be a thought experiment, not anything that's likely (or even possible). And I have no quarrel with you taking the latter position either - the point I'm making in my comment is merely that the argument against prosocial lying is a bad one, not that I think my defense of economists lying is particularly strong. Since multiple people have thought my point hinges on whether the example is reasonable, let me reconstruct the argument given in the post. 1. It's always morally unacceptable for a doctor to lie to a patient, regardless of his / her reasons for doing so. 2. The economist's profession is like that of the doctor in certain important respects: "The central problem with allowing for, and consenting to, any untruthfulness is that it undermines essential trust between professionals of the field and the rest of us." 3. Therefore pro-social lying by economists is wrong (just as it's wrong in the case of the doctor). I think the claims in the article rely quite heavily on our intuition that it's never acceptable for a doctor to lie to us, even for "prosocial" reasons. (We don't have such intuitions for economists, apparently, and that's why our intuitions about doctors are so important for the argument.) But this claim is basically not defended, and my point is that it's very easy to come up with cases in which it's not only morally acceptable for a doctor to lie to you, but in fact might be morally obligatory. This means that the argument fails. The fact that the argument fails doesn't mean that it is okay (in any real life situation) for a doctor (or an economist) to lie to you. But the fact that the argument fails is something worth noting, I think, in comments about the article.
- watwut 6y ago
  > But this claim is basically not defended, and my point is that it's very easy to come up with cases in which it's not only morally acceptable for a doctor to lie to you, but in fact might be morally obligatory. This means that the argument fails. I don't find that easy at all. That is the thing, all those doctors examples are either super unlikely to ever happen or happen due to non-medical reason. I mean, ok, if I am SS man and it is WWII and doctor is saving someone ... but I don't live in country with current genocide and the core issue is not doctor specific. The doctors in fact used to routinely lie to patient and family to "protect" their feelings. In generation of my parents/grandparents, the doctor would not tell you about bad prognosis. And that generation do not trust doctors when they tell them it is going to be ok. Current doctors (at least here) are routinely acting more confident then they should when they are more of guessing. Or they just don't explain. And result is predictable - people turn to internet and word of mount from friends to fill the gaps.

hnracer 6y ago

Later in the article he tones it down and says there's exceptional cases where it's okay for a doctor to lie.

bscphil 6y ago
You're right - snip for the lazy: > Just as doctors must be honest, so too must we. Deception is not always wrong – there are extraordinary cases when we understand a doctor’s need to lie. I imagine doctors overstate their confidence to children before a particularly complicated surgery. Sometimes – very rarely – it may be the best option among only very bad options. Deception should be a last resort, not the rule. As we look to the future, the field of economics must cease it’s cavalier compliance with lying – even with perceived prosocial lying. I find this statement rather odd and clearly incompatible with the very specific claim that "we fervently and unequivocally condemn deceit of any kind in the medical field". Well, do we or don't we? In any case, you're correct that the article taken as a whole is a bit more careful. In my comment I'm telescoping in a bit on the one claim about doctors and the role our intuitions about honesty in the medical field are supposed to play in the argument.
- tomp 6y ago
  We lie to children because children aren't capable of long-term risk-benefit-adjusted decision making. But lying to the parents in this example should still be condemned.

tomp 6y ago

Of course. And if you have an ever rarer form of brain cancer, where only shooting part of your brain out will save your life, the doctor is ethically obliged to shoot you in the head to save your life! But my Bayesian prior is that when the doctor is trying to shoot me, s/he's trying to kill me. And when an economist is lying to me, they're trying to defraud / manipulate me.

johbjo 6y ago

A doctor treating a patient is not a scientist. Neither is an academic economist that passively permits government officials to lie using scientific language. The issue here is not the lying. The issue is the status of economics as a science. Once that status is gone, no one is obliged to listen to them any more than astrologists.