Hacker News Reader

Comment by sleavey | Hacker News Reader

I don't want to be lied to in any form by my government. I believe they can always govern by telling the truth, and if they did so they would find themselves commanding more respect from the people.

I suggest, if you are unfamiliar with his work, that you read up on Kant's categorical imperative, in particular his absolute prohibition against lying. He argues that lying, even noble lying, is bad because it dehumanises the ones being lied to. If we stop treating each other as humans with rights, needs and desires, we will find ourselves in a very bad place - history has shown us that.

View on HN

> I don't want to be lied to in any form by my government.

Completely understandable, and, I agree.

> I believe they can always govern by telling the truth, and if they did so they would find themselves commanding more respect from the people.

Regarding "can always govern by telling the truth," that's demonstrably untrue. For instance, there is such a thing as classified information for a reason (that reason ostensibly being national security). Yes, this does get abused at times, but that's not an argument that the government should not classify any information. Given your reference to Kant, I don't necessarily expect you to find this persuasive, but, I wager many reasonable people would.

> ...Kant's categorical imperative....

I am actually familiar, but I reject the logic of it. It's... well... too categorical. I can't accept a principle that forbids me to take an action that may save a life. For example, I would be prohibited from hiding someone in my home who's being pursued by people who want to kill them, if the pursuers asked me directly where that person was.

> If we stop treating each other as humans with rights, needs and desires, we will find ourselves in a very bad place - history has shown us that.

I agree with this, but I reject the idea that not following the categorical imperative at all times necessarily deprives anyone of any right.

The Murderer at the Door hypothetical is commonly mentioned in response to Kant, but I don't think this serves as reason to reject the overall thesis. Kant also said that there is no right for someone to obtain information from another against their will. You don't need to tell someone who comes to your house looking for someone they plan to harm that they are there. You simply tell them they have no right to know who is in your house, and that they should bugger off! In the context of the current discussion, the government doesn't have the moral duty to reply to requests for classified information, they simply say they cannot provide classified information. If the public are unsatisfied with that answer, they need to vote them out.

Now I understand that, stretched to extremes, Kant's theory gets rather tricky to defend, such as a hypothetical situation of a Nazi coming to your house to ask if you are harbouring Jews he plans to kill. But Kant and others since have argued ways to deal with such situations too, though I must admit I haven't studied their arguments in detail and wouldn't do them justice to try to paraphrase. But I don't think we're really dealing with such a high stakes situation in the context of this discussion, so I think "lower order" arguments in favour of Kant (like mine) suffice. This is something I expect you'll disagree with given your response.

Coming back to the original context of governments lying to people to get them to have vaccines: I think it's possible to do huge damage to public trust in government and science if lies are told for the (always subjective) "greater good", even if the immediate outcome is positive. Governments should understand Kant.

P.S. thanks for your level headed response, it's refreshing and rare to see in threads that discuss COVID.

P.P.S. sometimes it needs to be said explicitly: I am open to changing my views on this if I hear a convincing argument.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com