After discussing this offline, I think the main argument that I laid out does not hold up well in the case of blackmail (though it works better for many other kinds of threats). They key bit is here:
if Bob refuses and Alice carries out her threat then it is negative sum (Bob loses a lot and Alice loses something too)
This only looks at the effects on Alice and on Bob, as a simplification. But with blackmail “carrying out the threat” means telling other people information about Bob, and that is often useful for those other people. If Alice tells Casey something bad about Bob, that will often be bad for Bob but good for Casey. So it’s not obviously negative sum for the whole world.
This only looks at the effects on Alice and on Bob, as a simplification. But with blackmail “carrying out the threat” means telling other people information about Bob, and that is often useful for those other people.
When the public interest motivates the release of private info, it’s called ‘whistleblowing’ and is* legally protected and considered far more moral than blackmail. I think that contrast is helpful to understanding why that’s not enough to make blackmail moral.
*in some jurisdictions, restrictions may apply, see your local legal code for a full list of terms & conditions.
I think you’re right that it’s not trivially negative sum because it can have positive outcomes for third parties. Still expect a world of legal blackmail to be worse.
As a means of disclosing information about wrongdoing, blackmail has no advantage over whistle-blowing, and also no advantage over journalism. Journalists have to disclose information, whereas it doesn’t get disclosed in successful blackmail, and journalists need a public interest defense,whereas it’s perfectly possible to blackmail someone over private behaviour.
I think there’s a greater distinction in the public eye: if you offer to not whistleblow in exchange for money, that’s not whistleblowing, that’s blackmail.
But if the blackmail information is a good thing to publish, then blackmailing is still immoral, because it should be published and people should be incentivized to publish it, not to not publish it. We, as a society, should ensure that if, say, someone routinely engage in kidnapping children to harvest their organs, and someone knows this information, then she should be incentivized to send this information to the relevant authorities and not to keep this information to herself, for reasons that are I hope obvious.
After discussing this offline, I think the main argument that I laid out does not hold up well in the case of blackmail (though it works better for many other kinds of threats). They key bit is here:
This only looks at the effects on Alice and on Bob, as a simplification. But with blackmail “carrying out the threat” means telling other people information about Bob, and that is often useful for those other people. If Alice tells Casey something bad about Bob, that will often be bad for Bob but good for Casey. So it’s not obviously negative sum for the whole world.
When the public interest motivates the release of private info, it’s called ‘whistleblowing’ and is* legally protected and considered far more moral than blackmail. I think that contrast is helpful to understanding why that’s not enough to make blackmail moral.
*in some jurisdictions, restrictions may apply, see your local legal code for a full list of terms & conditions.
I think you’re right that it’s not trivially negative sum because it can have positive outcomes for third parties. Still expect a world of legal blackmail to be worse.
As a means of disclosing information about wrongdoing, blackmail has no advantage over whistle-blowing, and also no advantage over journalism. Journalists have to disclose information, whereas it doesn’t get disclosed in successful blackmail, and journalists need a public interest defense,whereas it’s perfectly possible to blackmail someone over private behaviour.
I think there’s a greater distinction in the public eye: if you offer to not whistleblow in exchange for money, that’s not whistleblowing, that’s blackmail.
But if the blackmail information is a good thing to publish, then blackmailing is still immoral, because it should be published and people should be incentivized to publish it, not to not publish it. We, as a society, should ensure that if, say, someone routinely engage in kidnapping children to harvest their organs, and someone knows this information, then she should be incentivized to send this information to the relevant authorities and not to keep this information to herself, for reasons that are I hope obvious.