On a side note, I wonder about the situation where one is so confident in one’s goal as to be willing to bend the truth to accomplish it, but not so confident that one can convince anyone else to help without bending the truth.
I wonder about this too.
A possible source of examples of net harm done by the practice of distorting the truth ostensibly for the greater good is provided by the fact that many charities distort the truth to fundraise. See for example the GiveWell blog postings:
Presumably the people responsible for these illusions tell themselves that using them is justified for the greater good. I suspect that the use of these illusions does more harm than good (according to some sort of utilitarian metric) on account of resulting in misdirected funds and damaging the philanthropic sector’s credibility. As Elie Hassenfeld says in Why are we always criticizing charities?
The problem is: because the nonprofit sector is saturated with unsubstantiated claims of impact and cost-effectiveness, it’s easy to ignore me when I tell you (for example), “Give $1,000 to the Stop Tuberculosis Partnership, and you’ll likely save someone’s life (perhaps 2 or 3 lives).” It’s easy to respond, “You’re just a cheerleader” or “Why give there when Charity X makes an [illusory] promise of even better impact?”
On the other hand, maybe my belief here is influenced by generalizing from one example and selection effects which have given me a misleading impression of what most donors are like—not sure.
I wonder about this too.
A possible source of examples of net harm done by the practice of distorting the truth ostensibly for the greater good is provided by the fact that many charities distort the truth to fundraise. See for example the GiveWell blog postings:
•Donor Illusions
•When is a charity’s logo a donor illusion?
•Robin Hood, Smile Train and the “0% overhead” donor illusion
Presumably the people responsible for these illusions tell themselves that using them is justified for the greater good. I suspect that the use of these illusions does more harm than good (according to some sort of utilitarian metric) on account of resulting in misdirected funds and damaging the philanthropic sector’s credibility. As Elie Hassenfeld says in Why are we always criticizing charities?
On the other hand, maybe my belief here is influenced by generalizing from one example and selection effects which have given me a misleading impression of what most donors are like—not sure.