I understood the original comment to be making essentially the same point you’re making—that lying has a bad track record, where ‘lying has a bad track record of causing mistrust’ is a case of this. In what way do you see them as distinct reasons?
I see them as distinct because what I’m saying is that lying generally tends to lead to bad outcomes (for both the liar and society at large) whereas mistrust specifically is just one component of the bad outcomes.
Other components that come to my mind:
People don’t end up with accurate information.
Expectations that people will cooperate (different from “tell you the truth”) go down.
Expectations that people will do things because they are virtuous go down.
But a big thing here is that it’s difficult to know why exactly it will lead to bad outcomes. The gears are hard to model. However, I think there’s solid evidence that it leads to bad outcomes.
I understood the original comment to be making essentially the same point you’re making—that lying has a bad track record, where ‘lying has a bad track record of causing mistrust’ is a case of this. In what way do you see them as distinct reasons?
I see them as distinct because what I’m saying is that lying generally tends to lead to bad outcomes (for both the liar and society at large) whereas mistrust specifically is just one component of the bad outcomes.
Other components that come to my mind:
People don’t end up with accurate information.
Expectations that people will cooperate (different from “tell you the truth”) go down.
Expectations that people will do things because they are virtuous go down.
But a big thing here is that it’s difficult to know why exactly it will lead to bad outcomes. The gears are hard to model. However, I think there’s solid evidence that it leads to bad outcomes.