A law professor who was a practicing defense attorney whom I talked with during my ordeal told me of an experiment he had done. He was at a dinner party and told people at one table that he was defending a man who was wrongly accused of molesting a child, and was met with shock and accusations of trying to free a monster. He told another table that he was defending a murder suspect whom he was convinced was guilty, and got, “Oh, that’s sounds interesting. Tell me more.”
He told another table that he was defending a murder suspect whom he was convinced was guilty, and got, “Oh, that’s sounds interesting. Tell me more.”
My shock as an observer would have been the gross breach of confidentiality. Is that revelation grounds for a lawsuit, a criminal offense or merely grounds for disbarment? Regardless, it would have been a gross ethical violation on the same order of either of the other two offenses. Undermining the justice system like that is Evil (just an evil that is on the other end of the visceral disgust spectrum than the molestation.)
Is that revelation grounds for a lawsuit, a criminal offense or merely grounds for disbarment?
None of the above, really, unless you have so few murder cases that someone could plausibly guess which one you were referring to. I work with about 100 different plaintiffs right now, and my firm usually accepts any client with a halfway decent case who isn’t an obvious liar. Under those conditions, it’d be alarming if I told you that 100 out of 100 were telling the truth—someone’s bound to be at least partly faking their injury. I don’t think it undermines the justice system to admit as much in the abstract.
If you indiscreetly named a specific client who you thought was guilty, though, that could get you a lawsuit, a criminal offense, and disbarment.
I will take you at your word that you could get away with making such disclosures. You are the lawyer and so the expert at judging what ethical violations people can technically get away with.
I have to thank you for allowing me to update my expectations regarding the ethical standards I can expect from an average legal representative. I now know I will need to filter more aggressively myself and not rely on the system to provide what I would otherwise have taken to be the most rudimentary standards of integrity I need from someone in that role. (That’s a sincere thankyou, not snide pettiness. I really was confused about what that social rules the legal subculture would at least enforce lip-service to adherence to.)
I don’t think it undermines the justice system to admit as much in the abstract.
‘Abstract’ does not mean what you think it means. You are revealing concrete information that is slightly vague. You believe this is OK and as such can be trusted much less with private information. I still may (hypothetically) recommend someone use the services of someone with your beliefs about what constitutes acceptable disclosure of confidential information, but only if their fees are sufficiently low relative to their other competencies as to offset this liability.
Under those conditions, it’d be alarming if I told you that 100 out of 100 were telling the truth
It wouldn’t be alarming at all. It would sound exactly equivalent to “No comment”. It’d sound like you were doing your job (albeit more awkwardly than if you had just shut your mouth and signaled tact). If you choose to speak about the guilt of your clients and choose to reveal anything less than the token “My clients are Resistance), not Spies” then you are disclosing personal information. Because mathematics.
I usually abhor bullshit (advocacy with casual indifference to epistemic accuracy). Lawyers represent a notable exception, where unabashed advocacy for each side is the least bad option I know of for minimising injustice.
You’re...welcome? For what it’s worth, mainstream American legal ethics try to strike a balance between candor and advocacy. It’s actually not OK for lawyers to provide unabashed advocacy; lawyers are expected to also pay some regard to epistemic accuracy. We’re not just hired mercenaries; we’re also officers of the court.
In a world that was full of Bayesian Conspiracies, where people routinely teased out obscure scraps of information in the service of high-stakes, well-concealed plots, I would share your horror at what you describe as “disclosing personal information.” Mathematically, you’re obviously correct that when I say anything about my client(s) that translates as anything other than a polite shrug, it has the potential to give my clients’ enemies valuable information. As a practical matter, though, the people I meet at dinner parties don’t know or care about my clients. They can’t be bothered to hack into my firm’s database, download my list of clients, hire an investigator to put together dossiers on each client, and then cross-reference the dossier with my remarks to revise their probability estimate that a particular client is faking his injury. Even if someone chose to go to all that trouble, nobody would buy the resulting information—the defense lawyers I negotiate with are mathematically illiterate. Finally, even if someone bought the resulting information, it’s not clear what the defense lawyers would do if they could confidently upgrade their estimate of the chance that Bob was faking his injury from 30% up to 60% -- would they tail him with a surveillance crew? They do that anyway. Would they drive a hard bargain in settlement talks? They do that anyway. Civil legal defense tactics aren’t especially sensitive to this kind of information.
All of which is to say that I take my duties to my clients very seriously, and I would never amuse myself at a cocktail party in ways that I thought had more than an infinitesimal chance of harming them. If you prefer your advocates to go beyond a principle of ‘do no harm’ and live by a principle of ‘disclose no information’, and you are willing to pay for the extra privacy, then more power to you—but beware of lawyers who smoothly assure you that they would never disclose any client info under any circumstances. It’s a promise that’s easy to make and hard to verify.
and I would never amuse myself at a cocktail party in ways that I thought had more than an infinitesimal chance of harming them.
Your ethical intent sounds fine but that is of limited use without competence. The sort of casual disclosure described in the ancestor anecdote would make me slightly downgrade my evaluation of the trustworthiness and social competence of any professional that works with sensitive information. Much like those observed casually gossiping about other people at inappropriate times will be silently downgraded as potential confidants.
If you prefer your advocates to go beyond a principle of ‘do no harm’
The overwhelming majority of minor ethical transgressions that we make will “do no harm”. Some do. If the consequences were that easy to predict we wouldn’t need ethical inhibitions in the first place.
That’s an important warning, and I’m glad you linked me to the post on ethical inhibitions. It’s easy to be mistaken about when you’re causing harm, and so allowing a buffer in honor of the precautionary principle makes sense. That’s part of why I never mention the names of any of my clients in public and never post any information about any specific client on any public forums—I expect that most of the time, doing so would cause no harm, but it’s important to be careful.
Still, I had the sense when I first read your comment six weeks ago that it’s not a good ethical maxim to “never provide any information (even in the mathematical/Bayesian sense of “information”) to anyone who doesn’t have an immediate need to know it.”
I think I’ve finally put my finger on what was bothering me: in order to provide the best possible service to my clients, I need to make use of my social and emotional support structure. If I carried all of the burdens of my work solely on my own shoulders, letting all of my client’s problems bounce around solely in my head, I’d go a little crazier than I already am, and I’d provide worse service. My clients would suffer from my peculiar errors of viewpoint. In theory, I can discuss my clients with my boss or with my assistants, but both of those relationships are too charged with competition to serve as an effective emotional safety valve—I don’t really want to rely on my boss for a dose of perspective; I’m too busy signalling to my boss that I’m competent.
I think this is probably generally applicable—I want my doctors to have a chance to chat about me (without using my real name) in the break room or with their poker buddies, so that they can be as stable and relaxed as possible about giving me the best possible treatment. Same thing with my accountant—I’m much more concerned that my accountant is going to forget to apply for a legal tax exemption that’ll net me thousands of dollars than I am that my accountant is going to leak details about me to his friend who, unbeknownst to the accountant, is friends with the husband of an IRS agent who will then decide to give me an unfriendly audit. Sure, it’s important to me that my medical and financial details stay reasonably private, but I’m willing to trade a small amount of privacy for a moderate increase in professional competence.
Do you feel differently? I suspect that some of the people who make bold, confident assertions about how “nobody should ever disclose any private information under any circumstances” are simply signalling their loyalty and discretion, rather than literally describing their preferred policies or honestly describing their intended behavior. Perhaps I’m just falling prey to the Typical Mind fallacy, though.
I think there’s a difference between “does no harm, because it had a substantial chance of doing harm, but someone got lucky”, and “does no harm, and the chance of harm wasn’t ever substantial to begin with”.
People wrongly accused of murder will have the charges dropped if the victim walks in the courtroom and testifies that it didn’t happen. Accused child molesters get convicted even when the victim says that it didn’t happen.
This is true. I hope the implied claim is “either people think differently about child molestation accusations than murder accusations OR necromancy is not possible”.
Why do I find these reactions highly counter-intuitive? That is, I would never have predicted that this is what people would say.
I’m not sure. Is it could be that the details make the story sound apocryphal or contrived? Or is it that you find the underlying moral unbelievable? That is, do you expect that people’s judgement of guilt is distorted heavily by the moral repugnance associated with the alleged crime?
Well, I find the attempt to save a falsely accused man to be much more morally admirable than the attempt to save a justly accused man. Indeed, the fact that child molestation is considered very morally repugnant and carries huge legal and social costs is part of the reason why I feel that any attempt to protect a man from false accusations of child molestation to be very admirable.
To answer your question, I didn’t expect (at least, not till now) people’s judgement of guilt to be distorted so much by the moral repugnance of the alleged crime. If indeed people do distort this much, I should carefully rethink my understanding of moral intuitions.
This seems to be a very specific issue with child molestation in the United States, where there’s a kind of weird none-dare-urge-restraint spiral around that topic for some reason.
I figure it’s the “safe” reaction. Since child molestation is considered so much more repugnant, accidentally getting seen as having taken the side of a child molester (by allowing that he might be innocent when you don’t really know enough to judge that) is a bigger social risk.
Theory: People hear murder, and think, “Oh, the best you’ll do is get them a couple years off, no judge will let a murderer go free.”
But when someone hears “molesting a child”, they think, “They’re probably guilty regardless of what you think, but you have a chance of convincing a jury and then unleash this monster on us.”
Of course, this is working on a subconscious level.
I suppose the theory you’re supposed to think of is “molestation is more graphic than murder”? That can be tested by substituting another, more graphic word for murder, e.g. “shot, exploded, cut up”. (Trying not to get too graphic here.)
Ray Atkinson on Quora
My shock as an observer would have been the gross breach of confidentiality. Is that revelation grounds for a lawsuit, a criminal offense or merely grounds for disbarment? Regardless, it would have been a gross ethical violation on the same order of either of the other two offenses. Undermining the justice system like that is Evil (just an evil that is on the other end of the visceral disgust spectrum than the molestation.)
None of the above, really, unless you have so few murder cases that someone could plausibly guess which one you were referring to. I work with about 100 different plaintiffs right now, and my firm usually accepts any client with a halfway decent case who isn’t an obvious liar. Under those conditions, it’d be alarming if I told you that 100 out of 100 were telling the truth—someone’s bound to be at least partly faking their injury. I don’t think it undermines the justice system to admit as much in the abstract.
If you indiscreetly named a specific client who you thought was guilty, though, that could get you a lawsuit, a criminal offense, and disbarment.
I will take you at your word that you could get away with making such disclosures. You are the lawyer and so the expert at judging what ethical violations people can technically get away with.
I have to thank you for allowing me to update my expectations regarding the ethical standards I can expect from an average legal representative. I now know I will need to filter more aggressively myself and not rely on the system to provide what I would otherwise have taken to be the most rudimentary standards of integrity I need from someone in that role. (That’s a sincere thankyou, not snide pettiness. I really was confused about what that social rules the legal subculture would at least enforce lip-service to adherence to.)
‘Abstract’ does not mean what you think it means. You are revealing concrete information that is slightly vague. You believe this is OK and as such can be trusted much less with private information. I still may (hypothetically) recommend someone use the services of someone with your beliefs about what constitutes acceptable disclosure of confidential information, but only if their fees are sufficiently low relative to their other competencies as to offset this liability.
It wouldn’t be alarming at all. It would sound exactly equivalent to “No comment”. It’d sound like you were doing your job (albeit more awkwardly than if you had just shut your mouth and signaled tact). If you choose to speak about the guilt of your clients and choose to reveal anything less than the token “My clients are Resistance), not Spies” then you are disclosing personal information. Because mathematics.
I usually abhor bullshit (advocacy with casual indifference to epistemic accuracy). Lawyers represent a notable exception, where unabashed advocacy for each side is the least bad option I know of for minimising injustice.
You’re...welcome? For what it’s worth, mainstream American legal ethics try to strike a balance between candor and advocacy. It’s actually not OK for lawyers to provide unabashed advocacy; lawyers are expected to also pay some regard to epistemic accuracy. We’re not just hired mercenaries; we’re also officers of the court.
In a world that was full of Bayesian Conspiracies, where people routinely teased out obscure scraps of information in the service of high-stakes, well-concealed plots, I would share your horror at what you describe as “disclosing personal information.” Mathematically, you’re obviously correct that when I say anything about my client(s) that translates as anything other than a polite shrug, it has the potential to give my clients’ enemies valuable information. As a practical matter, though, the people I meet at dinner parties don’t know or care about my clients. They can’t be bothered to hack into my firm’s database, download my list of clients, hire an investigator to put together dossiers on each client, and then cross-reference the dossier with my remarks to revise their probability estimate that a particular client is faking his injury. Even if someone chose to go to all that trouble, nobody would buy the resulting information—the defense lawyers I negotiate with are mathematically illiterate. Finally, even if someone bought the resulting information, it’s not clear what the defense lawyers would do if they could confidently upgrade their estimate of the chance that Bob was faking his injury from 30% up to 60% -- would they tail him with a surveillance crew? They do that anyway. Would they drive a hard bargain in settlement talks? They do that anyway. Civil legal defense tactics aren’t especially sensitive to this kind of information.
All of which is to say that I take my duties to my clients very seriously, and I would never amuse myself at a cocktail party in ways that I thought had more than an infinitesimal chance of harming them. If you prefer your advocates to go beyond a principle of ‘do no harm’ and live by a principle of ‘disclose no information’, and you are willing to pay for the extra privacy, then more power to you—but beware of lawyers who smoothly assure you that they would never disclose any client info under any circumstances. It’s a promise that’s easy to make and hard to verify.
Your ethical intent sounds fine but that is of limited use without competence. The sort of casual disclosure described in the ancestor anecdote would make me slightly downgrade my evaluation of the trustworthiness and social competence of any professional that works with sensitive information. Much like those observed casually gossiping about other people at inappropriate times will be silently downgraded as potential confidants.
The overwhelming majority of minor ethical transgressions that we make will “do no harm”. Some do. If the consequences were that easy to predict we wouldn’t need ethical inhibitions in the first place.
That’s an important warning, and I’m glad you linked me to the post on ethical inhibitions. It’s easy to be mistaken about when you’re causing harm, and so allowing a buffer in honor of the precautionary principle makes sense. That’s part of why I never mention the names of any of my clients in public and never post any information about any specific client on any public forums—I expect that most of the time, doing so would cause no harm, but it’s important to be careful.
Still, I had the sense when I first read your comment six weeks ago that it’s not a good ethical maxim to “never provide any information (even in the mathematical/Bayesian sense of “information”) to anyone who doesn’t have an immediate need to know it.”
I think I’ve finally put my finger on what was bothering me: in order to provide the best possible service to my clients, I need to make use of my social and emotional support structure. If I carried all of the burdens of my work solely on my own shoulders, letting all of my client’s problems bounce around solely in my head, I’d go a little crazier than I already am, and I’d provide worse service. My clients would suffer from my peculiar errors of viewpoint. In theory, I can discuss my clients with my boss or with my assistants, but both of those relationships are too charged with competition to serve as an effective emotional safety valve—I don’t really want to rely on my boss for a dose of perspective; I’m too busy signalling to my boss that I’m competent.
I think this is probably generally applicable—I want my doctors to have a chance to chat about me (without using my real name) in the break room or with their poker buddies, so that they can be as stable and relaxed as possible about giving me the best possible treatment. Same thing with my accountant—I’m much more concerned that my accountant is going to forget to apply for a legal tax exemption that’ll net me thousands of dollars than I am that my accountant is going to leak details about me to his friend who, unbeknownst to the accountant, is friends with the husband of an IRS agent who will then decide to give me an unfriendly audit. Sure, it’s important to me that my medical and financial details stay reasonably private, but I’m willing to trade a small amount of privacy for a moderate increase in professional competence.
Do you feel differently? I suspect that some of the people who make bold, confident assertions about how “nobody should ever disclose any private information under any circumstances” are simply signalling their loyalty and discretion, rather than literally describing their preferred policies or honestly describing their intended behavior. Perhaps I’m just falling prey to the Typical Mind fallacy, though.
I think there’s a difference between “does no harm, because it had a substantial chance of doing harm, but someone got lucky”, and “does no harm, and the chance of harm wasn’t ever substantial to begin with”.
Good noticing of confusion, I feel slightly ashamed of not picking up on that immediately.
Thankyou, your paramedic IRC anecdote serves as one of the most practical triggers lesswrong has provided me.
The immediately preceding paragraph:
This is true. I hope the implied claim is “either people think differently about child molestation accusations than murder accusations OR necromancy is not possible”.
This link warrants a trigger warning:
Why do I find these reactions highly counter-intuitive? That is, I would never have predicted that this is what people would say.
I’m not sure. Is it could be that the details make the story sound apocryphal or contrived? Or is it that you find the underlying moral unbelievable? That is, do you expect that people’s judgement of guilt is distorted heavily by the moral repugnance associated with the alleged crime?
Well, I find the attempt to save a falsely accused man to be much more morally admirable than the attempt to save a justly accused man. Indeed, the fact that child molestation is considered very morally repugnant and carries huge legal and social costs is part of the reason why I feel that any attempt to protect a man from false accusations of child molestation to be very admirable.
To answer your question, I didn’t expect (at least, not till now) people’s judgement of guilt to be distorted so much by the moral repugnance of the alleged crime. If indeed people do distort this much, I should carefully rethink my understanding of moral intuitions.
This seems to be a very specific issue with child molestation in the United States, where there’s a kind of weird none-dare-urge-restraint spiral around that topic for some reason.
I figure it’s the “safe” reaction. Since child molestation is considered so much more repugnant, accidentally getting seen as having taken the side of a child molester (by allowing that he might be innocent when you don’t really know enough to judge that) is a bigger social risk.
I guess that was the whole point of the quote...
And here I could have sworn it also had something about the way people judge guilt and innocence.
Theory: People hear murder, and think, “Oh, the best you’ll do is get them a couple years off, no judge will let a murderer go free.” But when someone hears “molesting a child”, they think, “They’re probably guilty regardless of what you think, but you have a chance of convincing a jury and then unleash this monster on us.”
Of course, this is working on a subconscious level.
I suppose the theory you’re supposed to think of is “molestation is more graphic than murder”? That can be tested by substituting another, more graphic word for murder, e.g. “shot, exploded, cut up”. (Trying not to get too graphic here.)