There’s no “rationalist position” on questions like this. With some searching, you can find previous discussions about honesty and about “dark arts” of manipulation. There’s no consensus on whether nor when it’s justified.
There’s some agreement (or at least some speculation and not much objection) that most humans are best off with an honesty bias—both believing themselves to be and encouraging others to think them scrupulously honest. And that it’s much more effective and less costly (cognitively and emotionally) to align your behaviors and your identity than to try to separate them.
Some (including myself) think that the efficiency of good outcomes through lies is is easy to overestimate, and very often is easier or slightly less risky to the speaker while being actually worse for long-term outcomes. Not always, of course—that’s the impossibility of consequentialist morals—it’s just not possible for humans to calculate the probability distribution of effects beyond the trivial short-term ones. Leading to most humans strongly over-weighting short-term outcomes in their decisions.
There’s no “rationalist position” on questions like this. With some searching, you can find previous discussions about honesty and about “dark arts” of manipulation. There’s no consensus on whether nor when it’s justified.
There’s some agreement (or at least some speculation and not much objection) that most humans are best off with an honesty bias—both believing themselves to be and encouraging others to think them scrupulously honest. And that it’s much more effective and less costly (cognitively and emotionally) to align your behaviors and your identity than to try to separate them.
Some (including myself) think that the efficiency of good outcomes through lies is is easy to overestimate, and very often is easier or slightly less risky to the speaker while being actually worse for long-term outcomes. Not always, of course—that’s the impossibility of consequentialist morals—it’s just not possible for humans to calculate the probability distribution of effects beyond the trivial short-term ones. Leading to most humans strongly over-weighting short-term outcomes in their decisions.