I feel some sort of “ugh, I don’t want to be the Language Police” vibe, but here’s my two cents:
I think I would’ve called this “misleading” or “inaccurate” but I think “dishonest” should be reserved for stronger violations.
I also like Ben’s “conveniently misleading” or maybe even something like “inaccurate in a way that serves the interests of the OP.”)
I think we should probably reserve terms like “dishonest” for more egregious forms of lying/manipulation.
Outside of LW, I think “dishonest” often has a conscious/intentional/deliberate/premediated connotation. In many circles, dishonesty is a “charged” term that implies a higher degree of wrongness than we usually associate with things like imprecision, carelessness, or self-deception.
Separately, I do think it’s important for those involved in advocacy to hold themselves to high standards of precision/accuracy and be “extra careful” to avoid systematically deceiving oneself or others. But I also think there are ways that the community could levy critiques in kinder and more productive ways, though.
I think we would like to avoid worlds where advocacy people walk away with some sense of “ugh, LW people are mean and rude and call me dishonest and manipulative whenever I make minor mistakes” while still preserving the thoughtful/conscientious/precise/truth-seeking norms.
I think “misleading” seems also marginally better for these kinds of things. It still has some of the “well, I notice a correlation in your errors” dimension, but without being as judgmental about the details.
Outside of LW, I think “dishonest” often has a conscious/intentional/deliberate/premediated connotation.
FWIW, I don’t really believe this. I’ve been following how people use terms like “dishonest” in public very closely since 2022, and mostly people use it when people seem to say contradictory things, and the eternal back and forth between “these errors sure seem correlated and this person is saying contradictory things to different people” and “are you saying this person sat down and with full conscious awareness decided to lie to people?” seems to be a universal component of talking about honesty.
Other people don’t really have more agreement on the definitions of “dishonesty” or “lying”, and I think that reflects an underlying complexity in the territory. There are different levels of self-awareness, and in the end it’s also not really clear how much it matters if someone has a homunculus in their brain that does notice how they are saying different things to different people, vs. they are just doing it on instinct.
in the end it’s also not really clear how much it matters if someone has a homunculus in their brain that does notice how they are saying different things to different people, vs. they are just doing it on instinct.
I think from a purely “assess the consequences/predict the behavior” perspective this makes sense. I do think that many people view it as more “wrong” to do the intentional homunculus thing and would be more upset & feel more attacked if someone accused them of this.
Put differently, I think “Alice, you were misleading there” will reliably evoke a different response from Alice compared to “Alice, you were dishonest.” To get more fine-grained:
“Alice, I think you were misleading”– low aggro//most kind
“Alice, I think you [deliberately] lied to me– high aggro//least kind
“Alice, I think you were [deliberately? accidentally?] dishonest”– ambiguous. Could be easily interpreted as the high aggro//least kind version.
I feel some sort of “ugh, I don’t want to be the Language Police” vibe, but here’s my two cents:
I think I would’ve called this “misleading” or “inaccurate” but I think “dishonest” should be reserved for stronger violations.
I also like Ben’s “conveniently misleading” or maybe even something like “inaccurate in a way that serves the interests of the OP.”)
I think we should probably reserve terms like “dishonest” for more egregious forms of lying/manipulation.
Outside of LW, I think “dishonest” often has a conscious/intentional/deliberate/premediated connotation. In many circles, dishonesty is a “charged” term that implies a higher degree of wrongness than we usually associate with things like imprecision, carelessness, or self-deception.
Separately, I do think it’s important for those involved in advocacy to hold themselves to high standards of precision/accuracy and be “extra careful” to avoid systematically deceiving oneself or others. But I also think there are ways that the community could levy critiques in kinder and more productive ways, though.
I think we would like to avoid worlds where advocacy people walk away with some sense of “ugh, LW people are mean and rude and call me dishonest and manipulative whenever I make minor mistakes” while still preserving the thoughtful/conscientious/precise/truth-seeking norms.
I think “misleading” seems also marginally better for these kinds of things. It still has some of the “well, I notice a correlation in your errors” dimension, but without being as judgmental about the details.
FWIW, I don’t really believe this. I’ve been following how people use terms like “dishonest” in public very closely since 2022, and mostly people use it when people seem to say contradictory things, and the eternal back and forth between “these errors sure seem correlated and this person is saying contradictory things to different people” and “are you saying this person sat down and with full conscious awareness decided to lie to people?” seems to be a universal component of talking about honesty.
Other people don’t really have more agreement on the definitions of “dishonesty” or “lying”, and I think that reflects an underlying complexity in the territory. There are different levels of self-awareness, and in the end it’s also not really clear how much it matters if someone has a homunculus in their brain that does notice how they are saying different things to different people, vs. they are just doing it on instinct.
I think from a purely “assess the consequences/predict the behavior” perspective this makes sense. I do think that many people view it as more “wrong” to do the intentional homunculus thing and would be more upset & feel more attacked if someone accused them of this.
Put differently, I think “Alice, you were misleading there” will reliably evoke a different response from Alice compared to “Alice, you were dishonest.” To get more fine-grained:
“Alice, I think you were misleading”– low aggro//most kind
“Alice, I think you [deliberately] lied to me– high aggro//least kind
“Alice, I think you were [deliberately? accidentally?] dishonest”– ambiguous. Could be easily interpreted as the high aggro//least kind version.