Wasn’t your old rule officially “don’t lie to someone unless you would also feel good about slashing their tires given the opportunity?” Or something very close to that? That already solves the standard Kantean problems.
This chunk felt like the biggest difference between meta-honesty and “tire slash”:
Harry shook his head. “No,” said Harry, “because then if we weren’t enemies, you would still never really be able to trust what I say even assuming me to abide by my code of honesty. You would have to worry that maybe I secretly thought you were an enemy and didn’t tell you.
If I’m following the old rule, you probably want to know in what situations I’d feel good slashing your tires. If I actually felt okay slashing your tires, I’d probably also be invested in making you falsely belief I wouldn’t slash your tires. This makes it hard to super soundly, within one’s honesty code, let someone know when you would or wouldn’t be lying to them.
If I’m following meta-honesty, it seems like I can say, “I wouldn’t lie to you about being on your side unless XYZ doomsday scenario”, and that claim is as sound as my claim to be meta-honest. Now, if I say I’m on your side (not going to slash tires / lie), and you trust my claim to be meta-honest, you can believe me with whatever probability you assign to us not currently being in a doomsday scenario.
[...] Groovies believe that a human mind, or a community made up of human minds, is a giant monster that feeds on truth and chokes on confusion. Perhaps if you’re really clever and really lucky, you can make it choke in exactly the right way. But mostly you aren’t.
We believe that promoting less than maximally accurate beliefs is an act of sabotage. Don’t do it to anyone unless you’d also slash their tires, because they’re Nazis or whatever. Specifically, don’t do it to yourself.
(Sadly, we may have to count everyday social interactions as a partial exception.)
One of our mottoes is “if we believe absurdities we shall commit atrocities”. Another is “life is demanding without understanding”. False beliefs hurt both the believer and others. [...]
Wasn’t your old rule officially “don’t lie to someone unless you would also feel good about slashing their tires given the opportunity?” Or something very close to that? That already solves the standard Kantean problems.
This chunk felt like the biggest difference between meta-honesty and “tire slash”:
If I’m following the old rule, you probably want to know in what situations I’d feel good slashing your tires. If I actually felt okay slashing your tires, I’d probably also be invested in making you falsely belief I wouldn’t slash your tires. This makes it hard to super soundly, within one’s honesty code, let someone know when you would or wouldn’t be lying to them.
If I’m following meta-honesty, it seems like I can say, “I wouldn’t lie to you about being on your side unless XYZ doomsday scenario”, and that claim is as sound as my claim to be meta-honest. Now, if I say I’m on your side (not going to slash tires / lie), and you trust my claim to be meta-honest, you can believe me with whatever probability you assign to us not currently being in a doomsday scenario.
The quotation is from Black Belt Bayesian: