The morality of lying gets attention elsewhere, but it is a reasonable question to ask whether lying can ever be the morally right thing to do.
It ties in with the questions of privacy, confidentiality, secrecy, and consideration for others.
And it has important implications for such things as values, education, faith and beliefs, confidence, free markets, nationalism, propaganda, freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and so forth.
It leads into debates about whistle blowers, Wikileaks, Mossack Fonseca, Facebook security, and Edward Snowden.
And it has HUGE implications for trust.
So it’s a topic that will arise more than occasionally on this site, but for the moment I’ll stick to a single issue and keep it simple.
I try to avoid lying.
I don’t always succeed, but generally I manage to avoid directly lying by resorting to some things that may well be considered even worse.
I mislead.
I deceive.
I tell half-truths; which are the most dangerous lies of all.
Why?
Various reasons, including privacy.
I’ll give one example here to help readers to understand one of the things about which I do not tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
I never tell anyone about some of the things I contemplate.
I have spent years teaching myself to not only envisage the consequences of the limits of the box, but to extend my thinking beyond the boundaries and dimensions of the box.
Which means I get to think about some seriously disturbing possibilities.
Some of them are so horrifying that I don’t spend time contemplating them.
One trivial example - what if the universe were indeed made not by a God of Love, but by a God of Hate?
What if everything really were about making creatures suffer, and the afterlife is eternal and much much worse than anything we can imagine?
I don’t spend time thinking that through. Down those paths lie madness.
But I am very aware of all sorts of possibilities that never cross most people’s minds.
I don’t tell people the truth about the full extent of my contemplations. It would be far too disturbing for most people.
So when you read one of my answers about AI, or genetic engineering, or evolution, or economics or whatever on this blog, be aware that I am keeping it very moderate. Talking about the extremes would not be considerate for most people.
It therefore follows that if you ask me this question:
What does CK see as being the greatest dangers of Artificial Intelligence technology?
I will lie to you. I will give you an answer that you’ll find credible and pretty disturbing, and leave it at that.
Which is not the truth. It is a misleading and deceptive deliberate half-truth that avoids answering the question.
Why?
Because if I gave you an honest answer to your question you might have trouble sleeping at night. There are far worse things than The Matrix or SkyNet.
So be grateful that CK is not always entirely honest.