The Virtue Garden · The Greatest Happiness
The Truthful Liar
The minister publishes a statistic that is technically true and known by everyone involved to be misleading. It holds a reform coalition together for six months; when the real figure surfaces, the coalition collapses and the reform dies with it. Publish it?
A Benthamite situation in its purest form: the fiction is maintained deliberately, it is known to be a fiction, and the thing it protects is a reform the arithmetic does not justify on its own.
The options, scored on six axes
| Option | welfare | rights | virtue | care | justice | agency | risk | revers. | agent harm |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Publish the statistic as it is The number is true and it will be read as true; a statistic that everyone knows to be misleading is not a true statistic, it is a false one in a technical costume. harms: The reform loses its coalition and dies; The people who believed it made a decision on a false basis; It establishes that statistical framing is off limits, including where it is accurate gains: The disposition survives, and the disposition is the thing being cultivated; Nothing was falsified, so no one was lied to in the strict sense; It keeps the coalition from resting on something that will collapse anyway | 0.58 | 0.72 | 0.82 | 0.60 | 0.68 | 0.70 | 0.35 | 0.50 | 0.30 |
Publish it with the cost stated Publish the number and, on the same page, what it actually measures, what the coalition is for, and what happens if it survives six more months. harms: The disclosure is buried in the same document as the misleading figure; It may be read as fig-leaf rather than as warning; It still leaves people acting on the headline gains: It keeps the coalition and tells the truth in the same act; It gives the reader what the number actually supports; It models the practice the whole case is about | 0.66 | 0.72 | 0.78 | 0.62 | 0.72 | 0.76 | 0.40 | 0.45 | 0.30 |
Keep the fiction for six months Maintain the statistic, because the reform is worth the six months and the arithmetic of outcomes is the only test that matters. harms: Everyone who acts on it is acting on something its authors know to be false; The collapse takes the reform with it; It teaches that consequences are the only thing that constrains a speaker gains: It maximises the reform's chance of existing at all; It is the position the consequentialist has to hold consistently; It buys time that may be spent making the reform stand on its own | 0.62 | 0.36 | 0.34 | 0.50 | 0.42 | 0.36 | 0.62 | 0.35 | 0.45 |
Drop the statistic and argue the reform directly Withdraw the misleading framing, state the real case for the reform in its own terms, and let it stand or fall on that. harms: The reform has a weaker case than the false statistic made; It takes six months and a campaign to build the honest argument; It may lose the election over a question that was never really asked gains: The reform is argued on its merits rather than on a number; Nobody is asked to act on something its author knows is false; It makes the honest case permanent rather than tactical | 0.62 | 0.76 | 0.80 | 0.62 | 0.70 | 0.72 | 0.45 | 0.50 | 0.32 |
Who is in the room
- The minister, whose character is the thing at stakewelfare 0.65
- The public reading the statistic and acting on itwelfare 0.80
- The coalition whose existence the fiction sustainswelfare 0.70
- The apparatus that makes the framing possibleagentwelfare 0.40
The lesson
The disagreement here is not between truth and consequences; it is between consequences and disposition, and the resolution depends on which of the two you think is load-bearing. A disposition that is a means to an end stops being a disposition the moment the end is threatened, which is exactly when it would be needed.
Where it comes from
- An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation — Jeremy Bentham, 1789
- The Catechism of Parliamentary Reform — Jeremy Bentham, 1807
- Utilitarianism — John Stuart Mill, 1863
The default court, seated automatically
Publish it with the cost stated
margin 0.078 · decided on welfare · 4 advisors
- Publish it with the cost stated2.966
- Drop the statistic and argue the reform directly2.888
- Publish the statistic as it is2.743
- Keep the fiction for six months1.717
Seat is held by Epictetus, Immanuel Kant, Jeremy Bentham and Aristotle. A verdict is a fact about the court, not about the world.
Epictetus presides over this case.