Is discourse around lying/concealing information out of altruistic concern really that rare in Western cultures?
I feel like lying about the extent of pandemics for “your own good” is a tragic pattern that’s frequentlyrepeatedinhistory, and that altruistic motivations (or at least justifications) are commonly presented for why governments do this.
“Think of the children” and moral panic justifications for censorship seems extremely popular.
Academia, especially in the social sciences and humanities, also strikes me as being extremely pro-concealment (either actively or more commonly passively, by believing we should not gather information in the first place) on topics which they actually view as objectionable for explicitly altruistic reasons.
Other examples might be public health messaging. E.g. I’ve heard anecdotal claims that it’s a deliberate choice not to emphasize, say, the absolute risk of contracting HIV per instance of unprotected sex with an infected person.
Is discourse around lying/concealing information out of altruistic concern really that rare in Western cultures?
I feel like lying about the extent of pandemics for “your own good” is a tragic pattern that’s frequently repeated in history, and that altruistic motivations (or at least justifications) are commonly presented for why governments do this.
“Think of the children” and moral panic justifications for censorship seems extremely popular.
Academia, especially in the social sciences and humanities, also strikes me as being extremely pro-concealment (either actively or more commonly passively, by believing we should not gather information in the first place) on topics which they actually view as objectionable for explicitly altruistic reasons.
Other examples might be public health messaging. E.g. I’ve heard anecdotal claims that it’s a deliberate choice not to emphasize, say, the absolute risk of contracting HIV per instance of unprotected sex with an infected person.