There's a spectrum to "nudges". Some government nudging is actually morally justifiable, IMO. Things like making retirement saving opt-out instead of opt-in, or hiding information about a probable disaster to avoid panic[0]. Placebo buttons I find somewhere between justifiable cost saving (if buttons were working in the past, or could in the future) and being disrespectful to people. But in this case, and in almost all cases, you can avoid lying to people.
Beyond that, I strongly agree with your sentiment, and I frequently point out that if you were to apply standard marketing practice to your friends, you'd quickly get punched in the face - and justifiably so. To me, lying needs heavy justification - on the level of saving lives.
I like this quote: "Promoting less than maximally accurate beliefs is an act of sabotage. Don't do it to anyone unless you'd also slash their tires." [1]
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[0] - E.g. evacuating a city of million+ will necessarily cause a lot of deaths and heavily disrupt regional economy, leading to further deaths and suffering. Therefore, it's IMO justified for the government to avoid triggering evacuations if the risk is low, even if that means sitting on some information.
> To me, lying needs heavy justification - on the level of saving lives.
Agreed, and in case someone is looking for scientific justification, you can just look at it as specialized market economy (as quite a lot of things can be). Lying in this case reducing market information, which reduces efficiency. In this case, that translated into you wasting a small amount time and effort pushing a fake button. But multiply it across all the times you do it, and all the people that do it, and it's actually a fairly large drain overall (not to mention the frustration of expecting your actions to matter and them never seeming to).
I think the common refrain against this is that people don't act rationally or in the best interest of the whole in these cases, but I think that's more often just another case of poor market information leading to inefficiency, even if the source is different. The problem with manipulating the market by reducing information even more (deceiving people) is that if it works it likely only works while existing conditions persist, and may become much less useful later as conditions change. I.e. if people were crossing before the button was pressed and the placebo button helped, what happens when crosswalk sings start showing countdowns and people then become accustomed to noting that and waiting for them regardless if there's a button or not? Better information has make the system more efficient... except for those that still waste their time with the buttons that don't do anything, and now the prior strategy to manipulate people is making the system less efficient than if it wasn't present.
Which is all just a really drawn out way of saying and showing that treating people with respect and giving them as much information as possible (and definitely not giving them false information) should lead to better outcomes overall.
> Things like making retirement saving opt-out instead of opt-in
This isn't about the retirees as much as it's about society as a whole and the economics thereof.
Simply: Most cultures are now unwilling to put up with old people dying in the streets. We're even iffy on the idea of workhouses and other accoutrements of the Poor Law. Therefore, we have welfare, in multiple forms, and having a lot of people hitting welfare in their Medically Expensive Years is bad for multiple reasons.
> hiding information about a probable disaster to avoid panic
More like avoiding blame when they're culpable.
> E.g. evacuating a city of million+ will necessarily cause a lot of deaths and heavily disrupt regional economy, leading to further deaths and suffering. Therefore, it's IMO justified for the government to avoid triggering evacuations if the risk is low, even if that means sitting on some information.
Failure to prepare on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part... and if it does, I demand to know that you failed to prepare, so you can face some consequences.
Beyond that, I strongly agree with your sentiment, and I frequently point out that if you were to apply standard marketing practice to your friends, you'd quickly get punched in the face - and justifiably so. To me, lying needs heavy justification - on the level of saving lives.
I like this quote: "Promoting less than maximally accurate beliefs is an act of sabotage. Don't do it to anyone unless you'd also slash their tires." [1]
--
[0] - E.g. evacuating a city of million+ will necessarily cause a lot of deaths and heavily disrupt regional economy, leading to further deaths and suffering. Therefore, it's IMO justified for the government to avoid triggering evacuations if the risk is low, even if that means sitting on some information.
[1] - https://web.archive.org/web/20130728200940/http://www.accele..., via https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/XTWkjCJScy2GFAgDt/dark-side-...