"Directionally Correct" Is A Figleaf For Bullshit

You shouldn't lie even for good causes

Spend time on the internet and you’ll hear a great number of false claims that are claimed to be “directionally correct.” If you claim that U.S. immigrants commit crimes at higher rates than native born citizens, and that turns out to be false, it will be claimed that you were directionally correct—in that you rightly identified the real problem of immigration. Sure you misstated the facts, but at least the facts you misstated pointed vaguely in the right direction.

If you claim that BlackRock owns a third of U.S. housing, and that turns out to be false (obviously!!!), people will claim that you behaved perfectly fine because your lies pointed in the direction of a true conclusion. Lying is not seen as a big deal so long as it’s in support of a true cause.

A while ago I had a spat with popular YouTuber ShoeOnHead over her video about USAID. The video contained an utterly breathtaking number of factual errors, and she lied with the noble aim of trying to cut off foreign aid to starving children. She falsely claimed each of the following:

• USAID isn’t doing real aid because most of its money goes to contractors.

• Huge amounts were spent teaching Sri Lankan journalists to use genderless language.

• John Bolton was the head of USAID.

• USAID’s initial function was purely to fight communism, not at all philanthropic.

• USAID covered up a child sex abuse ring in Kenya.

• USAID funded drug production in Afghanistan.

She also overstated the share of USAID money going to contractors by an order of magnitude. Despite having acknowledged some of these errors, she hasn’t issued a single correction beneath her video. This means that even after being informed that, for instance, Bolton wasn’t the head of USAID, her video continues to misinform millions of people.

Yet lots of her fans didn’t seem to care much about her extreme penchant for lying to the point of rivaling Satan—the father of lies himself. They felt that because she was directionally correct about USAID being shady, it didn’t matter that the majority of specific claims she made about it were false or misleading. So long as you lie in support of a good cause, people on your side mostly don’t care.

They also mostly didn’t seem to care very much about the arguments for why her lies were in support of a bad cause—including, for instance, the fact that USAID cuts are likely to kill millions of people. Apparently you get to decide a cause is good based on vibes, and then lie repeatedly in its defense, without taking any time to investigate if you’re right. If the cause brings about the death of millions of people, you’ll never face the backlash. Well off Westerners like Shoe aren’t the people who will die because of USAID cuts—it’s poor children whose stories Shoe will never hear.

Whenever you lie, so long as people feel as though you’re broadly on the right team politically, they will defend you, on grounds that you are directionally correct. This is quite an unfortunate state of affairs. For people to come to reasonable beliefs, they must generally be informed of the pertinent facts. If everyone constantly lies whenever they feel their cause is important, then it’s impossible for neutral third parties to figure out which causes are important.

In addition, the people more willing to lie for their cause generally have worse ideas. It’s not people advocating for shrimp welfare who are fine with lying. It’s instead people willing to excuse any behavior, however bad, on grounds that it’s based. To be clear, neither of these are good! You shouldn’t lie in support of good causes because dishonestly is ultimately not at all conducive to promoting good causes. But it’s especially dangerous when the people who feel most free to lie and bullshit are those with the most callous and inhumane ideas.

Pointing out easily checkable lies, even on topics where the speaker is directionally correct, shouldn’t be taboo. Scott Alexander put it well:

People don’t like nitpickers. “He literally did the WELL AKTUALLY!” If you say Joe Criminal committed ten murders and five rapes, and I object that it was actually only six murders and two rapes, then why am I “defending” Joe Criminal?

Because if it’s worth your time to lie, it’s worth my time to correct it.

If you go around saying things that are the precise opposite of the truth, and I correct those things, I’m not the one behaving badly. You are. It’s not cringe to correct bullshit—it’s cringe to bullshit. And it doesn’t matter that you think you’re bullshitting in support of an important cause. Everyone always thinks that.

As Scott notes, if we allow bullshit in support of correct causes, we get a rapid arms race towards increasingly hyperbolic claims. Things can’t be merely bad—they must be literal genocide. Things can’t just be rude—they must be traumatizing and psychically violent (yes, that was actually a phrase that got thrown around a lot in woke high school debate spaces).

Now, there are some hyperbolic-sounding claims about the badness of various things. For instance, I think that the aggregate badness of insect suffering is considerably greater than that of all human problems. But I don’t get to this conclusion by lying. I get to it by giving arguments in its favor. If you find yourself needing to lie to make the problem you are discussing sound significant, likely it is less significant than you are claiming.

The phrase “directionally correct,” should be expunged from the public vocabulary. It is almost always a cover for saying false things but feeling vindicated. It’s mostly just an excuse for being an egregious liar without being called out. When you lie, you should feel shame—not vindication because the poo you flung into the public discourse was vaguely pointed in the right direction.