Re:CDC tracked millions of phones to see if Americans follow...
by somenameforme on Wednesday May 04, 2022 @02:32AM
(#31257395)
In a democracy in particular, trust is the most important thing in society. Because actions are not guided by the truth, but by what people think the truth is. And when you lose trust, you lose the ability to influence people's perception of that. In a society where a group is perceived as partisan, they end up only being able to influence a fraction of society.
There was a poll [1] on this specific question (from May 2021 - so right in the middle of the pandemic), and as of then only 52% of Americans felt that the CDC was trustworthy. That factor alone is going to dramatically outweigh any sort of benefit of their lie. And of course it wasn't just the lie, but their general behavior which frequently came off as extremely disingenuous.
In anything even vaguely approaching the longrun, honesty always win. Because while lies may create more optimal outcomes in the extreme shortrun, the decline in trust it causes ultimately means we start getting to play out the fable of The Boy Who Cried Wolf on a societal level. And that's not pleasant.
There was a poll [1] on this specific question (from May 2021 - so right in the middle of the pandemic), and as of then only 52% of Americans felt that the CDC was trustworthy. That factor alone is going to dramatically outweigh any sort of benefit of their lie. And of course it wasn't just the lie, but their general behavior which frequently came off as extremely disingenuous.
In anything even vaguely approaching the longrun, honesty always win. Because while lies may create more optimal outcomes in the extreme shortrun, the decline in trust it causes ultimately means we start getting to play out the fable of The Boy Who Cried Wolf on a societal level. And that's not pleasant.
[1] - https://cdn1.sph.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/94/202...