[renewiltord]

I wonder if there's a term for this kind of thing where people use the word "including".

As an example, I might have a non-profit that serves soup at soup kitchens and also pays me to manage it. If someone gives $100k, suppose I pay myself $90k and use $10k to serve soup.

When someone threatens to cut the contribution, I say "This will affect the non-profit's mission since the $100k a year goes to critical things like all the soup served at kitchens".

The impression is to imply that the majority of it goes to the soup. But the majority doesn't, in fact, go to the soup.

It would be useful to have a concise term for this particular kind of deceitfulness.

[afandian]

I know what you’re getting at.

I think you’d call it a type of ‘lie of omission’.

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Lying_by_omission

But also with some elements of ‘category error’

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Category_mistake

[renewiltord]

I was thinking it's Lying by Omission but that seemed to not be specific enough to this specific style of omission. Ah well, it will have to suffice unless we can think of something sufficiently pithy.

[aeon_ai]

Some languages, such as English, have a term for this -

It's called "lying".

[konnor]

Boy do I have something to tell you about a lot of non-profits...Take Susan G. Komen with breast cancer research...

https://theappalachianonline.com/problems-susan-g-komen/

> In the organization’s 2010-2011 financial report it was revealed that Susan G. Komen only devotes 20.9 percent of the donations it receives to researching breast cancer.

[hobs]

My favorite one is that St Jude has 80 beds. 50% of their funding goes to fundraising or reserves.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Jude_Children%27s_Research...

[4bpp]

I've been seeing the term "hostage puppies" being used for this for a while now; apparently it is associated with esr, though he himself disclaims credit (https://x.com/esrtweet/status/1891528290676199513).

It may not be a perfect fit since per the tweet, the term does not entail that there is necessarily any deceit or confusion involved - under the hostage model, the soup kitchen may be quite open about pocketing 90% of the money, as long as the implication stands that there will be nobody to distribute the remaining 10% in soup if not for them.

As for the deception/confusion aspect of it, I am not aware of a perfectly-fitting term, but Scott Alexander has been blindly groping other parts of that particular elephant for a while, e.g. in https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yCWPkLi8wJvewPbEp/the-noncen... and https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/04/ethnic-tension-and-mea.... There is a common thread in that you can effectively mess with people's reasoning by manipulating their category boundaries, and this is not something that we have worked out good defenses against. Is software piracy theft? Is a fund of which 10% go towards charitable causes being used for charity? Is a TV popsci presenter with a BA a scientist?, and so on.

[renewiltord]

The LW and SSC seem to hit very close to the idea, more the former than the latter, yes. I like those. Especially the eugenics position. Thank you for that.

[rglover]

Fraud