On 15/12/2007, Mike Godwin mnemonic@gmail.com wrote:
David Goodman writes:
Yes, the board must have the discretion to choose the appropriate course, and in this instance it chose wrongly. It takes good judgement to know how much to release, and the judgment proved not to be good. The bias towards secrecy would be the apparent reason.
Apart from my disagreement about Goodman's evaluation of our judgments, I am charmed to have been accused, for the first time in my life, with a "bias towards secrecy." Anyone familiar with me or my work would have presumed my bias had been in the opposite direction.
As Kant pointed out, acting against one's inclinations is often an indicator of moral judgment.
I think the accusation was towards the board, not you. The board have, on multiple occasions, chosen secrecy over transparency, and I don't believe that they were all for legal reasons. I'm happy to believe that you would only advise secrecy for legal reasons (it's not your job to give advice for any other reasons, after all), but at the end of the day, it isn't your decision, and your advise isn't the only deciding factor.