Suspecting Truth-Hiders

Tyler against bets:

On my side of the debate I claim a long history of successful science, corporate innovation, journalism, and also commentary of many kinds, mostly not based on personal small bets, sometimes banning them, and relying on various other forms of personal stakes in ideas, and passing various market tests repeatedly. I don’t see comparable evidence on the other side of this debate, which I interpret as a preference for witnessing comeuppance for its own sake (read Robin’s framing or Alex’s repeated use of the mood-affiliated word “bullshit” to describe both scientific communication and reporting). The quest for comeuppance is a misallocation of personal resources. (more)

My translation:

Most existing social institutions tolerate lots of hypocrisy, and often don’t try to expose people who say things they don’t believe. When competing with alternatives, the disadvantages such institutions suffer from letting people believe more falsehoods are likely outweighed by other advantages. People who feel glee from seeing the comeuppance of bullshitting hypocrites don’t appreciate the advantages of hypocrisy.

Yes existing institutions deserve some deference, but surely we don’t believe our institutions are the best of all possible worlds. And surely one of the most suspicious signs that an existing institution isn’t the best possible is when it seems to discourage truth-telling, especially about itself. Yes it is possible that such squelching is all for the best, but isn’t it just as likely that some folks are trying to hide things for private, not social, gains? Isn’t this a major reason we often rightly mood-affiliate with those who gleefully expose bullshit?

For example, if you were inspecting a restaurant and they seemed to be trying to hide some things from your view, wouldn’t you suspect they were doing that for private gain, not to make the world a better place? If you were put in charge of a new organization and subordinates seemed to be trying to hide some budgets and activities from your view, wouldn’t you suspect that was also for private gain instead of to make your organization better? Same for if you were trying to rate the effectiveness of a charity or government agency, or evaluate a paper for a journal. The more that people and habits seemed to be trying to hide something and evade incentives for accuracy, the more suspicious you would rightly be that something inefficient was going on.

Now I agree that people do often avoid speaking uncomfortable truths, and coordinate to punish those who violate norms against such speaking. But we usually do this when have a decent guess of what the truth actually is that we don’t want to hear.

If if were just bad in general to encourage more accurate expressions of belief, then it seems pretty dangerous to let academics and bloggers collect status by speculating about the truth of various important things. If that is a good idea, why are more bets a bad idea? And in general, how can we judge well when to encourage accuracy and when to let the truth be hidden, from the middle of a conversation where we know lots of accuracy has been being sacrificed for unknown reasons?

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