From: Robin Hanson (rhanson@gmu.edu)
Date: Wed Jun 18 2003 - 15:13:58 MDT
At 04:52 PM 6/18/2003 -0400, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
>>... one disturbing implication of this is that we may well evolve
>>to become even *more* self-deceived than we are now, as believing
>>one thing and thinking another becomes even harder than now.
>
>Accepting the scenario, for purposes of discussion... why would
>rationalization be any harder to see than an outright lie, under direct
>inspection? Rationalization brainware would be visible. The decision to
>rationalize would be visible. Anomalous weights of evidence in remembered
>belief-support networks could be detected, with required expenditure of
>scrutinizing computing power decreasing with the amount of the shift. It's
>possible there would be no advantage for rationalization over lying;
>rationalization might even be bigger and more blatant from a computational
>standpoint.
As I argued in my response to Hal Finney, the process that leads to a
belief seems much larger than the resulting belief itself. To verify a
belief you may need to just look up the right data structure. To verify
that a mind that produces beliefs is unbiased required you to look at much
more than a small data structure. This diffuse nature of belief production
is in fact what makes it hard for us to see our own self-deception.
Robin Hanson rhanson@gmu.edu http://hanson.gmu.edu
Assistant Professor of Economics, George Mason University
MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444
703-993-2326 FAX: 703-993-2323
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