Re: The Future of Secrecy

From: Robin Hanson (rhanson@gmu.edu)
Date: Fri Jun 20 2003 - 15:40:30 MDT

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    At 04:12 PM 6/20/2003 -0400, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
    >>We were talking about people using self-deception instead of
    >>dishonesty. For example, instead of lying and saying you are a great
    >>worker, you make yourself believe it even when your evidence goes
    >>against this belief. "Bias" mean processes that produce such systematic
    >>deviations.
    >
    >Why should systematic deviations in beliefs be any more or less difficult
    >to detect than systematic deviations in statements? Both are information,
    >both have probability distributions, both are produced by causal
    >mechanisms. What makes one information-theoretically different from the other?

    There are four levels that we might examine and compare:
    1. Agent statements and actions
    2. Agent beliefs
    3. Agent internal evidential and other context of belief updating
    4. Agent external evidential and other context of belief updating.

    If all you have is levels 1 & 4 to compare, you'll have a hard time
    identifying a "bias" in a particular case. (Researchers can already
    identify such biases on average though, at least in many cases.) The hope
    would be that being able to also observe levels 2 & 3 would make it easier
    to identify bias. Deviations between levels 1 & 2 are called "lying". And
    ways in which level 2 seems to be influenced by non-evidential elements of
    level 3 are usually "motivational belief bias".

    It was my guess, if you recall, that it would probably be feasible to be
    transparent enough to allow outsiders to see lying, but harder to allow
    outsiders to see motivational bias. If so, self-deception would become
    stronger.

    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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