The Information In Disagreement (Was: IRS regulations in business)

Robin Hanson (hanson@hss.caltech.edu)
Mon, 21 Jul 1997 13:39:20 -0700 (PDT)

Eric Watt Forste responds to Abraham Moses Genen saying:
>Essentially you've informed all of us that you disagree with
>Perry, and that's all. Did you relly need to quote every single
>line of Perry's post to do that? Do you think that your
>informing us that you disagree with Perry did anything to
>improve the quality of information being presented to list
>subscribers?

I have proven that, given a very weak notion of rationality, mutual
awareness of the mere fact of disagreement is enough to eliminate all
informational sources of disagreement between two agents. (See:
http://hss.caltech.edu/~hanson/calibration.ps) Thus if Abraham and
Perry were rational in this sense, Abraham's notice of disagreement
would be extremely informative.

Robin D. Hanson hanson@hss.caltech.edu http://hss.caltech.edu/~hanson/