From: Robin Hanson (rhanson@gmu.edu)
Date: Thu Jun 19 2003 - 17:54:13 MDT
At 10:53 AM 6/19/2003 -0700, you wrote:
> > ... Bet in the markets the few minutes a day you are rational, and then
> >go back to your blissful ignorance.
>
>... It seems to me that truth is needed to achieve cooperation in a wide
>enough variety of circumstances that we would all better off if we could
>make a binding agreement to be as close to truthful Bayesians as our
>computational powers allow.
Yes, except on the key question of not facing uncomfortable truths. If
people really place a high enough value on this, we do them harm by making
them truthful, even if that aids cooperation on all other fronts.
>Without simple rules concerning when we agree to be truthful (e.g.
>always demand the truth except in cases that are clearly distinct from
>normal interactions, such as bluffing in poker), there is little hope of
>determining whether people are living up to that agreement.
>
> But after noticing that you seem to disagree with this last sentence, I have
>to admit that I'm not very certain about it. But I'm still guessing that I'm
>right.
I don't think I disagree with that last sentence. Can you explain?
> It is harder to have disgreements with stock market prices that persist
>for years than it is to have persistent disgreements about how legislation
>is made, because market prices allow much less room for ambiguity and less
>room for selective use of evidence than descriptions of the legislative
>process do.
OK, I'll grant this point. But can't people just not look at the prices?
Most people never read the business stock page in the paper, and have little
idea of how IBM is doing. The public is amazingly ignorant when they want
to be.
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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