Comments on: Self-Interest, Intent & Deceit

By: Missn

Missn — Tue, 31 May 2011 18:31:52 +0000

P.S. I don’t think it means that we are bad people, it means we have bad behaviors.

By: Missn

Missn — Tue, 31 May 2011 18:30:19 +0000

I am deceitful and have been that way for years and find it an incredibly hard thing to overcome. It is not what the author above says and in fact I think it takes alot of courage for a person to admit they have the problem and are trying to work to overcome it. It has cost me all my friends, career, everything and while I work spiritual principles all the time, it is hard to work with because it is still a condition of selfishness. Many times people who have the behavior are looking for help to get through it and there is not alot out there and too often others turn away when we are reaching out for help because we want to change. We know that it does not contribute anything good to the world but we have to believe that we can do it. We have to believe that we can help to make the world a better place, the potential is there if we work on it. but a little help is sure nice.

By: samuel

samuel — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 20:00:25 +0000

such bullshit…
why look into such issues as semantics when the truth is deception is
deception and if the author keeps on with this sort of mental masturbation it will be self deception…
good luck

By: Hopefully Anonymous

Hopefully Anonymous — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 16:06:01 +0000

Norman,
You write:
“By ‘overestimate’ I take it that we mean an actual overestimate that affects my behaviour, and not just a proclaimed overestimate, where I go around announcing that I give everyone the benefit of the doubt. The latter is cheap talk, and I don’t see why it would be a reliable signal.”
I think the performing vs. actually believing distinction can apply to behavior as well as to talk. Once again I think you’re presenting two contrasting options in a way that I think distorts the range of options. The range of options would be closer to (1) actual overestimate that affects my behavior, (2) proclaimed overestimate that I proclaim affects my behavior, (3) performed overestimate that I perform affecting my behavior. Just like one would only proclaim that one overestimates and that it affects one’s behvaior when one has an audience, one could only perform overestimates affecting one’s behavior before an audience. That is also still different than actually overstimating, and those overestimates actually affecting one’s behavior regardless of audience. Once again, the performative aspect would occur with or without internal transparency about it. As a concrete example: One person tells everybody that he picks up trash in the public park, but in front of everyone, he litters in the public park instead. Another person is always seen picking up trash in the public park, but secretly dumps trash there at night. A third person doesn’t know why, but feels an impulsive need to pick up trash in the public park when someone whose opinion he respects is observing him at the park. A fourth person picks up trash at the public park even when he’s alone and no one’s watching.

By: Norman Siebrasse

Norman Siebrasse — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 12:37:05 +0000

Peter’s suggestion that signaling might stabilize overestimates of others’ altruism is biased is interesting. By ‘overestimate’ I take it that we mean an actual overestimate that affects my behaviour, and not just a proclaimed overestimate, where I go around announcing that I give everyone the benefit of the doubt. The latter is cheap talk, and I don’t see why it would be a reliable signal. It also strikes me that signaling would work only if we are talking about signaling to observers with whom we might interact in the future, and not the immediate party in a pairwise interaction. If we’re not talking about cheap talk, but actual behaviour, then signaling altruism involves being more altruistic than is warranted by the available information about the other party, and it’s hard to see why that would be stable since it amounts to just being a sucker. But it does seem that altruistic behaviour towards the person I am currently interacting with would provide third parties with information about my propensity for altruism. It’s not obvious to me that this kind of signaling strategy would be stable, since it does involve being a sucker on a regular basis. As well as getting the signal that I am inclined to cooperate, it also sends the signal that I can be taken advantage of. It’s not clear to me how it would all work out. I might add that my own intuition is that people are not biased to overestimate others’ altruism, but this isn’t a strong intuition. It would be interesting to see a formal model that takes signaling into account.

By: Peter McCluskey

Peter McCluskey — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 16:23:44 +0000

If people have unbiased estimates of others’ altruism, then having some genuine altruism appears necessary for an equilibrium of deception.
But I have a strong impression that people are biased to overestimate others’ altruism. I see two possible reasons why such a bias could be stable. It could signal ones own altruism (if availability bias causes me to overweigh my own degree of altruism when estimating average altruism, then my beliefs about others’ altruism will say something about how altruistic I think I am).
Or a high estimate of others’ altruism could signal ones’ intention to cooperate. As long as I’m more likely to cooperate with altruists, my belief that someone is selfish will signal that I’m less likely to cooperate with them.

By: David J. Balan

David J. Balan — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 14:38:47 +0000

It is important to distinguish between games where “altruistic” behavior arises even though all the players are self-interested, and signalling games where there actually is such a thing as an altruistic type. In the former, the only thing that makes anyone behave altruistically is the promise of future reward and/or the threat of future punishment. In the latter, there are some benefits to being an altruistic type (for example, people are more eager to engage in trust-based trade with you), which means that there are some benefits to being perceived as an altruistic type even if you aren’t one, which leads to signalling.

By: Norman Siebrasse

Norman Siebrasse — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 13:35:31 +0000

Re Eliezer: In general, the evolutionary framework applies to any unit that replicates with variation and subject to selection. The unit that is most fruitfully studied depends on the phenomenon of interest. In this case I don’t really see how a focus on the gene rather than the individual affects the argument one way or the other.

I entirely agree that the emotions of love are very often “legitimate” or, as I would prefer to put it, sincere. However, no matter how sincere, they are not always good predictors of future behaviour. For example, I have a friend whose wife left him after he suffered a physically debilitating illness. Prior to that he believed that she sincerely loved him. I expect he was right, in that if anyone had asked her how she would respond in such a case, she would probably have said, and sincerely believed, that she would have stood by him. On the other hand, I have an acquaintance who did stand by his wife after she suffered a very similar physically debilitating illness. In hindsight one would presumably say that the love in the second case was more sincere than in the first case. My argument would suggest that before the fact it would have been very difficult to say whose love was more sincere because of self-deception by the wife in the first case.

By: Norman Siebrasse

Norman Siebrasse — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 13:11:42 +0000

Re H.A.: 1. The basic contrast is between self-interest and other motivations.

2. Yes, I expect that believing your own lie does make it more difficult to respond to change. This is a subset of the broader point that if I lie to make you believe that I am not self-interested, and I believe my own lie, then I will (sometimes) act in a non-self-interested manner, which is contrary to my immediate interests, even in the same environment. So, it is clear that there are disadvantages to believing your own lie. The question is whether there are sufficient compensating advantages for self-deceit to have evolved.

3. I agree with these points. They seem to me to flesh out, rather than contest, the sentence you quoted.

By: Tobbic

Tobbic — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 05:56:56 +0000

A great post!

Few thoughts..: Considering what makes an equilibrium where people are not always being perceived as self-interested possible I think that mixed strategies which balance outright self-interest and the need to deceive others in to thinking you are not self-interested (for various reasons) is a good explanation. This is different from an equilbrium in the absence of deception where everyone is just sharing their present windfalls to gain their share of future windfalls of others. The reason why there’s (is there?) an equilibrium with deception is that sharing with an impression (deception) of altruism is a better than strategy of pure reciprocative sharing. Furthermore, assuming succesful deception requires (or is enhanced by) self-deception, the belief that people are not always as acting out of self-interest would be useful as it would allow for self-deception. Thus, the belief that people can be genuinely altruistic would be expected to be the norm in the society as it allows for self-deception.

It is interesting how purely altruistic behavior can’t be distinguished from self-interested behavior where deceive yourself and others. It does make the hypothesis of solely self-interesed behavior irrefutable as the opposite (altruism) is indistinguishable. It also shows how “altruism” can arise among completely self-interested individuals.