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	<title>Overcoming Bias &#187; Games</title>
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	<link>http://www.overcomingbias.com</link>
	<description>Overcoming Bias is economist Robin Hanson’s blog, on honesty, signaling, disagreement, forecasting, and the far future.</description>
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		<title>Who Loves Truth Most?</title>
		<link>http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/04/who-loves-truth-most.html</link>
		<comments>http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/04/who-loves-truth-most.html#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 11 Apr 2009 20:15:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Robin Hanson</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Academia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Epistemology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Games]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hypocrisy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Prediction Markets]]></category>

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			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Who loves cars most?&#0160; Most people like cars, but the folks most vocal in their enthusiasm for cars are car sellers; they pay millions for ads gushing about how much their engineers love designing cars, their factory workers love building them, etc.&#0160; The next most vocal are probably car collectors, tinkerers, and racers; they&#39;ll bend your ear off about their car hobby.&#0160; Also vocal are folks visibly concerned that the poor don&#39;t have enough cars.&#0160; </p>
<p>But if you want to find the folks who most love cars <em>for their main purpose</em>, getting folks around in their daily lives, you&#39;ll have to filter out the sellers, hobbyists, and do-gooders to find ordinary people who just love their cars.&#0160; For the most part, car companies love to sell cars to make cash, car hobbyists love to use cars to show off their personal abilities, and do-gooders use cars to show off their compassion.&#0160; By comparison, those who just love to drive from point A to B don&#39;t shout much. </p>
<p>Truth loving is similar.&#0160; Most folks say they prefer truth, but the folks most vocal about loving &quot;truth&quot; are usually selling something.&#0160; For preachers, demagogues, and salesmen of all sorts, the wilder their story, the more they go on about how they love truth.&#0160; The next most vocal in their enthusiasm for truth are those who, like car hobbyists, use public demonstrations of truth-finding to show off personal abilities.&#0160; Academics, gamers, poker players, and amateur intellectuals of all sorts are proud of the fact that their efforts reveal truth, and they make sure you notice their proficiencies. And do-gooders earnestly talk about the importance of everyone understanding the truth of the uninsured, the illiterate, etc. </p>
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<p>The people who just want to know things because they need to make important decisions, in contrast, usually say little about their love of truth; they are too busy trying to figure stuff out.&#0160; These are the &quot;truth lovers&quot; I most respect in the sense of trusting their efforts to be directly targeted to actually uncovering truth.&#0160; Sellers, hobbyists, and do-gooders are instead more likely to pretend to seek truth while actually seeking cash or respect.&#0160; </p>
<p>What if you wanted to convince others that you were actually devoted primarily to truth about some topic, and to an unusual degree?&#0160; Perhaps the clearest signal would be to show that you are <em>buying</em> truth, not <em>selling</em> it or <em>making</em> it, especially if you use some sort of auction to show you buy truth from the least cost provider.&#0160; Instead of offering purported truths for others to believe, or paying ideologues to &quot;discover&quot; already-agreed-on &quot;truths,&quot; or inviting others to admire your truth-discerning skills in practice, offer prizes payable to whomever actually uncovers truths on your topic.&#0160; </p>
<p>When there are identifiable accomplishments that would clearly indicate truth had been uncovered, you can fund prizes payable to whoever creates such accomplishments.&#0160; Or if you want to encourage accurate estimates now on topics where truths will eventually be revealed by other means, you can fund &quot;info prizes,&quot; such as by subsidizing prediction markets.&#0160; </p>
<p>If these are such clear signals of truth-loving, why do we see so few people sending such signals?&#0160; One obvious explanation is that the signal works; it shows us how few big truth fans there really are out there.</p>
<p><strong>Added 13Apr:</strong>&#0160; Arnold riffs <a href="http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2009/04/notes_on_masono.html">here</a>.&#0160; Of course even ordinary people buy cars for reasons other than getting from A to B.&#0160; And they can buy newspapers to prepare themselves for clever in-fashion conversations; they needn&#39;t want truth.</p>
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