Kira Newman runs The Honesty Experiment: 30 days. Complete honesty. Can they survive it? — Follow their journey and read about honesty in life, love, and business. She interviewed me recently. One excerpt:
The communication works as following: some sequences of words and the like are made to produce specific picture or a mental model in the listener's head. When they are made to produce a false picture, that's a lie.
Telling someone that they are e.g. a most beautiful woman in the world evokes the picture of your love, and thus it is a lie if this picture is false (e.g. if you are only doing this to get them in bed). From the autistic standpoint, it is a lie unless you built a beauty-meter and evaluated everyone.
People on the autistic spectrum seem not to model the information-receiving aspect of communication very well, and so they might describe statements that are in some sense not literally correct as "lies", even though those do not produce any deception, or describe correct statements which have been e.g. cherry picked to create a false impression, as "truths".
Suppose you are reporting on people who took some medicine, and you neglect to report anyone who suffered any adverse effect, in an interaction where the listener would expect you to. You are doing this to sell the drug. Even if none of the statements made were literally false, you're being manipulative and deceptive in a way that hurts other people for sake of your private gain, and you should feel bad about it.
I don't see why honesty would have a budget, unless of course you exhaust will power any time you are forcing yourself to be honest instead of lying.
On the other hand, lying definitely has a budget, in the sense that for a given amount of non lying there's limited amount of lying that can be done before there's sufficient Bayesian evidence for the other parties.
People who lie effectively also tend to inappropriately divulge details about themselves which most honest people tend to neglect to divulge.
Think more in terms of: you have a limited budget of honesty, and where you should spend it.
Thinking in terms of a limited financial budget makes you more frugal with money. Similarly, thinking in terms of a fixed honesty budget is a recipe for making one more frugal with honesty.
Yes, definitely. Roman Catholicism, like Islam and Hinduism is a strictly hierarchical system with lots of rituals and very specific rules. This has advanced to the point where outward appearances are more important to be viewed as a good Catholic than your actual actions or beliefs
...or one can just finesse the issue entirely:“’Honesty is the best policy.’ Very well then; if I act so as to do the best for myself I am assured of acting honestly.”--J. E. Littlewood, Littlewood’s miscellany, CUP
(in case it's unclear, Littlewood intended this as a joke)
Unlike most people in the world, Americans have this belief in rugged honesty at all costs: If you aren't honest, you're not good. Whereas many peoples in Latin America, for example, and throughout much of Asia, will graciously say dishonest things in order to be polite. I would say that, in most tribal societies, where community is absolutely essential, most people are willing to tell white lies to smooth over difficult social situations.-- Darwinian anthropologist Helen Fisher
Why do we believe that honesty is actually a good thing? Is there any evidence for that?
"My colleague Tyler Cowen, he’s often remarked that most of us could get frank advice about ourselves if we simply asked around to our local colleagues and associates about our strengths and weaknesses and our problems, and few of us ever do that."
And yet "Honesty Box" is a popular Facebook application. I think people are very curious what others think about them. Let's say you overheard part of a conversation two friends had about you, but you didn't make some of it out. Wouldn't you be extremely curious what else was said?
Obviously people don't go around all the time asking for frank feedback, but that doesn't mean that we're not curious about ourselves. There are lots of other potential reasons. One big one: asking for feedback like this would be a low status move, and most people like to appear high status, or are at least uncomfortable being low status.
I actually think the idea of having a high level of honesty and egalitarianism is a great one. I have lots of friends who I have that kind of honest, egalitarian relationship with, and they're great friendships. The modern world doesn't exactly have scarce resources, so we don't need to be conniving against each other.
I'm not persuaded by your blackmail example either. There are lots of people who are in favor of minimum wage laws, because paying working class people more money seems good, so requiring businesses to offer higher wages intuitively seems like it should help working class people. But of course economists don't think things are that simple 'cause they've thought about the issue for a while longer. Blackmail seems likely to be the same sort of thing... perhaps people want these sorts of things to come out, and they think blackmailing would mean things stayed quiet. The name "blackmail" doesn't help either. Nor does the fact that anyone who did blackmail sounds like a jerk, and people typically dislike jerks, and perhaps don't realize that in this case this jerk behavior is serving a useful role.
"So it’s a form of social hypocrisy: we, in fact, don’t really want to uncover those kinds of police actions very eagerly, at least."
This doesn't seem especially persuasive to me. For one thing, I don't think it's particularly accurate to say "we" set up internal affairs departments to report to the chief of police. I was not consulted for this decision, and I doubt you were either. I'd estimate the portion of the population that was consulted in the decision of who the department of internal affairs should report to to be under 0.001%. So using "we" seems highly misleading.
Even if most people had a mild preference for police oversight to be decoupled from police departments, I wouldn't necessarily expect this to be implemented. It seems like a collective-action problem: the police department probably has a strong desire to keep investigation groups internal, while any public desire would be a mild one held by many people.
If we were to poll the users of http://www.reddit.com/r/bad... on whether police oversight should stop reporting to the chief of police, what do you expect the result of the poll would be?
The only reason I can see for dishonesty is avoidance of conflict or trying to obtain something you are otherwise not entitled to. I don't see the difficulty of not saying anything at all if you can't say something positive. Even if one dislikes something, I can't see why one would not suggest what could make it better in one's eyes or something neutral and noncommittal. Someone might corner someone else into a position where dishonesty may be considered, but if they care that much for a response, it is hard to see why they would prefer dishonesty. Everyone is entitled to their opinion and they are worth what they cost.
This is somewhat like questions of trust which I find inane. Trust whom to do what? Trust how far and with what? Without doubt or with concern? Trust they exist, that they will behave well, that they have good judgment, or they are incorruptible? Specifics are not a side concern, they are the entire concern.
why this makes me laugh, i do not know. thinking about inhumanity and budgets and lying and parts... and cannot help but laugh. but it's one short brief ha.
"Why would any rational agent, in the midst of enemies or at least rivals, want to be totally honest? It isn't a matter of how we're built; it can be explained by our interests--in good economist fashion."
Rational agents can build a better world if they can trust each other. Imposing penalties on deceit and growing a sense of community so that cooperation becomes viable is a more rational and ethical strategy than "every man for himself".
Limited willpower is the only explanation I can think of for having an honesty budget. You can only force yourself to be honest (when your urges argue otherwise) so much. And the gains for willpower from its exercise are probably much smaller than the gains of strength from physical exercise. The basic human solution to limited willpower is habit formation. To the extent the "budgetary" limit on honesty is willpower (and I can't think of what else it might be), it doesn't limit the degree of honesty one can obtain through practicing it.
(For an ethical theory based on willpower limitation, see "Why do what you "ought"?—A habit theory of explicit morality" — http://tinyurl.com/7dcbt7y )
The communication works as following: some sequences of words and the like are made to produce specific picture or a mental model in the listener's head. When they are made to produce a false picture, that's a lie.
Telling someone that they are e.g. a most beautiful woman in the world evokes the picture of your love, and thus it is a lie if this picture is false (e.g. if you are only doing this to get them in bed). From the autistic standpoint, it is a lie unless you built a beauty-meter and evaluated everyone.
People on the autistic spectrum seem not to model the information-receiving aspect of communication very well, and so they might describe statements that are in some sense not literally correct as "lies", even though those do not produce any deception, or describe correct statements which have been e.g. cherry picked to create a false impression, as "truths".
Suppose you are reporting on people who took some medicine, and you neglect to report anyone who suffered any adverse effect, in an interaction where the listener would expect you to. You are doing this to sell the drug. Even if none of the statements made were literally false, you're being manipulative and deceptive in a way that hurts other people for sake of your private gain, and you should feel bad about it.
I don't see why honesty would have a budget, unless of course you exhaust will power any time you are forcing yourself to be honest instead of lying.
On the other hand, lying definitely has a budget, in the sense that for a given amount of non lying there's limited amount of lying that can be done before there's sufficient Bayesian evidence for the other parties.
People who lie effectively also tend to inappropriately divulge details about themselves which most honest people tend to neglect to divulge.
Think more in terms of: you have a limited budget of honesty, and where you should spend it.
Thinking in terms of a limited financial budget makes you more frugal with money. Similarly, thinking in terms of a fixed honesty budget is a recipe for making one more frugal with honesty.
Yes, definitely. Roman Catholicism, like Islam and Hinduism is a strictly hierarchical system with lots of rituals and very specific rules. This has advanced to the point where outward appearances are more important to be viewed as a good Catholic than your actual actions or beliefs
The person who sends the message and the person who receives it might differ about what the most important part of the message happens to be.
There may be some correlation wit Protestantism. The Germans and Dutch tend to be blunter than soutthern Europeans.
...or one can just finesse the issue entirely:“’Honesty is the best policy.’ Very well then; if I act so as to do the best for myself I am assured of acting honestly.”--J. E. Littlewood, Littlewood’s miscellany, CUP
(in case it's unclear, Littlewood intended this as a joke)
Unlike most people in the world, Americans have this belief in rugged honesty at all costs: If you aren't honest, you're not good. Whereas many peoples in Latin America, for example, and throughout much of Asia, will graciously say dishonest things in order to be polite. I would say that, in most tribal societies, where community is absolutely essential, most people are willing to tell white lies to smooth over difficult social situations.-- Darwinian anthropologist Helen Fisher
Why do we believe that honesty is actually a good thing? Is there any evidence for that?
"My colleague Tyler Cowen, he’s often remarked that most of us could get frank advice about ourselves if we simply asked around to our local colleagues and associates about our strengths and weaknesses and our problems, and few of us ever do that."
And yet "Honesty Box" is a popular Facebook application. I think people are very curious what others think about them. Let's say you overheard part of a conversation two friends had about you, but you didn't make some of it out. Wouldn't you be extremely curious what else was said?
Obviously people don't go around all the time asking for frank feedback, but that doesn't mean that we're not curious about ourselves. There are lots of other potential reasons. One big one: asking for feedback like this would be a low status move, and most people like to appear high status, or are at least uncomfortable being low status.
I actually think the idea of having a high level of honesty and egalitarianism is a great one. I have lots of friends who I have that kind of honest, egalitarian relationship with, and they're great friendships. The modern world doesn't exactly have scarce resources, so we don't need to be conniving against each other.
I'm not persuaded by your blackmail example either. There are lots of people who are in favor of minimum wage laws, because paying working class people more money seems good, so requiring businesses to offer higher wages intuitively seems like it should help working class people. But of course economists don't think things are that simple 'cause they've thought about the issue for a while longer. Blackmail seems likely to be the same sort of thing... perhaps people want these sorts of things to come out, and they think blackmailing would mean things stayed quiet. The name "blackmail" doesn't help either. Nor does the fact that anyone who did blackmail sounds like a jerk, and people typically dislike jerks, and perhaps don't realize that in this case this jerk behavior is serving a useful role.
"So it’s a form of social hypocrisy: we, in fact, don’t really want to uncover those kinds of police actions very eagerly, at least."
This doesn't seem especially persuasive to me. For one thing, I don't think it's particularly accurate to say "we" set up internal affairs departments to report to the chief of police. I was not consulted for this decision, and I doubt you were either. I'd estimate the portion of the population that was consulted in the decision of who the department of internal affairs should report to to be under 0.001%. So using "we" seems highly misleading.
Even if most people had a mild preference for police oversight to be decoupled from police departments, I wouldn't necessarily expect this to be implemented. It seems like a collective-action problem: the police department probably has a strong desire to keep investigation groups internal, while any public desire would be a mild one held by many people.
If we were to poll the users of http://www.reddit.com/r/bad... on whether police oversight should stop reporting to the chief of police, what do you expect the result of the poll would be?
The only reason I can see for dishonesty is avoidance of conflict or trying to obtain something you are otherwise not entitled to. I don't see the difficulty of not saying anything at all if you can't say something positive. Even if one dislikes something, I can't see why one would not suggest what could make it better in one's eyes or something neutral and noncommittal. Someone might corner someone else into a position where dishonesty may be considered, but if they care that much for a response, it is hard to see why they would prefer dishonesty. Everyone is entitled to their opinion and they are worth what they cost.
This is somewhat like questions of trust which I find inane. Trust whom to do what? Trust how far and with what? Without doubt or with concern? Trust they exist, that they will behave well, that they have good judgment, or they are incorruptible? Specifics are not a side concern, they are the entire concern.
why this makes me laugh, i do not know. thinking about inhumanity and budgets and lying and parts... and cannot help but laugh. but it's one short brief ha.
Mitchell and Webb on Radical Honesty: http://www.youtube.com/watc...
"Why would any rational agent, in the midst of enemies or at least rivals, want to be totally honest? It isn't a matter of how we're built; it can be explained by our interests--in good economist fashion."
Rational agents can build a better world if they can trust each other. Imposing penalties on deceit and growing a sense of community so that cooperation becomes viable is a more rational and ethical strategy than "every man for himself".
Limited willpower is the only explanation I can think of for having an honesty budget. You can only force yourself to be honest (when your urges argue otherwise) so much. And the gains for willpower from its exercise are probably much smaller than the gains of strength from physical exercise. The basic human solution to limited willpower is habit formation. To the extent the "budgetary" limit on honesty is willpower (and I can't think of what else it might be), it doesn't limit the degree of honesty one can obtain through practicing it.
(For an ethical theory based on willpower limitation, see "Why do what you "ought"?—A habit theory of explicit morality" — http://tinyurl.com/7dcbt7y )