We hold businesses strongly liable for lies, and even for truths that authorities call misleading. Ordinary people, in contrast, are mainly held liable only for lying under oath in court, lying to police officers, lying for clear financial gain, and when a factual claim defames one person to another sufficiently carelessly. Otherwise we are
This could make resumes dramatically more truthful. One survey put the number of Americans who lie on their job resume at 72%.
This could also help with fraud in science. The three scholars who uncovered Francesca Gino's likely data fabrication got no particular reward for their efforts.
How many of those 72% lies are literal enough to be captured by this vow-system? I am getting strong flashbacks to Scott Alexander's "The Media Very Rarely Lies", which applies very similarly to corporations and people.
Also, obligatory reminder that corporations are not people, so find the origin of this idea to be highly questionable as well.
We need a verbal convention so we know that when we hear certain words that someone has an obligation to create a certain entry in a blockchain. Handling the accounting is not the main problem here.
I see the value, but I fail to see how this is not just a company.
Eg: in veristake.com (making this up), you can create statements backed by your $. The $ is pledged through BTC collateral, a smart contract is written to decide its veracity, so that the rules for resolution are clear upfront to all parties. People can pay fees to claim the amount pledged if the statement is proven wrong.
Then it's just a matter to say "I veristaked my claim with $100", or "You really mean that? OK then, how much are you willing to veristake it for?"
Secondary point: How is this much better than bets? a $100k statement with a 99% confidence that you'll run the marathon can be called by anybody who is willing to put $1k. Wouldn't that better reflect market beliefs vs simple fee payments?
On the other topic, it sounds like you don’t want to prevent all lying. There’s a specific “incantation” that triggers the legal consequences. In your cases, it’s “I vow $100k that...”
The friction of adding “on veristake” to that incantation, which triggers a private solution on the blockchain, sounds much easier to execute than a change to the legal code enforced by public records and the overburdened judicial system.
Over time, if the company is successful enough, instead of saying the blurry “I vow”, you can say the precise “I veristake”.
I don't see why we need that at all. If someone wants to convince us they made a certain Blockchain commitment they can just actually do it and then tell us they did and we can check.
Once you disentangle the question of whether you think people should (1) put their money where their mouth is more from (2) the claim that it should it be easy to make these bets with a special verbal formula I think the case for 2 falls apart.
While it might seem obvious that if it was super easy to make such a binding commitment we would demand it all the time, that isn't what the historical precedent suggests. Back in the day, many people believed that all it took to net your very soul on the fact that you weren't lying was to take an oath on the bible. Yet, even though it was expected in a trial it very much didn't propogate to your average spat or discussion short of a formal trial.
If people don't treat saying the magic 'vow' word as a big deal and are willing to say it w/o serious consideration you'll have a lot of people losing their life savings etc because of ill-considered remarks eg a brag at the bar. OTOH suppose people do treat it the way they treated swearing on the bible in earlier time -- it's not something you do w/o substantial consideration. Then we haven't gained anything over just letting people go through the usual rituals we use to ensure important agreements aren't confused with mere puffery: notarization, multiple signatures in front of witnesses, various other psychological hints we use to indicate that a real binding contract is being formed.
Yes, it introduces a bit of additional overhead. But that's a good thing. Only pretty significant vows wont impose more adjudication costs than they are worth anyway so we want to discourage the tiny ones and that additional overhead is important for solving the nasty practical issues.
If my two friends back up my lie about your vow can we steal all your shit? Or at least bancrupt you? When does a vow even count, what if you vow never to leave someone during an orgasm? Our usual rituals are pretty good at solving these problems.
Also, I think practical considerations actual mean such a system introduces systemic biases and is subject to manipulation.
1) Who pays for these claims to be adjudicated? It's very expensive to adjudicate claims (probably in 100k range).
On a challenger pays model only very large vows made by people who can cover the vow end up getting challenged creating false stakes for many people's mere 10k vows. On a loser pays model those with deep pockets can go around and using their greater wealth to coerce the party that vowed 1k to concede lest they risk even a small chance of a 100k adjudication bill. This concern is present but limited in our system because you can't ask a court to decide an arbitrary fact so less incentive.
2) The proposal is a pure cost unless people take vowed claims as being more reliable/likely to be satisfied. But since vowing doesn't have a counterparty to negotiate it's trivially easy to appear to make a strong vow that leaves plenty of wiggle room: if a poll vows "my fortune on the fact that the US economy will expand by 10% by the end of my term" it sounds good but what metric?
It's very hard to specify a truly clear ajudicable condition in natural speech if you try and easy to sneakily avoid. But once you need to specify it out using lawyerly language then leave it as a formal contract or Blockchain automated contract.
3) It creates particular risks around conditions like marriage where we have strong norms against acknowledging certain truths.
I fear that more often than it would be used to check imprudent claims of public interest it would be used by sleazy wedding/romance vendors that induce couples to vow they'll never get divorced.
This works extremely well in practice (when it does) to at least silence the actors without much conviction and to establish the level of one's own conviction. In a closed circles—friends, family, known acquaintances—one doesn't need legal enforcement.
Are you really claiming you are confused as to whether these people really intended to enter into a binding agreement? Or are you just pushing an overly literal reading of 'literally'? It's widely used as an intensifier now whether you like it or not.
This is a solved problem. We have various rituals we use to distinguish mere puffery or off the cuff hyperbole from true commitments. In the pre-modern world we mostly used religious rituals (still do to some extent) but now we also have things like notarization or at least the legal standards for the creation of a contract (offer, acceptance, consideration, meeting of the minds etc).
Practically in a forum what you do is formalize the conditions and make arrangements regarding how any amounts will be distributed to convey seriousness. So I don't see what the benefit here is.
I'd expect this to be useful if there were a significant number of people who currently went through publicly announcing a similar bond in a more complicated way, or said they would make such a bond but can't find a way to. Are there?
This wouldn't work because the court system is already useless - lawyers earn too much, and the system is rigged such that LLCs can't pursue litigation without a lawyer, so only big companies have the ability to use the court system to their advantage.
The biggest improvement we could make to society right now is to put a lot of money into developing a binding AI dispute resolution method, so that the number of lawsuits can be dramatically expanded. The positive effects that would have on human behavior would be unprecedented - imagine actually having to be careful about not defaming people by making false statements because I could input your tweet into the AI and get a judgment instantly.
This is brilliant. We already put money on the line with a bet, and once upon a time would swear oaths by the gods, daring their wrath if our words proved false. This is a natural extension of both of those practices.
In the spirit of your brilliant idea, I hereby vow by $100 that there will be a post at my blog every Friday at least through this September (unless Substack does something weird like that month when they took my blog down for three days and then apologized). I'm already good for this week; the current post says the blogosphere doesn't understand basic personality theory as well as it should: https://thingstoread.substack.com/p/the-big-five-is-incomplete
Unfortunately courts do not work well (or at all) in many countries. My personal experience has been that even the usual house rent contracts are not enforceable because of judicial system's inefficiencies. Add corruption and other similar practices on top.
Looking at arbitrators, enforcement becomes an issue. But should be more viable than to target fixing judicial systems!
This could make resumes dramatically more truthful. One survey put the number of Americans who lie on their job resume at 72%.
This could also help with fraud in science. The three scholars who uncovered Francesca Gino's likely data fabrication got no particular reward for their efforts.
How many of those 72% lies are literal enough to be captured by this vow-system? I am getting strong flashbacks to Scott Alexander's "The Media Very Rarely Lies", which applies very similarly to corporations and people.
Also, obligatory reminder that corporations are not people, so find the origin of this idea to be highly questionable as well.
I hate to be that guy but... Sounds like the blockchain would be ideal for this.
We need a verbal convention so we know that when we hear certain words that someone has an obligation to create a certain entry in a blockchain. Handling the accounting is not the main problem here.
I see the value, but I fail to see how this is not just a company.
Eg: in veristake.com (making this up), you can create statements backed by your $. The $ is pledged through BTC collateral, a smart contract is written to decide its veracity, so that the rules for resolution are clear upfront to all parties. People can pay fees to claim the amount pledged if the statement is proven wrong.
Then it's just a matter to say "I veristaked my claim with $100", or "You really mean that? OK then, how much are you willing to veristake it for?"
Secondary point: How is this much better than bets? a $100k statement with a 99% confidence that you'll run the marathon can be called by anybody who is willing to put $1k. Wouldn't that better reflect market beliefs vs simple fee payments?
The bets are illegal now.
How can you ensure people can't claim verbally tomake such a stake without actually doing so? Seems awkward to have listeners go check a website.
Ah ok re bets
On the other topic, it sounds like you don’t want to prevent all lying. There’s a specific “incantation” that triggers the legal consequences. In your cases, it’s “I vow $100k that...”
The friction of adding “on veristake” to that incantation, which triggers a private solution on the blockchain, sounds much easier to execute than a change to the legal code enforced by public records and the overburdened judicial system.
Over time, if the company is successful enough, instead of saying the blurry “I vow”, you can say the precise “I veristake”.
I don't see why we need that at all. If someone wants to convince us they made a certain Blockchain commitment they can just actually do it and then tell us they did and we can check.
I want this. I also want to which politicians if any make such vows during televised political debates and what the opponents say or do in response.
want to see*
Once you disentangle the question of whether you think people should (1) put their money where their mouth is more from (2) the claim that it should it be easy to make these bets with a special verbal formula I think the case for 2 falls apart.
While it might seem obvious that if it was super easy to make such a binding commitment we would demand it all the time, that isn't what the historical precedent suggests. Back in the day, many people believed that all it took to net your very soul on the fact that you weren't lying was to take an oath on the bible. Yet, even though it was expected in a trial it very much didn't propogate to your average spat or discussion short of a formal trial.
If people don't treat saying the magic 'vow' word as a big deal and are willing to say it w/o serious consideration you'll have a lot of people losing their life savings etc because of ill-considered remarks eg a brag at the bar. OTOH suppose people do treat it the way they treated swearing on the bible in earlier time -- it's not something you do w/o substantial consideration. Then we haven't gained anything over just letting people go through the usual rituals we use to ensure important agreements aren't confused with mere puffery: notarization, multiple signatures in front of witnesses, various other psychological hints we use to indicate that a real binding contract is being formed.
Yes, it introduces a bit of additional overhead. But that's a good thing. Only pretty significant vows wont impose more adjudication costs than they are worth anyway so we want to discourage the tiny ones and that additional overhead is important for solving the nasty practical issues.
If my two friends back up my lie about your vow can we steal all your shit? Or at least bancrupt you? When does a vow even count, what if you vow never to leave someone during an orgasm? Our usual rituals are pretty good at solving these problems.
Also, I think practical considerations actual mean such a system introduces systemic biases and is subject to manipulation.
1) Who pays for these claims to be adjudicated? It's very expensive to adjudicate claims (probably in 100k range).
On a challenger pays model only very large vows made by people who can cover the vow end up getting challenged creating false stakes for many people's mere 10k vows. On a loser pays model those with deep pockets can go around and using their greater wealth to coerce the party that vowed 1k to concede lest they risk even a small chance of a 100k adjudication bill. This concern is present but limited in our system because you can't ask a court to decide an arbitrary fact so less incentive.
2) The proposal is a pure cost unless people take vowed claims as being more reliable/likely to be satisfied. But since vowing doesn't have a counterparty to negotiate it's trivially easy to appear to make a strong vow that leaves plenty of wiggle room: if a poll vows "my fortune on the fact that the US economy will expand by 10% by the end of my term" it sounds good but what metric?
It's very hard to specify a truly clear ajudicable condition in natural speech if you try and easy to sneakily avoid. But once you need to specify it out using lawyerly language then leave it as a formal contract or Blockchain automated contract.
3) It creates particular risks around conditions like marriage where we have strong norms against acknowledging certain truths.
I fear that more often than it would be used to check imprudent claims of public interest it would be used by sleazy wedding/romance vendors that induce couples to vow they'll never get divorced.
Related: Use of “I’d bet” on the EA Forum is mostly metaphorical, @ https://nunosempere.com/blog/2023/03/02/metaphorical-bets/
I'd love this, but I mostly gave up on this the last time someone said "I will literally bet all my money" and then walked it back.
If they say "My $10K vows that I'd bet that X", well then either they make the bet with you, or you get the $10K.
This works extremely well in practice (when it does) to at least silence the actors without much conviction and to establish the level of one's own conviction. In a closed circles—friends, family, known acquaintances—one doesn't need legal enforcement.
Are you really claiming you are confused as to whether these people really intended to enter into a binding agreement? Or are you just pushing an overly literal reading of 'literally'? It's widely used as an intensifier now whether you like it or not.
This is a solved problem. We have various rituals we use to distinguish mere puffery or off the cuff hyperbole from true commitments. In the pre-modern world we mostly used religious rituals (still do to some extent) but now we also have things like notarization or at least the legal standards for the creation of a contract (offer, acceptance, consideration, meeting of the minds etc).
Practically in a forum what you do is formalize the conditions and make arrangements regarding how any amounts will be distributed to convey seriousness. So I don't see what the benefit here is.
> overly literal reading of 'literally'?
The specific wording is this case was "I would bet all the money I have (literally not figuratively) that..."
Blockchain >
I'd expect this to be useful if there were a significant number of people who currently went through publicly announcing a similar bond in a more complicated way, or said they would make such a bond but can't find a way to. Are there?
I know about the public bet culture, but those are usually reciprocal.
I know about the public bet culture, but those are usually reciprocal.
This wouldn't work because the court system is already useless - lawyers earn too much, and the system is rigged such that LLCs can't pursue litigation without a lawyer, so only big companies have the ability to use the court system to their advantage.
The biggest improvement we could make to society right now is to put a lot of money into developing a binding AI dispute resolution method, so that the number of lawsuits can be dramatically expanded. The positive effects that would have on human behavior would be unprecedented - imagine actually having to be careful about not defaming people by making false statements because I could input your tweet into the AI and get a judgment instantly.
This is brilliant. We already put money on the line with a bet, and once upon a time would swear oaths by the gods, daring their wrath if our words proved false. This is a natural extension of both of those practices.
In the spirit of your brilliant idea, I hereby vow by $100 that there will be a post at my blog every Friday at least through this September (unless Substack does something weird like that month when they took my blog down for three days and then apologized). I'm already good for this week; the current post says the blogosphere doesn't understand basic personality theory as well as it should: https://thingstoread.substack.com/p/the-big-five-is-incomplete
This feels like thinking in bets, just applied across society.
Unfortunately courts do not work well (or at all) in many countries. My personal experience has been that even the usual house rent contracts are not enforceable because of judicial system's inefficiencies. Add corruption and other similar practices on top.
Looking at arbitrators, enforcement becomes an issue. But should be more viable than to target fixing judicial systems!
This would have to be enforced by....