From e1b3b69dce0ee2a65007c1995364098297a7f5b4 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: "Zack M. Davis" Date: Tue, 25 Aug 2026 13:19:22 -0700 Subject: [PATCH] editing "'So You Don't'", "Contra Piper", and "Accidentally Misleading" --- ...should-be-embarrassing-or-higher-innocence.md | 4 ++-- ...tra-piper-on-when-conversation-is-possible.md | 16 ++++++++++------ content/drafts/so-you-dont-trust-me.md | 6 +++--- 3 files changed, 15 insertions(+), 11 deletions(-) diff --git a/content/drafts/accidentally-misleading-people-should-be-embarrassing-or-higher-innocence.md b/content/drafts/accidentally-misleading-people-should-be-embarrassing-or-higher-innocence.md index a0b371b..dfda6ce 100644 --- a/content/drafts/accidentally-misleading-people-should-be-embarrassing-or-higher-innocence.md +++ b/content/drafts/accidentally-misleading-people-should-be-embarrassing-or-higher-innocence.md @@ -14,7 +14,7 @@ The function of embarrassment as a social emotion is as a signal of appeasement The socially undesirable appearance can come apart from any intended or actual wrongdoing. Jewish law has a concept of [_marit ayin_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marit_ayin), "appearance to the eye": the law prohibits actions that would themselves be permissible if they didn't create the appearance of a prohibited act. Hanging up wet clothes to dry on the sabbath is prohibited, because it looks like you were doing laundry on the sabbath (even if the clothes actually got wet for some other reason). One of the purposes of the _marit ayin_ doctrine is to deny plausible deniability to norm-violators (as someone might try to do laundry on the sabbath if they felt secure that no one would punish them for merely hanging up the wet clothes). Those who want to be known for keeping the sabbath [need to pay a price that's more expensive for sabbath-violators to pay](/blog/2026/Aug/so-you-dont-trust-me/); if you care about maintaining the norm itself, it shouldn't be much extra trouble for you to furthermore care about maintaining the appearance of the norm. -One time, I accidentally joined a work call unmuted while my housemate was playing a loud video game. I was deeply embarrassed, because it _looked like_ I was playing video games during work hours. I think my _marit ayin_-like embarrassment was serving a useful socio-psychological function, even though it was my housemate's game and I was in fact totally innocent in my soul. If I were the sort of person who wasn't embarrassed by that, I think my manager and coworkers would have good reason to doubt my commitment to productively working from home. +One time, I accidentally joined a work call unmuted while my housemate was playing a loud video game. I was deeply embarrassed, because it _looked like_ I was playing video games during work hours. I think my _marit ayin_-like embarrassment was serving a useful socio-psychological function, even though it was my housemate's game and I was in fact totally innocent in my soul. If I were the sort of person who was totally unashamed about creating the appearance of slacking off, then I think my manager and coworkers would have reason to doubt my commitment to productively working from home. Similarly, people who are visibly embarrassed after having accidentally misled people can be counted on to work hard to make sure that people won't regret believing them next time. Defensive people won't, because, well, why would they? They didn't do anything wrong. @@ -52,7 +52,7 @@ That's the conclusion of the post. Thanks for reading! ... or that's how I'd prefer to end the post, with a message of absolution and hope. Absolution—that those whose actions have propagated falsehood need not question what we know to be true of our souls. And hope—that we all might learn to do better in the future. There's just one little nuance that continues to haunt me, that I could not, unfortunately, end the post without explaining. (Not because I didn't try, but because my prereader Said Achmiz didn't let me get away with it.) Just a tiny subtlety, almost irrelevant, really, affecting almost none of the logic except to clarify that _souls aren't real._ -Souls aren't real and _accidents aren't real._ I've been writing this post to try to get through to people who are incapable of noticing when they've been misleading because they're terrified of [judgment and social punishment](/blog/2025/Oct/the-relationship-between-social-punishment-and-shared-maps/). When you point out to them that their words led reasonable readers to walk away with the wrong model, they double-triple-quadruple down on playing dumb, insisting that they weren't _lying_, and that even if readers ended up being more wrong, it wouldn't be any substantial evidence against their integrity. This post has been trying to offer these people some moral absolution (which I don't care about one way or the other) in exchange for orienting towards the problem that I actually care about (of creating accurate shared maps): to say, look, I believe that you weren't _lying_, I believe that you're innocent in your soul, but the part where reasonable readers walk way with the wrong model is _still a problem you should care about_, even if it was an accident. +I've been writing this post to try to get through to people who are resistant to noticing when they've been misleading because they're terrified of [judgment and social punishment](/blog/2025/Oct/the-relationship-between-social-punishment-and-shared-maps/). When you point out to them that their words led reasonable readers to walk away with the wrong model, they double-triple-quadruple down on playing dumb, insisting that they weren't _lying_, and that even if readers ended up being more wrong, it wouldn't be any substantial evidence against their integrity. This post has been trying to offer these people some moral absolution (which I don't care about one way or the other) in exchange for orienting towards the problem that I actually care about (of creating accurate shared maps): to say, look, I believe that you weren't _lying_, I believe that you're innocent in your soul, but the part where reasonable readers walk away with the wrong model is _still a problem you should care about_, even if it was an accident. But _was_ it an accident? Was it, really? [It is written](https://www.readthesequences.com/The-Twelve-Virtues-Of-Rationality) that the one who wishes to believe asks, "Does the evidence permit me to believe?" while the one who wishes to disbelieve asks, "Does the evidence force me to believe?" If you have a [bottom line](https://www.readthesequences.com/The-Bottom-Line) that you want to believe, and you go around looking for evidence that permits you to believe it, I really have to question in what sense it's an "accident" if you end up misleading people towards your bottom line. diff --git a/content/drafts/contra-piper-on-when-conversation-is-possible.md b/content/drafts/contra-piper-on-when-conversation-is-possible.md index 97906c3..48ffb24 100644 --- a/content/drafts/contra-piper-on-when-conversation-is-possible.md +++ b/content/drafts/contra-piper-on-when-conversation-is-possible.md @@ -12,7 +12,7 @@ Tags: honesty > > now, maybe you didn't value your ability to communicate with liberals, and don't see this as a loss, or see it as more than offset by whatever you gain from this frame! but from my perspective, it's a really serious loss. -I categorically reject the idea declaring someone else so deceived that their own understanding of their beliefs and motives should be rejected inherently makes conversation with them nearly impossible. +I categorically reject the idea that rejecting someone's understanding of their beliefs and motives inherently makes conversation with them nearly impossible. It certainly doesn't make conversation with _me_ impossible. When someone tells me that my understanding of my beliefs and motives should be rejected, I don't take my ball and go home in a huff, muttering that they've made further conversation nearly impossible. Rather, I respond the same way I do to any other disagreement: by supporting my view with reasoning and evidence. Why would the rules be different just because the topic of discussion happens to be my own beliefs and motives? @@ -20,13 +20,15 @@ It certainly doesn't make conversation with _me_ impossible. When someone tells One reason why someone might think it's different is for fear that accusations of self-deception are unfalsifiable. I have privileged introspective access to my beliefs and motivations. On what possible basis could someone else tell me I'm wrong? And what reasoning and evidence could I possibly offer to defend the accuracy of my self-perception? If the accusation or its denial can be made just as well independently of any third-party-accessible evidence, then that inherently does make conversation nearly impossible. What would there be to talk about? -However, I reject the premise that the accusation or its denial can be made just as well independently of any third-party-accessible evidence. I may have privileged introspective access to my beliefs and motivations, but beliefs and motivations aren't epiphenomenal, either. We form beliefs about other entities' beliefs and motivations because such beliefs [let us predict their behavior](https://www.readthesequences.com/Making-Beliefs-Pay-Rent-In-Anticipated-Experiences). An animal that goes to the stream to drink is presumed to be motivated by thirst; the same animal going to the stream depsite it having dried up in the summer heat is presumed to have (falsely) believed that the water would still be there. We don't need to know what it feels like to be the animal in order to speak sensibly of such mental states. - +However, I reject the premise that the accusation or its denial can be made just as well independently of any third-party-accessible evidence. I may have privileged introspective access to my beliefs and motivations, but beliefs and motivations aren't epiphenomenal, either. We form beliefs about other entities' beliefs and motivations because such beliefs [let us predict their behavior](https://www.readthesequences.com/Making-Beliefs-Pay-Rent-In-Anticipated-Experiences). An animal that goes to the stream to drink is presumed to be motivated by thirst; the same animal going to the stream despite it having dried up in the summer heat is presumed to have (falsely) believed that the water would still be there. We don't need to know what it feels like to be the animal in order to speak sensibly of such mental states. + In the same way, people don't need to know what it feels like to be me in order to speak sensibly about rejecting my own understanding of my beliefs and motives. They could claim that my stated beliefs and motives are inconsistent with my behavior (which they can see) while remaining agnostic about how it feels to be me (which they don't have access to). Such a claim [probably wouldn't be based on nothing at all](/blog/2022/May/plea-bargaining/); indeed, the very existence of persistent disagreements (when you'd expect honest rational agents to simply update on each other's evidence and converge on the correct probability) [suggests that hidden motives are common](/blog/2023/Aug/assume-bad-faith/). -If I buy cookies for the [salon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salon_(gathering)) from a bakery owned by my girlfriend in Australia (at a substantial markup for international shipping), it kind of makes sense for other salon members to wonder if my choice might have been biased by nepotism rather than reflecting true optimization towards the goal of the salon having the best desserts. At the same time, my belief that I wasn't swayed by nepotism is something I can provide reasoning and evidence for: for example, I could show the other salon members the notes and spreadsheets I compiled while comparison shopping, which justify my belief that my girlfriend just happens to be the optimal dessert vendor for the salon. +If I buy cookies for the [salon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salon_(gathering)) from a bakery owned by my girlfriend in Australia (at a substantial markup for international shipping), it kind of makes sense for other salon members to wonder if my choice might have been biased by nepotism rather than reflecting true optimization towards the goal of the salon having the best desserts. + +At the same time, my belief that I wasn't swayed by nepotism is something I can provide reasoning and evidence for: for example, I could try showing the other salon members the notes and spreadsheets I compiled while comparison shopping, which justify my belief that my girlfriend just happens to be the optimal dessert vendor for the salon. -Now, maybe the other salon members don't find my spreadsheets convincing, but it should be clear that the details of the spreadsheets at least give us _something to talk about_. It's not a deadlock between an unfalsifiable accusation of self-deception and an unfalsifiable denial, because my catering decision (and therefore the beliefs and motives that led to it) was tangled up with empirical realities of the world. If my comparison shopping was thorough and documents the many ways in which my girlfriend's bakery is just the best, that makes my story about only wanting the best cookies for the salon more credible; if I didn't really shop around much, that makes my story less credible. The correctness of my understanding of my beliefs and motives is something I can rationally defend to skeptics in front of third parties; it's not something that needs to be assumed as a prerequisite for even talking at all. +I might not convince them—it would be undignified for me to play dumb about the low prior probability of the coincidence I'm claiming—but at least we have _something to talk about_: it's not a deadlock between an unfalsifiable accusation of self-deception and an unfalsifiable denial, because my catering decision (and therefore the beliefs and motives that led to it) was tangled up with empirical realities of the world. If my comparison shopping was thorough and credibly documents the many ways in which my girlfriend's bakery is just the best, that makes my story about only wanting the best cookies for the salon more credible; if I didn't really shop around much, that makes my story less credible. The correctness of my understanding of my beliefs and motives is something I can rationally defend to skeptics in front of third parties; it's not something that needs to be assumed as a prerequisite for even talking at all. ## Why the Self-Understanding of Those Who Think It's Impossible Should Be Rejected @@ -36,7 +38,9 @@ In contrast, there is a clear reason why someone would want the wrong answer abo Notice how Piper writes about Ngo calling liberals self-deceived: warning him that the "move" of adopting that "frame" sacrifices his ability to communicate with liberals, and that while he might find the benefit worth the cost, from her perspective, "it's a really serious loss." -But positing self-deception isn't just a "move" that one could decline to make while still transmitting the same information; the "frame" is the expression of a hypothesis that could be true or false, which Ngo believes to be true. And as I've discussed above, the cost of not being able to communicate with people you're accusing of self-deception isn't a logical or physical inevitability; it's a choice imposed by the people who don't want to talk to people who don't already trust them. +But positing self-deception isn't just a "move" that one could decline to make while still transmitting the same information; the "frame" is the expression of a hypothesis that could be true or false, which Ngo believes to be true. (Piper characterizes Ngo as claiming that he "should make up beliefs [he thinks liberals] have", but [Ngo says](https://x.com/RichardMCNgo/status/2071372646517035120) his distrust of liberals' self-identifications is based on what he sees as their failure to "reason very explicitly about how much they've capitulated to wokeness"; reasoning from behavioral evidence aspires to be more disciplined than just "mak[ing] up" things.) + +Furthermore, as I've discussed above, the cost of not being able to communicate with people you're accusing of self-deception isn't a logical or physical inevitability; it's a choice imposed by the people who don't want to talk to people who don't already trust them. In light of these observations, I think Piper's apparently well-meaning advice is better understood as a negotiating threat: don't criticize us in this way, or we'll walk. Even if you privately think us self-decieved, you must not reveal that you think that, or we'll destroy the surplus of you being able to interact with us. diff --git a/content/drafts/so-you-dont-trust-me.md b/content/drafts/so-you-dont-trust-me.md index e2444fe..a0027d1 100644 --- a/content/drafts/so-you-dont-trust-me.md +++ b/content/drafts/so-you-dont-trust-me.md @@ -30,7 +30,7 @@ There is a crucial asymmetry. Owners of sick cats would prefer that the insuranc ---- -Sometimes, there's nothing you can say. Earlier in _Atlas Shrugged_, Ellis Wyatt confronts Dagny Taggart, Operating Vice-President of the Taggart Transcontinental railroad. A competing railroad that Wyatt depends upon has just been strangled by anti-competitive regulation, and Wyatt has come to Dagny (as "the only one who's got any brains in this rotten outfit") to deliver an "ultimatum." If Taggart Transcontinental expects to profit from the lack of competition without providing reliable transportation, Wyatt will exact revenge: "it is now in your power to destroy me; I may have to go; but if I go, I'll make sure that I take all the rest of you along with me." Dagny is pained to be so distrusted by Wyatt—the regulatory capture wasn't her doing—but knows better than to object: +Sometimes, there's nothing you can say. Earlier in _Atlas Shrugged_, Ellis Wyatt confronts Dagny Taggart, Operating Vice-President of the Taggart Transcontinental railroad. A competing railroad that Wyatt's oil business depends upon has just been strangled by anti-competitive regulation, and Wyatt has come to Dagny (as "the only one who's got any brains in this rotten outfit") to deliver an "ultimatum." If Taggart Transcontinental expects to profit from the lack of competition without providing reliable transportation, Wyatt will exact revenge: "it is now in your power to destroy me; I may have to go; but if I go, I'll make sure that I take all the rest of you along with me." Dagny is pained to be so distrusted by Wyatt—the regulatory capture wasn't her doing—but knows better than to object: > Somewhere within her, under the numbness that held her still to receive the lashing, she felt a small point of pain, hot like the pain of scalding. She wanted to tell him of the years she had spent looking for men such as he to work with; she wanted to tell him that his enemies were hers, that she was fighting the same battle; she wanted to cry to him: I'm not one of them! But she knew that she could not do it. She bore the responsibility for Taggart Transcontinental and for everything done in its name; she had no right to justify herself now. > @@ -38,8 +38,8 @@ Sometimes, there's nothing you can say. Earlier in _Atlas Shrugged_, Ellis Wyatt > > She saw a faint hint of astonishment in his face; this was not the manner or the answer he had expected; perhaps it was what she had not said that astonished him most: that she offered no defense, no excuses. He took a moment to study her silently. Then he said, his voice less sharp: "All right. Thank you. Good day." -The reason Dagny can't plead innocence or take offense is because, as a honest executive trapped in a pooling equilibrium with corrupt ones, she can see that the words of someone in her position are cheap talk that isn't credible to Wyatt. Not getting defensive about the accusation isn't much evidence—a corrupt executive could emit the same cheap assurance—but being touchy about it would be discrediting, because only a corrupt executive has an incentive to try to discourage the scrutiny that would separate the types. Dagny's non-defensiveness can't itself win Wyatt's trust, but it's enough to slightly soften Wyatt's aggression, because it at least clarifies that she knows that the ultimate test will be whether the trains actually run. +The reason Dagny can't plead innocence or take offense is because, as an honest businessperson trapped in a pooling equilibrium with corrupt ones, she can see that the words of someone in her position are cheap talk that isn't credible to Wyatt. Not getting defensive about the accusation isn't much evidence—a corrupt executive with acting skills could maintain the same composure—but being touchy about it would be discrediting, because only a corrupt executive has an incentive to try to discourage the scrutiny that would separate the types. Dagny's non-defensiveness can't itself win Wyatt's trust, but it's enough to slightly soften Wyatt's aggression, because it at least clarifies that she knows that she'll be judged on whether the trains actually run. ---- -And that's why honest people are never touchy about the matter of being trusted. They know that in order to distinguish themselves from dishonest people, they have to pay a price that's too expensive for dishonest people to pay. Those who try to wriggle out of paying the price should understand what signal they're sending. +And that's why honest people are never touchy about the matter of being trusted. They know that in order to distinguish themselves from dishonest people, they have to pay a price that's too expensive for dishonest people to pay. Sometimes the price might be very expensive (Dagny didn't deserve to be treated that way; the healthy cat owners are bearing more risk than they should have to), but it's the only way things could be; the hidden Bayesian structure of the universe is not kind. Those who try to wriggle out of paying the price should understand what signal they're sending. -- 2.53.0