bentarm comments on The "Spot the Fakes" Test - Less Wrong

48 Post author: Yvain 17 March 2009 12:52AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (18)

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: bentarm 17 March 2009 01:32:26AM 10 points [-]

This seems to be almost the inverse of the My Favourite Liar technique (I initially thought this post was going to be about the suggestion given in this comment that respected posters on this site adopt that technique as a test of the group's rationality). The issue here, of course, is that you would intersperse some "plausible lies" into your lectures and no-one would be able to tell the difference.

This brings together so many of the ideas from Eliezer's rationality series that I'm struggling to decide which post to link to (probably this one is most relevant).

If your justifications for your beliefs are indistinguishable from fake justifications for false beliefs, they are worthless to a truth-seeker. Any body of knowledge which can't pass the "Spot the Fakes" Test is no knowledge at all.

(I can't resist linking to this in this context)