Phil, how many times do I have to tell you that every time you try to speak for what my positions are, you get it wrong? Are you incapable of understanding that you do not have a good model of me? Is it some naive realism thing where the little picture in your head just seems the way that Eliezer is? Do I have to request a feature that lets me tag all your posts with a little floating label that says "Phil Goetz thinks he can speak for Eliezer, but he can't"?
There's some here that is insightful, and some that I disagree with. But if I want to make promises I'll make them myself! If I want to stake all my reputation on always telling the truth, I'll stake it myself! Your help is not solicited in doing so!
And it all collapses if he tells one lie to anybody.
I strive for honesty, hard enough to take social penalties for it; but my deliberative intelligence literally doesn't control my voice fast enough to prevent it from ever telling a single lie to anybody. Maybe with further training and practice.
I do not have a good model of Eliezer. Very true. I will edit the post to make it not sound like I speak for Eliezer.
But if you want to be a big man, you have to get used to people talking about you. If you open any textbook on Kant, you will find all sorts of attributions saying "Kant meant... Kant believed..." These people did not interview Kant to find out what he believed. It is understood by convention that they are presenting their interpretation of someone else's beliefs.
If you don't want others to present their interpretations of your beliefs, you're in the wrong business.
The Black Belt Bayesian writes:
Eliezer adds:
These are both radically high standards of honesty. Thus, it is easy to miss the fact that they are radically different standards of honesty. Let us look at a boundary case.
Thomblake puts the matter vividly:
So, let us say that you are living in Nazi Germany, during WWII, and you have a Jewish family hiding upstairs. There's a couple of brownshirts with rifles knocking on your door. What do you do?
I see four obvious responses to this problem (though there may be more)
I am certain that YVain could have a field day with the myriad ways in which response 4 does not represent rational discourse. Nonetheless, in this limited problem, it wins.
(It should also be noted that response 4 came to me in about 15 minutes of thinking about the problem. If I actually had Jews in my attic, and lived in Nazi Germany, I might have thought of something better).
However:
What if you live in the impossible possible world in which a nuclear blast could ignite the atmosphere of the entire earth? What if you are yourself a nuclear scientist, and have proven this to yourself beyond any doubt, but cannot convey the whole of the argument to a layman? The fate of the whole world could depend on your superiors believing you to be the sort of man who will not tell a lie. And, of course, in order to be the sort of man who would not tell a lie, you must not tell lies.
Do we have wiggle room here? Neither your superior officer, nor the two teenaged brownshirts, are Omega, but your superior bears a far greater resemblance. The brownshirts are young, are ruled by hormones. It is easy to practice the Dark Arts against them, and get away with it. Is it possible to grab the low-hanging fruit to be had by deceiving fools (at least, those who are evil and whose tires you would willingly slash), while retaining the benefits of being believed by the wise?
I am honestly unsure, and so I put the question to you all.
ETA: I have of course forgotten about the unrealistically optimistic option:
5: Really, truly, promote maximally accurate beliefs. Teach the soldiers rationality from the ground up. Explain to them about affective death spirals, and make them see that they are involved in one. Help them to understand that their own morality assigns value to the lives hidden upstairs. Convince them to stop being nazis, and to help you protect your charges.
If you can pull this off without winding up in a concentration camp yourself (along with the family you've been sheltering) you are a vastly better rationalist than I, or (I suspect) anyone else on this forum.