If one is in no position to act on a delusional belief, then optimal behavior is to believe in the delusional but socially desirable belief with full sincerity. But unless one is aware of reality, one cannot reliably judge which delusion is safe. For example, one of my politically correct Australian nieces assumed it would be safe to walk down a street named Martin Luther King Boulevard. My seemingly equally politically correct American niece would be unlikely to do so.
Um, you might want to change that to Martin Luther King boulevard. It took me a minute to realize you weren't talking about an anti-semitic early Protestant.
This is thread where I'm trying to figure out a few things about signalling on LessWrong and need some information, so please immediately after reading about the two individuals please answer the poll. The two individuals:
A. Sees that an interpretation of reality shared by others is not correct, but tries to pretend otherwise for personal gain and/or safety.
B. Fails to see that an interpretation of reality is shared by others is flawed. He is therefore perfectly honest in sharing the interpretation of reality with others. The reward regime for outward behaviour is the same as with A.
To add a trivial inconvenience that matches the inconvenience of answering the poll before reading on, comments on what I think the two individuals signal,what the trade off is and what I speculate the results might be here versus the general population, is behind this link.