Preferring person A to B seems the better choice only if its rather unlikely that person A is significantly smarter than you.
Assume you know the truth, and know or strongly suspect that person A knows the truth but is concealing it.
OK. You are on the rocket team in Nazi Germany. You know Nazi Germany is going down in flames. Ostensibly, all good Nazis intend win heroically. You strongly suspect that Dr Wernher von Braun is not, however, a good Nazi. You know he is a lot smarter than you, and you strongly suspect he is issuing lots of complicated lies because of lots of complicated plots. Who then should you stick with?
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.