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Endovior comments on Problem of Optimal False Information - Less Wrong
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I would pick the black box, but it's a hard choice. Given all the usual suppositions about Omega as a sufficiently trustworthy superintelligence, I would assume that the utilities really were as it said and take the false information. But it would be a painful, both because I want to be the kind of person who pursues and acts upon the truth, and also because I would be desperately curious to know what sort of true and non-misleading belief could cause that much disutility -- was Lovecraft right after all? I'd probably try to bargain with Omega to let me know the true belief for just a minute before erasing it from my memory -- but still, in the Least Convenient Possible World where my curiosity was never satisfied, I'd hold my nose and pick the black box.
Having answered the hypothetical, I'll go on and say that I'm not sure there's much to take from it. Clearly, I don't value Truth for its own sake over and beyond all other considerations, let the heavens fall -- but I never thought I did, and I doubt many here do. The point is that in the real world, where we don't yet have trustworthy superintelligences, the general rule that your plans will go better when you use an accurate map doesn't seem to admit of exceptions (and little though I understand Friendly AI, I'd be willing to bet that this rule holds post-singularity). Yes, there are times where you might be better off with a false belief, but you can't predictably know in advance when that is, black swan blow-ups, etc.
To be more concrete, I don't think there's any real-world analogue to the hypothetical. If a consortium of the world's top psychiatrists announced that, no really, believing in God makes people happier, more productive, more successful, etc., and that this conclusion holds even for firm atheists who work for years to argue themselves into knots of self-deception, and that this conclusion has the strongest sort of experimental support that you could expect in this field, I'd probably just shrug and say "I defy the data". When it comes to purposeful self-deception, it really would take Omega to get me on board.
That's exactly why the problem invokes Omega, yes. You need an awful lot of information to know which false beliefs actually are superior to the truth (and which facts might be harmful), and by the time you have it, it's generally too late.
That said, the best real-world analogy that exists remains amnesia drugs. If you did have a traumatic experience, serious enough that you felt unable to cope with it, and you were experiencing PTSD or depression related to the trauma that impeded you from continuing with your life... but a magic pill could make it all go away, with no side effects, and with enough precision that you'd forget only the traumatic event... would you take the pill?
Okay, I suppose that probably is a more relevant question. The best answer I can give is that I would be extremely hesitant to do this. I've never experienced anything like this, so I'm open to the idea that there's a pain here I simply can't understand. But I would certainly want to work very hard to find a way to deal with the situation without erasing my memory, and I would expect to do better in the long-term because of it. Having any substantial part of my memory erased is a terrifying thought to me, as it's really about the closest thing I can imagine to "experiencing" death.
But I also see a distinction between limiting your access to the truth for narrow, strategic reasons, and outright self-deception. There are all kinds of reasons one might want the truth withheld, especially when the withholding is merely a delay (think spoilers, the Bayesian Conspiracy, surprise parties for everyone except Alicorn, etc.). In those situations, I would still want to know that the truth was being kept for me, understand why it was being done, and most importantly, know under what circumstances it would be optimal to discover it.
So maybe amnesia drugs fit into that model. If all other solutions failed, I'd probably take them to make the nightmares stop, especially if I still had access to the memory and the potential to face it again when I was stronger. But I would still want to know there was something I blocked out and was unable to bear. What if the memory was lost forever and I could never even know that fact? That really does seem like part of me is dying, so choosing it would require the sort of pain that would make me wish for (limited) death -- which is obviously pretty extreme, and probably more than I can imagine for a traumatic memory.
For some genotypes, more trauma is associated with lower levels of depression
Yet, someone experiencing trauma that they are better off continuing to suffer would hypothetically lead to learned helplessness and worse depression. But it's true, yet false belief is more productive.
That said, genetic epidemiology is weird and I haven't looked at the literature beyodndon't understand the literature beyond this book. I was prompted to investigate it based on some counterintuitive outcomes regarding treatment for psychological trauama and depressive symptomology, established counterintuitive results about mindfulness and depressive symptoms in Parkinsons and Schizophrenia, and some disclosed SNP's sequences from a known individual.