I'm saying that people do value honesty, but can't pursue it as a value effectively because of faulty cognitive machinery, poor epistemic skills, and a dislike of admitting (even to themselves) that they are wrong. I think that the Lesswrong / rationalist / skeptic community tends to be comprised of folks with superior cognitive machinery and epistemic skills in this dimension. When people say "I value honesty" they believe that they are speaking honestly, even if they aren't entirely sure what truth means.
As I see it, you're saying that people do not value honesty and purposefully choose to ignore it in favor of other, more instrumental values. And you extend this trait to the Lesswrong / rationalist / skeptic community as well. When people say "I value honesty", in their mind they know it to be a lie but do not care. If they were to ever say "I consider truth to be whatever is socially useful", in their mind they would believe that this an honest statement.
Both our hypotheses explain the same phenomenon. My mental disagreement flowchart says that it is time to ask the following questions:
0) Did I state your point and derive its logical implications correctly? Do you find my point coherent, even if it's wrong?
1) Do you have evidence (anecdotal or otherwise) which favors your hypothesis above mine?
(My evidence is that neurotypical humans experience guilt when being dishonest, and this makes being dishonest difficult. Do you dispute the truth of this evidence? Alternatively, do you dispute that this evidence increases the likelihood of my hypothesis?)
2) Do you stake a claim to parsimony? I do, since my hypothesis relies entirely on what we already know about biases and variations in the ability to think logically.
One major issue for group rationality is signaling with dishonest beliefs. Beliefs are used as a signal to preserve your reputation or to show membership in a group. It happens subconsciously, and I believe it is the cause of most of the issues of both religions and political parties. It also happens on Less Wrong, most commonly though not sharing beliefs that you think people will disagree with.
First, let's identify the problem. This is mostly from the viewpoint of ideal agents as opposed to actual humans. You are part of a community of rationalists. You discuss lots of issues, and you become familiar with the other members of your community. As a result, you start to learn which members of the community are the smartest. Of course, your measure of the intelligence of the members is biased towards people who say things that you agree with. The members who say things that you agree with build up more reputation in your mind. This reputation makes you more likely to trust other things that this person says. I am also a member of this community. I have opinions on many things, but there is one issue that I think really does not matter at all. On this issue, most of the community believes X, but I believe not X. By signaling belief in X, I increase my reputation in the community, and will cause other people to take more seriously my views on other issues I think are more important. Therefore, I choose to signal belief in X.
What is happening here is that:
(A) People are assigning reputation based on claims, and judging claims based partially on other beliefs signaled by the same person.
(B) People want their claims are taken seriously, and so take actions which will preserve and improve their reputation.
Therefore,
(C) People take signal beliefs that they believe are false because they are shared by the community.
Signaling honest beliefs is kind of like cooperating in a prisoners dilemma. It helps the community push towards reaching what you believe are valid conclusions, at the cost of your own reputation. It is possible for us to decide as a community that we want to cooperate, especially with tools such as anti-kibitzer. However, there is more than one way to do that. I think there are three options. I think they are all theoretically possible, but I think they are all bad.
(1) We can agree to stop assigning reputation based on beliefs.
This option is bad because there is a loss of information. People who made the right choice on one issue are more likely to make the right choice on other issues, and we are ignoring this correlation.
(2) We can agree to always report honest beliefs even though we know it will cost us reputation.
This option is bad because it encourages self-deception. If you commit to honestly report beliefs, and you can gain more reputation by reporting belief in X, you may trick yourself into thinking that you believe X.
(3) We can allow dishonest reporting of beliefs to continue.
This option is bad because it causes a bias. The community will get a source of evidence biased towards their current beliefs.
Which option do you prefer? Am I missing a fourth option? Is one of the choices obviously the best or obviously the worst? Should we combine them somehow? Am I modeling the problem entirely wrong?