Creutzer comments on White Lies - Less Wrong

38 Post author: ChrisHallquist 08 February 2014 01:20AM

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Comment author: Creutzer 10 February 2014 02:22:56AM *  2 points [-]

I think that's covered by "alternatively, evil". ;) More seriously, though: how is "knowing what the preferred answer is and either agreeing with it or being willing to lie" a reasonable criterion by which to filter your group?

Comment author: ialdabaoth 10 February 2014 02:26:52AM *  2 points [-]

how is "knowing what the preferred answer is and either agreeing with it or being willing to lie" a reasonable criterion by which to filter your group?

It proves that you value loyalty to your group more than you value your own capacity to reason, which means that authoritarian leaders don't have to consider you a threat (and thus destroy you and everything you hold dear) if they order you to do something against your self-interest. Thus, perversely, when you're in an environment where power has already concentrated, it can be in your self-interest to signal that you're willing to disregard your self-interest, even to the point of disregarding your capacity to determine your self-interest.

Once ingrained, this pattern can continue even if those authoritarian leaders lose their capacity to destroy you - and perversely, the pattern itself can remain as the sole threat capable of destroying you if you dissent.

(Put a few layers of genteel classism over the authoritarian leadership, and it doesn't even have to look autocratic in the first place.)

Comment author: Creutzer 10 February 2014 02:32:30AM 2 points [-]

Definitely covered by "alternatively, evil". Especially when considering a two-person relationship!

Comment author: ialdabaoth 10 February 2014 02:47:40AM 2 points [-]

Definitely covered by "alternatively, evil". Especially when considering a two-person relationship!

My problem with calling these behaviors "evil" is that they don't have to be consciously decided upon - they're just ways that happened to keep our ancestors alive in brutal political environments. Cognitive biases and natural political tendencies may be tragic, but calling them "evil" implies a level of culpability that I think isn't really warranted.

Comment author: Creutzer 10 February 2014 10:40:12AM *  2 points [-]

The choice of words was a bit tongue-in-cheek, but enforcing your power over others in this way is definitely not a nice thing to do. And holding people responsible for such disingenuous behaviour only when they consciously deliberate and decide on it doesn't seem to be very useful to me. People rarely consciously deliberate and decide upon being assholes. (And if someone does what you described in a two-person relationship, I am very inclined to call them an asshole, at least in my head.)

Comment author: hyporational 10 February 2014 05:50:23AM 0 points [-]

I wonder if people who have a disadvantaged native social circuitry are more likely to judge other people because their success in social situations requires more conscious deliberation and thus they're expecting more of it from others.

Comment author: ialdabaoth 10 February 2014 02:24:13PM 0 points [-]

I don't know; I'm something of a counterexample to that, and I tend to not associate with other socially disadvantaged people, so I don't have a good reference class to build examples from.