TheAncientGeek comments on A Dialogue On Doublethink - Less Wrong

52 Post author: BrienneYudkowsky 11 May 2014 07:38PM

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Comment author: TheAncientGeek 10 May 2014 03:08:45PM 2 points [-]

Assuming you're found out.

If you are scrutinised, in different siutations, by someone who cares about consistency, the benefit of inconsistent signalling vanishes.And noone is scrutinsed more than a politician in a healthy democracy. People read reports of politicians contradicting themselves and being inconsistent, and infer that politicians are unusually hypocritical.

But absence of evidence is not evidence of absence The ordinary persons hypocrisy is not publicised becausd the ordinary person does not have reporters following them round. The ordinary person typically moves in a number of fairly disjoimt circles -- the workplace, family, same-sex friends and so on -- signaling different loyalties to each. The existence of Chinese walls is even humorously acknowledged: "what happens in X stays in X".

Inconsisten.cy reaches a peak when communicating with completely unconnected individuals and groups. My go-to example is a telesales operative Iwho would ring various people during the crude of a day and agree with every word they said. Her customers were of course unknown to each other and in no position to compare notes,.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 11 May 2014 03:40:00AM 2 points [-]

Well, in the example you cited, the Vicar of Bray, one is dealing with the kind of religious fanatics who are likely to have low tolerance for hypocrisy and may very well do some investigation into one's history.