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.
What I think the two choices signal and the trade offs are
Most people I would guess are discomforted by sustained duplicity. Without us necessarily realizing it, our positions on matters shift towards those that are convenient for us, either because of material gain, personal safety, reproductive success or just plain good signalling. Everyone wants to look good, especially to themselves. Most people will have a hard time "living a lie" and may also eventually fail to emulate all the aspects of behaviour a false belief may entail. The emulator is in a sense at a disadvantage compared to someone who is honest in their personally beneficial belief.
Person B may indeed fail to realize the truth because of this effect, or it may be due to other deficiencies, it dosen't matter. Plainly person B is worse at making a good map of reality than person A is. He seems to be signalling a deficiency or rather failure in rationality. But he's signalling more than just that, as I will soon show.
Person A on the other hand clearly has better map making skills. He seems to signal more rationality. But if he slips up, he is signalling he may not be the best person to associate yourself with, the benefits and gains he accrues from the his stated beliefs will be smaller than someone who is a true believer in most things convenient. If he dosen't slip up he may indeed be signalling that he is unusually comfortable with deceiving people and is harder to move with socially accepted norms, the only people who can do this flawlessly are sociopaths or those vastly more intelligent than their surroundings. Does this sound like someone who is reliably non-threatening? In fact how exactly to distinguish such an A from another A who just dosen't care about other people and wishes to preserve his own advantage?
It is safer to cooperate with Person B than person A. Person A is someone for whom it takes much more resources cognitive and otherwise to distinguish the subtypes that share your interests or will not deceive you on a particular matter compared to distinguishing different types of B. Opportunity costs matter. Needless to say if you are not yourself exceptionally gifted with such resources these may be resources you simply don't have.
Perhaps some of you may be doubting at this point that a non-plain selfish type A exists. The normative, publicly praised and endorsed course of action if you disagree with a widely accepted truth or norm is to voice this disagreement, either so the false paradigm can be overturned or so others can help you overcome your folly. Naturally the actual norm on this differs, though how strongly so depends on where. What good does do you if the same improved map making abilities that helped you overcome the potentially adaptive biases also tell you that its currently folly to try and change other peoples minds by entering public debate? Why sacrifice yourself if this has negligible impact? If you think the best strategy to do away with the falsehood with as little damage to others is to delay disclosure to a later point, or if you think its utterly hopeless that the falsehood will be done away with in your lifetime and that your sacrifice will have only minimal impact, why not be duplicitous (for the relevant time frame)? But naturally here we reach the same test all over again. It is convenient for one to believe that it is best for one to remain silent isn't it?
What I think the results of this poll might be.
I expect about a bit below two thirds will choose A. because of LW norms that value rationality and map making skills. This is somewhat counteracted by LW explicit norms on truth telling being closer to actual norms than in most places so people might feel that others are more likley to be wrong in their assessments of the negative consequences .
I think in a representative sample of people, most would choose B.
Person B, but the magnitude of the distinction I make will probably be highly context dependent.
At least that was my original answer. Now I lean toward mostly person B, and sometimes person A.
There are a number of reasons to be wary of person A. While they will likely make for a more interesting story character, in real life their behavior can cause a number of serious problems. First, while we should presumably fairly distinguish between person A and person C (where person C only thinks they see that an interpretation of reality shared by others is no... (read more)