LESSWRONG
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Eukryt Wrts Blg
Esteemed Estimator41

I don't like that you invited this person, and I think you shouldn't have, 

sure

and I think you should reverse that decision, and it's on you if you ignore my advice and it goes poorly"

This seems a bit speculative to me. If OP didn't believe that would the post have looked any different?

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Mistakes with Conservation of Expected Evidence
Esteemed Estimator10

One idea is to "call out" the pressure you feel. "I'm having trouble saying anything because I'm worried what you will think of me." This isn't always a good idea, but it can often work fairly well. Someone who is caving to incentives isn't very likely to say something like that, so it provides some evidence that you're being genuine.

If it provides evidence that I'm being genuine, someone who isn't being genuine would use this strategy and say the same thing. The other person knows this, so "calling out" shouldn't provide evidence that I'm being genuine. I... (read more)

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3abramdemski
Fair. I think the analysis I was giving could be steel-manned as: pretenders are only boundedly sophisticated; they can't model the genuine mindset perfectly. So, saying what is actually on your mind (eg calling out the incentive issues which are making honesty difficult) can be a good strategy. However, the "call out" strategy is not one I recall using very often; I think I wrote about it because other people have mentioned it, not because I've had sucess with it myself. Thinking about it now, my main concerns are: 1. If the other person is being genuine, and I "call out" the perverse incentives that theoretically make genuine dialogue difficult in this circumstance, then the other person might stop being genuine due to perceiving me as not trusting them. 2. If the other person is not being genuine, then the "call out" strategy can backfire. For example, let's say some travel plans are dependent on me (maybe I am the friend who owns a car) and someone is trying to confirm that I am happy to do this. Instead of just confirming, which is what they want, I "call out" that I feel like I'd be disappointing everyone if I said no. If they're not genuinely concerned for my enthusiasm and instead disingenuously wanted me to make enthusiastic noises so that others didn't feel I was being taken advantage of, then they could manipulatively take advantage of my revealed fear of letting the group down, somehow.