The mystery of mendacity

[Papus79]

I wanted to bring this one up because I was having a conversation with another member and they brought up some points that could have been expanded quite a ways but I didn't want to completely hijack the thread.

What we were talking about is whether or not people who are persistently wrong, of the sort who would double down, care that they're wrong. You also have a much larger swath of the population who won't put in any effort to figure out what's happening in the world whether it's in the sciences, in politics, education, media, or whatever, and they'll take on board whatever they seem to hear people saying without discriminating and then, here's the weird part, proceed to use that to dismiss people who have done their homework and suggest to other people that they should. I would say, in support of this forum, there seems to be a pretty good culture and for as many people as we have who disagree on even fundamental things I haven't found many, if any, examples, of someone who won't talk out a difference of opinion respectfully and at length thus I really mean to say that I'm broaching this as more of an existential concern, ie. watching a lot of country's politics and media seeming to melt into solipsism and just how eager so many people are to go along with it. It's such a bizarre thing, something like the mass peeling open of reliable blind spots in human sanity, that it seems to be worthy of its own study.

I don't know if this topic is too rife in that there could be a real risk of people accusing each other in the thread - I'd like to think there's a way that we can get more of a sort of meta-narrative treatment of the topic and perhaps even advance an examination of it without getting into polarizing specifics.

I can think of a whole range of reasons why people would evade, if not canonical 'truth' at least the most rational explanation available, on various topics:

- They have a particular economic or political dog in the fight, team matters more, and that can take the form of a job, a retirement plan, etc..
- The accurate stance scores far lower in social status points than the currently vogue but far less accurate stance. Life is too short and people's ability to enjoy it can be ruined by truth when the rest of the pack is running in the opposite direction (though admittedly when the world is running in irrational directions genuine enjoyment is difficult to come by).
- In some cases they may truly, deeply, not want to believe certain things about what people are and do thus they'd attack anyone popping that bubble as if they were the offender in question. For example I've had my jaw dropped by some people's alternate accounts for the disappearances of peoples for example (including - I'm not joking - 'aliens did it').
- They may feel similarly, in reference to the point immediately above, equal desire to run from the possibility that there are some things we don't have the capacity to change or cannot change without even greater violence to what we have (pyrrhic victories).
- They need to tell themselves certain things to get by in the world, for example put on a pair of blinders for people outside their tribe, not see that their activity is part of the problem and is in a dynamic that causes mass suffering, and the topic threatens to do violence to a narrative critical to their sanity.
- The worst case of all of these - there's not enough to go around, you have to find a group who can't defend what they have and thus take from them, and this requires moral distancing and dehumanization of that group as such to allow action in such directions (pogroms often follow from this).

There may be more but these are some of the best I've been able to figure out. The question then is - what kinds of approaches do you think can be applied to mitigate these?

It seems like the worst cases, like the last point in my list, seem to often come at the tail of many failures on much milder issues which stacked up and pressed downward enough to bring it to that point. When that happens I can't help but think that the option for deep critical thinking at some point was thrown aside for cheap point-scoring and tribal politics. I can't remember the exact expression John Gray uses but he makes the point that liberal democracy needs to inoculate itself against what can be seen as recurrent evils that will reliably crop up under given conditions and that liberal democracy, in ensuring the rights it stands by, is constantly in some degree of maintenance with regard to keeping these things resolved or making sure that there are enough side-vents for pressure to go out through to prevent explosions. I'd have to think our orientation to truth is something that has to be kept sharp, especially considering the reliability with which so many people will just apathetically avoid it.

Anyway I *hope* this topic isn't too hot. It seems like an equally interesting and urgent issue to go over with a fine-tooth comb and see what kinds of conclusions might come of it.

[Eckhart Aurelius Hughes]

Moderator Note: I have moved this topic from the Ethics and Morality Forum to the off-topic section. It appears the topic is the question of how to mitigate the alleged reasons that some people allegedly evade canonical truth or rational explanation. That's probably a very interesting question to discuss in the off topic section. Nonetheless, it appears to be a pragmatic how to question, not a philosophical question about morality or ethics.

[Fooloso4]

Papus79:

What we were talking about is whether or not people who are persistently wrong, of the sort who would double down, care that they're wrong.

It is sometimes hard to determine where single-minded conviction ends and pathology begins.

I find Plato’s dialogues instructive because it becomes clear that it is not just a matter of ideas and opinions but of the character of the interlocutor. The impediment to their understanding is not intellectual, but may involve such things as pride, honor, ambition,and temperament. In the forums resentment and revenge often lie barely hidden below the surface of honest and open, objective inquiry. Having solved an intractable problem or having developed a revolutionary concept comes up regularly as well. Here the poster is often contemptuous of those who have not recognized that he or she is undoubtedly right. And, of course, in order to maintain that illusion they will go to extraordinary lengths to argue in defense of their claims.

[LuckyR]

As we progress further and further into the Post Truth era, this will happen more and more frequently. The main part of the reason for this is that regardless of the percentage of error in a particular opinion, the holder of this opinion can find an online "authority" who will validate the opinion. Thus in their mind, the opinion is correct, or at least reasonable.

[Papus79]

Having solved an intractable problem or having developed a revolutionary concept comes up regularly as well. Here the poster is often contemptuous of those who have not recognized that he or she is undoubtedly right. And, of course, in order to maintain that illusion they will go to extraordinary lengths to argue in defense of their claims.

People who go that route should take stock in how people like Richard Feynman were treated when they were first bringing their ideas to the table. If you say something new and challenge landed establishment it's nearly certain that you get just about pilloried for it. When that's the case, particularly when and if you actually do have a new idea that's worth something, you have to have the patience and humility to stick with it and be more the humble spokesperson for the ideas rather than acting as if you own them or as if your ego is entwined with their success.

As we progress further and further into the Post Truth era, this will happen more and more frequently. The main part of the reason for this is that regardless of the percentage of error in a particular opinion, the holder of this opinion can find an online "authority" who will validate the opinion. Thus in their mind, the opinion is correct, or at least reasonable.

I don't know that post-truth is anything new though. Churlishness has been with us for likely all of time and we have plenty of historical evidence for it. It might in some ways look frighteningly similar to us dipping into what could be considered something that would be a dark age, just that there's no such possibility for everything to just crumble into feudal territories. Over and above social decay or the west feeling like it's 'run out of story' I think it would just about take a Carrington event or some big nuclear stupidity for us to even have a technologically relative dark age.

It seems like there is at least a craving for new ideas right now and that may even pick up steam into 2020. Maybe there is a bit of a competition for who'll bring the best-new-thing. It'll be interesting to watch albeit frightening on account of the duplicity that will be going on to subvert it.

[LuckyR]

As we progress further and further into the Post Truth era, this will happen more and more frequently. The main part of the reason for this is that regardless of the percentage of error in a particular opinion, the holder of this opinion can find an online "authority" who will validate the opinion. Thus in their mind, the opinion is correct, or at least reasonable.

I don't know that post-truth is anything new though. Churlishness has been with us for likely all of time and we have plenty of historical evidence for it. It might in some ways look frighteningly similar to us dipping into what could be considered something that would be a dark age, just that there's no such possibility for everything to just crumble into feudal territories. Over and above social decay or the west feeling like it's 'run out of story' I think it would just about take a Carrington event or some big nuclear stupidity for us to even have a technologically relative dark age.

It seems like there is at least a craving for new ideas right now and that may even pick up steam into 2020. Maybe there is a bit of a competition for who'll bring the best-new-thing. It'll be interesting to watch albeit frightening on account of the duplicity that will be going on to subvert it.

I think you are confusing the Pre Truth era, before the Golden Age of journalism (and scholarship), with the current Post Truth era. True both were/are notable for the relative equality of snake oil and truth as far as public standing. However in the past it was because neither opinion nor truth had ubiquitous and reliable verification. Whereas now both snake oil and truth have ubiquitous and seemingly reliable (to rubes and those who at their core don't want facts, they want someone to tell them they are correct) verification.

Similar but different. As to your "new ideas", have you noticed that when cable got 200+ channels, there was nothing to watch? Similarly, the internet makes knowledge available to all at a click, yet folks know less than ever since factual knowledge has lost its caché. I fear that access to numerous ideas will lead to consolidation of opinions into fewer and fewer over time.

[chewybrian]

Similar but different. As to your "new ideas", have you noticed that when cable got 200+ channels, there was nothing to watch? Similarly, the internet makes knowledge available to all at a click, yet folks know less than ever since factual knowledge has lost its caché. I fear that access to numerous ideas will lead to consolidation of opinions into fewer and fewer over time.

Despite our impressive rational faculties, we are terrible at making decisions, and this is worth its own thread.

Decisions should break down to the chance of a 'win' multiplied by the value of the win. Yet we can't even get that right when faced with fairly simple decisions in the present. When decisions made in the present have outcomes pushed out into the future, then we need only add a 'time value of money' factor to our equation, to convert to 'net present value'. Put simply, if your next best interest rate is 5%, then a $1.05 expectation a year from now is worth one dollar today. That's sound decision making summed up, in stark contrast to the way we actually decide.

But, we step away from these equations for all sorts of 'reasons'. Change the decision from opt in to opt out, and the overall results vary wildly, even as people face the exact same choice. People will irrationally compare values with the past instead of against today's options, which are the ones that matter (this is why was/now pricing is everywhere). Add in an extra option that you know people will never choose, and it will change their choice among the options that were already there (even though they don't want the new thing!). Marketers know all these vulnerabilities and work hard to exploit them.

Consider a shelf at the liquor store, at various times holding varying selections of wines at different prices:

A, $10, $30

B, $10, $27, $30

C, $10, $27, $30, $50

Each bottle of wine for $10 is exactly the same as the other $10 bottle, and at $27, and so on. The only difference is what sits next to it. So, there is no other reason to make a different choice in each different scenario. You should value each wine by comparing its price to its appeal to you. Yet, people will tend to choose the $10 wine in scenario A, the $27 wine in B, and the $30 wine in C. Their choices are not rational, but overly affected by factors which should have no effect. Even if I would never buy the $50 wine, its presence moves me over to the $30 bottle.

Add in time..."You've won our delayed gratification contest. Your prize is:"

Scenario A: a choice of the $30 wine today, or the $50 wine in a month.

Scenario B: a choice of the $30 wine in 12 months, or the $50 wine in 13 months.

People will take the $30 wine in A, and the $50 wine in B, even as the choice is effectively the same--will you wait a month to move up $20?

You would think that freedom is a worthy goal, and that the more choices we have, the better off we would be, right? But, in fact, the more choices we are offered, the less happy we are. Rationally, we should be pleased by choice and the ability to get more precisely what suits us best. But, evidently, we don't really know what we want, or we are more focused on the regret of the choices we could have taken than the possible benefit of what we took. Opportunity cost seems to be valued above real cost.

When your expectations are raised by choice, your satisfaction with your choice goes down. And, you will feel responsible for the failure, since you had so many options and should have, presumably, been able to get a winner from all those options; with fewer options, failure doesn't feel like it was your fault. We can also be paralyzed by an excess of choice, and either refuse to play at all, or look to an 'expert' to make the choice for us. From one of the videos below--for every 10 additional mutual funds offered in a 401K plan, participation went down 2%; offer 50 more choices, and 10% fewer people will take the free matching money!

Working back to the topic, it seems certain that politicians and lobbyists are aware of our weaknesses and working hard to exploit them as well.

Finally, I wonder what other explanations you might have for our failures. Are we not as rational as we might hope? Is our genetic program failing us, possibly because it is something of an anachronism? Are we more focused on the opinions of others than our own satisfaction? Something else?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9X68dm92HVI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VO6XEQIsCoM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-4flnuxNV4

[Papus79]

I think you are confusing the Pre Truth era, before the Golden Age of journalism (and scholarship), with the current Post Truth era. True both were/are notable for the relative equality of snake oil and truth as far as public standing. However in the past it was because neither opinion nor truth had ubiquitous and reliable verification. Whereas now both snake oil and truth have ubiquitous and seemingly reliable (to rubes and those who at their core don't want facts, they want someone to tell them they are correct) verification.

Similar but different. As to your "new ideas", have you noticed that when cable got 200+ channels, there was nothing to watch? Similarly, the internet makes knowledge available to all at a click, yet folks know less than ever since factual knowledge has lost its caché. I fear that access to numerous ideas will lead to consolidation of opinions into fewer and fewer over time.

We were the same kind of ape though. Agreed that there was less information rather than more, it means that the number of huxters and depth to which they need to go has gone up. I think in either scenario, if we really - at a broad level - cared out truth we'd resolve such things, just that this doesn't seem to be the case.

[Papus79]

I just watched an Iain McGilchrist interview from a week or so ago and he added another thing - ie. that doubling down, egotism, and desire to urinate on anything it doesn't understand is something that the left brain tends to do if it lacks sufficient oversight from the right brain - whether through right-brain stroke, hypertrophy in the left, or whatever else. So I suppose we can add some more direct neurological concepts to this as well.

[Fooloso4]

Papus79:

People who go that route should take stock in how people like Richard Feynman were treated when they were first bringing their ideas to the table.

I didn’t make myself clear, they did not solve an intractable problem, they only think they have and will ignore everything that points to the fact that they haven’t.

[Papus79]

I understood what you were saying but was making perhaps a different point - ie. that if you *think* you have a great idea know that disconfirmation goes with the territory and that, for all of the information out there, odds are good that there's something you haven't thought of and that there's a a reason why other people haven't championed that idea. Otherwise, if your idea is correct, over time you'll find that it doesn't sink, stands up to critical analysis, and in that case the idea is probably more important than one's own gain or loss from it.

What I think you're trying to reinforce is that people don't come to this with the amount of humility that they should - and I'd agree, if someone comes to it with an untested idea and a bit of a messianic complex they're in for a real letdown.

[h_k_s]

I wanted to bring this one up because I was having a conversation with another member and they brought up some points that could have been expanded quite a ways but I didn't want to completely hijack the thread.

What we were talking about is whether or not people who are persistently wrong, of the sort who would double down, care that they're wrong. You also have a much larger swath of the population who won't put in any effort to figure out what's happening in the world whether it's in the sciences, in politics, education, media, or whatever, and they'll take on board whatever they seem to hear people saying without discriminating and then, here's the weird part, proceed to use that to dismiss people who have done their homework and suggest to other people that they should. I would say, in support of this forum, there seems to be a pretty good culture and for as many people as we have who disagree on even fundamental things I haven't found many, if any, examples, of someone who won't talk out a difference of opinion respectfully and at length thus I really mean to say that I'm broaching this as more of an existential concern, ie. watching a lot of country's politics and media seeming to melt into solipsism and just how eager so many people are to go along with it. It's such a bizarre thing, something like the mass peeling open of reliable blind spots in human sanity, that it seems to be worthy of its own study.

I don't know if this topic is too rife in that there could be a real risk of people accusing each other in the thread - I'd like to think there's a way that we can get more of a sort of meta-narrative treatment of the topic and perhaps even advance an examination of it without getting into polarizing specifics.

I can think of a whole range of reasons why people would evade, if not canonical 'truth' at least the most rational explanation available, on various topics:

- They have a particular economic or political dog in the fight, team matters more, and that can take the form of a job, a retirement plan, etc..
- The accurate stance scores far lower in social status points than the currently vogue but far less accurate stance. Life is too short and people's ability to enjoy it can be ruined by truth when the rest of the pack is running in the opposite direction (though admittedly when the world is running in irrational directions genuine enjoyment is difficult to come by).
- In some cases they may truly, deeply, not want to believe certain things about what people are and do thus they'd attack anyone popping that bubble as if they were the offender in question. For example I've had my jaw dropped by some people's alternate accounts for the disappearances of peoples for example (including - I'm not joking - 'aliens did it').
- They may feel similarly, in reference to the point immediately above, equal desire to run from the possibility that there are some things we don't have the capacity to change or cannot change without even greater violence to what we have (pyrrhic victories).
- They need to tell themselves certain things to get by in the world, for example put on a pair of blinders for people outside their tribe, not see that their activity is part of the problem and is in a dynamic that causes mass suffering, and the topic threatens to do violence to a narrative critical to their sanity.
- The worst case of all of these - there's not enough to go around, you have to find a group who can't defend what they have and thus take from them, and this requires moral distancing and dehumanization of that group as such to allow action in such directions (pogroms often follow from this).

There may be more but these are some of the best I've been able to figure out. The question then is - what kinds of approaches do you think can be applied to mitigate these?

It seems like the worst cases, like the last point in my list, seem to often come at the tail of many failures on much milder issues which stacked up and pressed downward enough to bring it to that point. When that happens I can't help but think that the option for deep critical thinking at some point was thrown aside for cheap point-scoring and tribal politics. I can't remember the exact expression John Gray uses but he makes the point that liberal democracy needs to inoculate itself against what can be seen as recurrent evils that will reliably crop up under given conditions and that liberal democracy, in ensuring the rights it stands by, is constantly in some degree of maintenance with regard to keeping these things resolved or making sure that there are enough side-vents for pressure to go out through to prevent explosions. I'd have to think our orientation to truth is something that has to be kept sharp, especially considering the reliability with which so many people will just apathetically avoid it.

Anyway I *hope* this topic isn't too hot. It seems like an equally interesting and urgent issue to go over with a fine-tooth comb and see what kinds of conclusions might come of it.

If these people are doing this on purpose then they are Sophists.

If not on purpose then they are simply idiots.

That's it in a nutshell.

[LuckyR]

I think you are confusing the Pre Truth era, before the Golden Age of journalism (and scholarship), with the current Post Truth era. True both were/are notable for the relative equality of snake oil and truth as far as public standing. However in the past it was because neither opinion nor truth had ubiquitous and reliable verification. Whereas now both snake oil and truth have ubiquitous and seemingly reliable (to rubes and those who at their core don't want facts, they want someone to tell them they are correct) verification.

Similar but different. As to your "new ideas", have you noticed that when cable got 200+ channels, there was nothing to watch? Similarly, the internet makes knowledge available to all at a click, yet folks know less than ever since factual knowledge has lost its caché. I fear that access to numerous ideas will lead to consolidation of opinions into fewer and fewer over time.

We were the same kind of ape though. Agreed that there was less information rather than more, it means that the number of huxters and depth to which they need to go has gone up. I think in either scenario, if we really - at a broad level - cared out truth we'd resolve such things, just that this doesn't seem to be the case.

Your observation corroborates my assessment, it isn't the case, hence the Post Truth era.

[LuckyR]

Similar but different. As to your "new ideas", have you noticed that when cable got 200+ channels, there was nothing to watch? Similarly, the internet makes knowledge available to all at a click, yet folks know less than ever since factual knowledge has lost its caché. I fear that access to numerous ideas will lead to consolidation of opinions into fewer and fewer over time.

Despite our impressive rational faculties, we are terrible at making decisions, and this is worth its own thread.

Decisions should break down to the chance of a 'win' multiplied by the value of the win. Yet we can't even get that right when faced with fairly simple decisions in the present. When decisions made in the present have outcomes pushed out into the future, then we need only add a 'time value of money' factor to our equation, to convert to 'net present value'. Put simply, if your next best interest rate is 5%, then a $1.05 expectation a year from now is worth one dollar today. That's sound decision making summed up, in stark contrast to the way we actually decide.

But, we step away from these equations for all sorts of 'reasons'. Change the decision from opt in to opt out, and the overall results vary wildly, even as people face the exact same choice. People will irrationally compare values with the past instead of against today's options, which are the ones that matter (this is why was/now pricing is everywhere). Add in an extra option that you know people will never choose, and it will change their choice among the options that were already there (even though they don't want the new thing!). Marketers know all these vulnerabilities and work hard to exploit them.

Consider a shelf at the liquor store, at various times holding varying selections of wines at different prices:

A, $10, $30

B, $10, $27, $30

C, $10, $27, $30, $50

Each bottle of wine for $10 is exactly the same as the other $10 bottle, and at $27, and so on. The only difference is what sits next to it. So, there is no other reason to make a different choice in each different scenario. You should value each wine by comparing its price to its appeal to you. Yet, people will tend to choose the $10 wine in scenario A, the $27 wine in B, and the $30 wine in C. Their choices are not rational, but overly affected by factors which should have no effect. Even if I would never buy the $50 wine, its presence moves me over to the $30 bottle.

Add in time..."You've won our delayed gratification contest. Your prize is:"

Scenario A: a choice of the $30 wine today, or the $50 wine in a month.

Scenario B: a choice of the $30 wine in 12 months, or the $50 wine in 13 months.

People will take the $30 wine in A, and the $50 wine in B, even as the choice is effectively the same--will you wait a month to move up $20?

You would think that freedom is a worthy goal, and that the more choices we have, the better off we would be, right? But, in fact, the more choices we are offered, the less happy we are. Rationally, we should be pleased by choice and the ability to get more precisely what suits us best. But, evidently, we don't really know what we want, or we are more focused on the regret of the choices we could have taken than the possible benefit of what we took. Opportunity cost seems to be valued above real cost.

When your expectations are raised by choice, your satisfaction with your choice goes down. And, you will feel responsible for the failure, since you had so many options and should have, presumably, been able to get a winner from all those options; with fewer options, failure doesn't feel like it was your fault. We can also be paralyzed by an excess of choice, and either refuse to play at all, or look to an 'expert' to make the choice for us. From one of the videos below--for every 10 additional mutual funds offered in a 401K plan, participation went down 2%; offer 50 more choices, and 10% fewer people will take the free matching money!

Working back to the topic, it seems certain that politicians and lobbyists are aware of our weaknesses and working hard to exploit them as well.

Finally, I wonder what other explanations you might have for our failures. Are we not as rational as we might hope? Is our genetic program failing us, possibly because it is something of an anachronism? Are we more focused on the opinions of others than our own satisfaction? Something else?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9X68dm92HVI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VO6XEQIsCoM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-4flnuxNV4

You have the answer bracketed. Namely, that behavioral science has identified the adaptations that have been honed over millenia to address natural problems, and computer science has written algorithms to harness these tendencies for profit (clicks). Thus social media is an extremely efficient Skinner box to train humans to do whatever the entity that is paying wants folks to do. Buy this, vote for that, don't believe this other thing.

[Papus79]

Iain's assessment makes me wonder there might be something one could speculate like this:

- A person with low intelligence can't survive in the world as it's dog eats dog.
- The left brain seems to handle a lot of the basic-staple demands.
- A sort of left-brain hypertrophy occurs as a survival response.
- Many or most of the usual side effects of left-brain hypertrophy ensue.