Hypothetical (and I may expand on this in another post):
You’ve been shot. Fortunately, there’s a well-equipped doctor on hand who can remove the bullet and stitch you up. Unfortunately, he’s got everything he needs except any kind of pain killer. The only effect of the painkiller is going to be on your (subjective) experience of pain.
He can say:
A. Look, I don’t have painkiller, but I’m going to have to operate anyhow.
B. He can take some opaque, saline (or otherwise totally inert) IV, tell you it’s morphine, and administer it to you.
Which do you prefer he does? Knowing what I know about the placebo effect, I’d have to admit I’d rather be deceived. Is this unwise? Why?
Admittedly, I haven’t attained a false conclusion via my epistemology. It’s probably wise to generally trust doctors when they tell you what they’re administering. So it seems possible to want to have false belief, even while wanting to maintain efficient epistemology. This might not generalize to Pjeby’s various theories, but it seems that we can think of at least one case where we would desire having a false belief. Admittedly, this might not be a decision we could make, i.e. “Lie to me about what’s in that IV!” might not help. (Though there is some evidence of placebos working even when people were made fully aware they were placebos.)
On the other hand, I’m not sure I can think of an example of where we desire to have a belief that we know to be false, which may be the real issue.
Are you implying that the doctor should act to trigger a placebo effect, while still making a true statement? Because in the least convenient version of the dilemma, you would have to choose one or the other.
Erased my previous comment. It missed the real point.
If you think the doctor should say, “This is the best painkiller I have,” that suggests you want to believe you are getting a potent painkiller of some kind. You want to believe that it is a potent painkiller, which is false, as opposed to it is the most potent of the zero painkillers he has, which is true. The fact that the doctor is not technically lying does not change the fact you want to believe something that is false.
If the IV contains a saline solution, the Way may want me to believe the IV contains a saline solution, but I sure as Hell want to think it contains a potent painkiller.
(Yes, I realize the irony in using the expression “sure as Hell.”)
The doctor should say “This is the best painkiller I have” and administer it.
The doctor can do a heck of a lot better than that, even without lying. Ericksonian hypnosis, for example, involves a lot of artfully-vague statements like, “you may notice some sensation happening now”, and amplifying them to lead a person to believe more specific suggestions (such as pain-relief suggestions) that follow. A lot of it can also be done covertly, such that the patient is never consciously aware that a hypnotic procedure is under way.
(Of course, statistics say that relatively few people are able to undergo major surgery with hypnoanesthesia. But if that’s the only painkiller you have, it’d be silly not to use it.)
Omega asks you to silently guess the color of a bead in a jar. Omega then inflicts some amount of pain on you. If Omega believes that you believe the bead to be red (it is in fact blue) then he will administer subjectively less pain.
The win here is for omega to believe that you believe the bead is blue. In the surgery situation, we only have to trick part of our brain.
I suspect that with practice, this would be easier if one were actually attempting it, rather than concluding mid-surgery that morphine does not work on you.
Hypothetical (and I may expand on this in another post):
You’ve been shot. Fortunately, there’s a well-equipped doctor on hand who can remove the bullet and stitch you up. Unfortunately, he’s got everything he needs except any kind of pain killer. The only effect of the painkiller is going to be on your (subjective) experience of pain.
He can say: A. Look, I don’t have painkiller, but I’m going to have to operate anyhow.
B. He can take some opaque, saline (or otherwise totally inert) IV, tell you it’s morphine, and administer it to you.
Which do you prefer he does? Knowing what I know about the placebo effect, I’d have to admit I’d rather be deceived. Is this unwise? Why?
Admittedly, I haven’t attained a false conclusion via my epistemology. It’s probably wise to generally trust doctors when they tell you what they’re administering. So it seems possible to want to have false belief, even while wanting to maintain efficient epistemology. This might not generalize to Pjeby’s various theories, but it seems that we can think of at least one case where we would desire having a false belief. Admittedly, this might not be a decision we could make, i.e. “Lie to me about what’s in that IV!” might not help. (Though there is some evidence of placebos working even when people were made fully aware they were placebos.)
On the other hand, I’m not sure I can think of an example of where we desire to have a belief that we know to be false, which may be the real issue.
The doctor should say “This is the best painkiller I have” and administer it. If the patient confronts the question, it’s already too late.
Are you implying that the doctor should act to trigger a placebo effect, while still making a true statement? Because in the least convenient version of the dilemma, you would have to choose one or the other.
Erased my previous comment. It missed the real point.
If you think the doctor should say, “This is the best painkiller I have,” that suggests you want to believe you are getting a potent painkiller of some kind. You want to believe that it is a potent painkiller, which is false, as opposed to it is the most potent of the zero painkillers he has, which is true. The fact that the doctor is not technically lying does not change the fact you want to believe something that is false.
If the IV contains a saline solution, the Way may want me to believe the IV contains a saline solution, but I sure as Hell want to think it contains a potent painkiller.
(Yes, I realize the irony in using the expression “sure as Hell.”)
“Pain will go away” is a true belief for this situation.
The doctor can do a heck of a lot better than that, even without lying. Ericksonian hypnosis, for example, involves a lot of artfully-vague statements like, “you may notice some sensation happening now”, and amplifying them to lead a person to believe more specific suggestions (such as pain-relief suggestions) that follow. A lot of it can also be done covertly, such that the patient is never consciously aware that a hypnotic procedure is under way.
(Of course, statistics say that relatively few people are able to undergo major surgery with hypnoanesthesia. But if that’s the only painkiller you have, it’d be silly not to use it.)
Omega asks you to silently guess the color of a bead in a jar. Omega then inflicts some amount of pain on you. If Omega believes that you believe the bead to be red (it is in fact blue) then he will administer subjectively less pain.
The win here is for omega to believe that you believe the bead is blue. In the surgery situation, we only have to trick part of our brain.
I suspect that with practice, this would be easier if one were actually attempting it, rather than concluding mid-surgery that morphine does not work on you.