I think if I were to title this post, it’d be something like “It’s not enough to model internal distortionary forces, you’ve got to model external ones too.” (The current title sounds cool but sans explanation, I don’t see how it matches the content.)
And I’d frame the argument as:
When it comes to believing true things about the world, there are distortionary forces both without and within. External people want you to believe things for the sake of their agenda and will optimize aggressively against you for their own interests. At the same time, you too are a political animal and your own mind will optimize against you (and others) for the sake of your own near-term political expediency (cf. Elephant in the Brain and arguments for the primacy of self-deception). To reach truth, you have to model and account for each distortionary environment. Not just one. That means tracking both your own motivated cognition and others’ motivated cognition too.
A person who only models their own mind (the naive, inwards-focused bias-correcting Rationalist) will allow others to manipulate their map. A person who only maps the external adversarial environments allows their own mind to manipulate them (especially if they can justify things with reference to external enemies, cf. playbook of oppressive regimes). You must account and attend to both.
I think if I were to title this post, it’d be something like “It’s not enough to model internal distortionary forces, you’ve got to model external ones too.” (The current title sounds cool but sans explanation, I don’t see how it matches the content.)
And I’d frame the argument as:
That’s a good summary.