An example important in my life is planning: I “couldn’t” make long-term plans or complete my to-do list as long as my “to-do list” was just a list of obligations rather than anything I really wanted done. More generally, I think plans “on paper” are especially easy case, since they don’t take a telepath. For example, see the planning fallacy and Robin Hanson’s comment that managers prefer the biased estimates. Getting to a corporate level, there’s accounting. A cool related image is in episode two of Twin Peaks when Josie opens the safe and finds two ledgers, one making the mill look profitable and the other tracking the real debts. That’s an example of “occlumency” I guess. But how common is it to have two account books like that, one internally and the other for investors? Or two schedules, a real one for real planning and a fake one to project optimism to the higher-ups? Or two to-do lists, one of stuff I plan to really do and the other I’m just saying I’ll do to avoid an argument? Like, actually two files or pieces of paper? Certainly in a corporate context there’s good legal reasons not to, since liability for fraud often depends on what you can be proven to know, right?
An example important in my life is planning: I “couldn’t” make long-term plans or complete my to-do list as long as my “to-do list” was just a list of obligations rather than anything I really wanted done. More generally, I think plans “on paper” are especially easy case, since they don’t take a telepath. For example, see the planning fallacy and Robin Hanson’s comment that managers prefer the biased estimates. Getting to a corporate level, there’s accounting. A cool related image is in episode two of Twin Peaks when Josie opens the safe and finds two ledgers, one making the mill look profitable and the other tracking the real debts. That’s an example of “occlumency” I guess. But how common is it to have two account books like that, one internally and the other for investors? Or two schedules, a real one for real planning and a fake one to project optimism to the higher-ups? Or two to-do lists, one of stuff I plan to really do and the other I’m just saying I’ll do to avoid an argument? Like, actually two files or pieces of paper? Certainly in a corporate context there’s good legal reasons not to, since liability for fraud often depends on what you can be proven to know, right?