For ‘things that aren’t an accident but aren’t necessarily conscious or endorsed’, another option might be to use language like ‘decision’, ‘action’, ‘choice’, etc. but flagged in a way that makes it clear you’re not assuming full consciousness. Like ‘quasi-decision’, ‘quasi-action’, ‘quasi-conscious’… Applied to Zack’s case, that might suggest a term like ‘quasi-dissembling’ or ‘quasi-misleading’. ‘Dissonant communication’ comes to mind as another idea.
When I want to emphasize that there’s optimization going on but it’s not necessarily conscious, I sometimes speak impersonally of “Bob’s brain is doing X”, or “a Bob-part/agent/subagent is doing X”.
For ‘things that aren’t an accident but aren’t necessarily conscious or endorsed’, another option might be to use language like ‘decision’, ‘action’, ‘choice’, etc. but flagged in a way that makes it clear you’re not assuming full consciousness. Like ‘quasi-decision’, ‘quasi-action’, ‘quasi-conscious’… Applied to Zack’s case, that might suggest a term like ‘quasi-dissembling’ or ‘quasi-misleading’. ‘Dissonant communication’ comes to mind as another idea.
When I want to emphasize that there’s optimization going on but it’s not necessarily conscious, I sometimes speak impersonally of “Bob’s brain is doing X”, or “a Bob-part/agent/subagent is doing X”.