I agree that the evidence currently suggests that being transparent about your beliefs isn’t a winning strategy.
I’m not 100% convinced that we can conclusively say that it can’t be a winning strategy. Perhaps if norms change, and someone who was sufficiently well-calibrated to this way of thinking and was effective at communicating (and probably came across as high-status enough) it could be very effective.
Could someone be completely honest and still be effective? I’d love to see someone who could pull this off, and I haven’t written this off as a possibility. But maybe I’m being naive :-)
The effectivity of truth and lying depends on environment. For example, imagine a culture where political debates on TV would be immediately followed by impartial fact checking. Or a culture where politicians have to make predictions about future events (“I don’t know” also counts as a valid prediction), and these are later publicly reviewed and evaluated. And, importantly, where the citizens actually care about the results. I suppose such environment would bring more truth in politics.
But this is a chicken-and-egg problem, because changing the environment, that’s kinda what politics is about. Also, there are many obvious counter-strategies, such as having loyal people do the “fact checking” in your tribe’s favor. (For example, when a politician says something that is approximately correct, like saying that some number is 100, when in reality it is 96, it would be evaluated as “a correct approximation → TRUE” when your side does it, or as “FALSE” when your opponent does it. You could evaluate opponent’s metaphorical statements literally, but the other way round for your allies; etc.)
Could someone be completely honest and still be effective?
That mostly depends on other people. Such as voters (whether they bother to check facts) and media (whether they report on the fact that your statements are more likely to be true). If instead the media decide to publish a completely made up story about you, and most readers accept the story uncritically, you are screwed.
(There are also ways to hurt 100% honest people without lying about them, such as making them publicly answer a question where the majority of the population believes a wrong answer and gets offended by hearing the correct one. “Is God real?”)
I agree with everything you say. I’m reminded of Dan Gardner’s terrific book Future Babble on how and why people respond to pundits even though their predictions/calibrations are often woeful.
The thing is, in the same way that there are people who can get away with clearly being in bad faith and not being truthful, I think there are probably some people who can get away with being relatively well-calibrated and up-front about not treating everything in black and white terms, and still be effective communicators, and effective in politics in general.
I wouldn’t be surprised if there are some other factors (something to do with the conveyed social status of the person in question?) that relate to their effectiveness that are in some ways independent of the positions they actually take. Taking the “Is God real?” example, it’s true that the vast majority of people couldn’t get away with that. But there are probably some people who could get away with it.
I’m speculating. And to my mind this is an empirical question. The fact that no one comes to mind probably indicates I’m wrong. But I can always be hopeful!
I’m also writing this in a rush, so apologies if I haven’t been very clear. Thanks for the comments!
I agree that the evidence currently suggests that being transparent about your beliefs isn’t a winning strategy.
I’m not 100% convinced that we can conclusively say that it can’t be a winning strategy. Perhaps if norms change, and someone who was sufficiently well-calibrated to this way of thinking and was effective at communicating (and probably came across as high-status enough) it could be very effective.
Could someone be completely honest and still be effective? I’d love to see someone who could pull this off, and I haven’t written this off as a possibility. But maybe I’m being naive :-)
The effectivity of truth and lying depends on environment. For example, imagine a culture where political debates on TV would be immediately followed by impartial fact checking. Or a culture where politicians have to make predictions about future events (“I don’t know” also counts as a valid prediction), and these are later publicly reviewed and evaluated. And, importantly, where the citizens actually care about the results. I suppose such environment would bring more truth in politics.
But this is a chicken-and-egg problem, because changing the environment, that’s kinda what politics is about. Also, there are many obvious counter-strategies, such as having loyal people do the “fact checking” in your tribe’s favor. (For example, when a politician says something that is approximately correct, like saying that some number is 100, when in reality it is 96, it would be evaluated as “a correct approximation → TRUE” when your side does it, or as “FALSE” when your opponent does it. You could evaluate opponent’s metaphorical statements literally, but the other way round for your allies; etc.)
That mostly depends on other people. Such as voters (whether they bother to check facts) and media (whether they report on the fact that your statements are more likely to be true). If instead the media decide to publish a completely made up story about you, and most readers accept the story uncritically, you are screwed.
(There are also ways to hurt 100% honest people without lying about them, such as making them publicly answer a question where the majority of the population believes a wrong answer and gets offended by hearing the correct one. “Is God real?”)
I agree with everything you say. I’m reminded of Dan Gardner’s terrific book Future Babble on how and why people respond to pundits even though their predictions/calibrations are often woeful.
The thing is, in the same way that there are people who can get away with clearly being in bad faith and not being truthful, I think there are probably some people who can get away with being relatively well-calibrated and up-front about not treating everything in black and white terms, and still be effective communicators, and effective in politics in general.
I wouldn’t be surprised if there are some other factors (something to do with the conveyed social status of the person in question?) that relate to their effectiveness that are in some ways independent of the positions they actually take. Taking the “Is God real?” example, it’s true that the vast majority of people couldn’t get away with that. But there are probably some people who could get away with it.
I’m speculating. And to my mind this is an empirical question. The fact that no one comes to mind probably indicates I’m wrong. But I can always be hopeful!
I’m also writing this in a rush, so apologies if I haven’t been very clear. Thanks for the comments!