Much of this is academic once you realize that in communication, especially effective communication (and, really, if we’re rationalists concerned with “winning communication” what other sort are we concerned with?), the truth value of a statement from our internal interpretation is irrelevant, and, indeed our intention is also irrelevant unless it is indicated over some other channel during our communication, because none of these are accessible to the people we are communicating with.
Your statement may be accurate and come from honest intent when it started out, but that gives you no guarantee that it will be interpreted as such when it is received by others. The whole discourse of lies, NTLs, honesty, and radical honesty is only giving excuses that you have tried hard enough when communication fails. After that you can just claim that it was the other person(s) fault.
But does the rationalist (who is playing to win), let herself lose the game just because trying to anticipate which cooperative strategy another player could choose is difficult?
I suggest the solution isn’t choosing which single person model to permit or reject, rather it’s to recognize that communication involves more than one person, and that reducing it to such a simple model is causing too much error to be truly effective.
Much of this is academic once you realize that in communication, especially effective communication (and, really, if we’re rationalists concerned with “winning communication” what other sort are we concerned with?), the truth value of a statement from our internal interpretation is irrelevant, and, indeed our intention is also irrelevant unless it is indicated over some other channel during our communication, because none of these are accessible to the people we are communicating with.
Your statement may be accurate and come from honest intent when it started out, but that gives you no guarantee that it will be interpreted as such when it is received by others. The whole discourse of lies, NTLs, honesty, and radical honesty is only giving excuses that you have tried hard enough when communication fails. After that you can just claim that it was the other person(s) fault.
But does the rationalist (who is playing to win), let herself lose the game just because trying to anticipate which cooperative strategy another player could choose is difficult?
I suggest the solution isn’t choosing which single person model to permit or reject, rather it’s to recognize that communication involves more than one person, and that reducing it to such a simple model is causing too much error to be truly effective.
bears repeating.