Another potential failure mode: you will think that you’re not deceiving your partner in some area while actually deceiving them. According to “The Elephant in the Brain”, this is probable.
I believe that essentially the elephant is the agent making all decisions, so it’s the elephant taking the vows and bearing full responsibility for upholding them. Self-deception is not a valid excuse for deception.
The only exception to the latter is when this information was given to me in confidence by a third party as part of an agreement which was made in compliance with all Vows
This might make third parties less likely to tell you important things, since you might tell your spouse.
I am confused. Which part makes it less likely? The part where an agreement that goes against the Vows is invalidated? This is true, but seems not specific to these vows: any time I enter an agreement with someone, they are relying on me not to have prior conflicting agreements, and I am liable to compensate them if it turns out that I did.
What happens if someone learns about this agreement of yours and thus kidnaps and tortures your spouse until they tell the kidnapper all your passwords or something like that?
This is an interesting point. I guess the correct interpretation of “would in hindsight prefer to know” is “would rank the policy of revealing the information above the policy of not revealing the information from an updateless perspective i.e. according to their a priori expected utility”.
Another thing, I think this whole agreement models you as a rational agent with a utility function. And it might become bad for you if you start thinking about yourself another way, e.g. if you start seeing yourself less agentic, less rational, with more monkey-brain bugs.
Well, I do tend to model humans as more rational than the typical position of this community. However, I think that if it turns out that I am less agentic then the concept of “bad for me” becomes less coherent s.t. the effect more or less cancels out.
>I believe that essentially the elephant is the agent making all decisions, so it’s the elephant taking the vows and bearing full responsibility for upholding them. Self-deception is not a valid excuse for deception.
So then, these vows could only be made if you have an extremely high level of already having untangled yourself / the elephant, such that it’s even possible for you to not (self-)deceive. Are the vows assuming this? If not, maybe there should be a clause describing a derivative or trajectory, rather than a state. In other words, how sure are you that you / they aren’t already deceiving each other about some important stuff?
>set out to deceive my [spouse] on purpose
Maybe you’re saying “set out”, meaning, once the marriage starts, there won’t be any *new* deception. Hard to tell how the boundary is drawn, if a preexisting deep deception could spin up new shallow deceptions (without you explicitly noticing this, i.e. being in bad faith). What’s “on purpose” doing here? It sort of sounds like “on purpose (...but if it’s the elephant, not *me*, then it’s less bad)”, which I don’t think you want to say?
So then, these vows could only be made if you have an extremely high level of already having untangled yourself / the elephant, such that it’s even possible for you to not (self-)deceive.
I believe that it’s always possible for you to not self-deceive. The only real agent is the “elephant”. The conscious self is just a “mask” this agent wears, by choice. It can equally well choose to wear a different mask if that benefits it.
What’s “on purpose” doing here?
I just mean that there is an intent to deceive, rather than an accidental miscommunication.
What I’m saying is, do you think that there’s no ongoing deep hidden deception (or, situation that would call forth deception) in you or your spouse? I this seems possible to me, it’s just that empirically it’s very rare. I’m wondering if your vows are proofed against this possibility. Maybe you don’t think the probability is high enough to worry about; maybe you think the vow ought to be nullified / broken if there is such deception; maybe by
If for any reason I break my vow, I will act to repair the error as fast as reasonably possible.
you mean to say, yes it was a breach to make this vow given that there was hidden deception, and you’ll repair it. Maybe this is how vows are supposed to work—making them, knowing that there’s a good chance they’ll be partly broken, and then working to uphold them with the understanding that the good faith clause will keep the agreement intact—rather than trying to explicitly say what (/whether) there’s circumstances in which the agreement is definitively not intact. IDK. I guess my worry is that hidden deceptions (that is, a deception that you’re doing but aren’t aware of, i.e. don’t have clear access to with most of your mind) will adaptively keep themselves hidden if there’s no clear recourse for keeping the agreement intact (including an amicable separation) when they become revealed.
We do have margin for minor violations of the vows, as long as they are not “unconscionable”. Granted, we don’t have a precise definition of “unconscionable”, but certainly if both of us agree that a violation is not unconscionable then it isn’t.
I believe that essentially the elephant is the agent making all decisions, so it’s the elephant taking the vows and bearing full responsibility for upholding them. Self-deception is not a valid excuse for deception.
I am confused. Which part makes it less likely? The part where an agreement that goes against the Vows is invalidated? This is true, but seems not specific to these vows: any time I enter an agreement with someone, they are relying on me not to have prior conflicting agreements, and I am liable to compensate them if it turns out that I did.
This is an interesting point. I guess the correct interpretation of “would in hindsight prefer to know” is “would rank the policy of revealing the information above the policy of not revealing the information from an updateless perspective i.e. according to their a priori expected utility”.
Well, I do tend to model humans as more rational than the typical position of this community. However, I think that if it turns out that I am less agentic then the concept of “bad for me” becomes less coherent s.t. the effect more or less cancels out.
>I believe that essentially the elephant is the agent making all decisions, so it’s the elephant taking the vows and bearing full responsibility for upholding them. Self-deception is not a valid excuse for deception.
So then, these vows could only be made if you have an extremely high level of already having untangled yourself / the elephant, such that it’s even possible for you to not (self-)deceive. Are the vows assuming this? If not, maybe there should be a clause describing a derivative or trajectory, rather than a state. In other words, how sure are you that you / they aren’t already deceiving each other about some important stuff?
>set out to deceive my [spouse] on purpose
Maybe you’re saying “set out”, meaning, once the marriage starts, there won’t be any *new* deception. Hard to tell how the boundary is drawn, if a preexisting deep deception could spin up new shallow deceptions (without you explicitly noticing this, i.e. being in bad faith). What’s “on purpose” doing here? It sort of sounds like “on purpose (...but if it’s the elephant, not *me*, then it’s less bad)”, which I don’t think you want to say?
I believe that it’s always possible for you to not self-deceive. The only real agent is the “elephant”. The conscious self is just a “mask” this agent wears, by choice. It can equally well choose to wear a different mask if that benefits it.
I just mean that there is an intent to deceive, rather than an accidental miscommunication.
What I’m saying is, do you think that there’s no ongoing deep hidden deception (or, situation that would call forth deception) in you or your spouse? I this seems possible to me, it’s just that empirically it’s very rare. I’m wondering if your vows are proofed against this possibility. Maybe you don’t think the probability is high enough to worry about; maybe you think the vow ought to be nullified / broken if there is such deception; maybe by
you mean to say, yes it was a breach to make this vow given that there was hidden deception, and you’ll repair it. Maybe this is how vows are supposed to work—making them, knowing that there’s a good chance they’ll be partly broken, and then working to uphold them with the understanding that the good faith clause will keep the agreement intact—rather than trying to explicitly say what (/whether) there’s circumstances in which the agreement is definitively not intact. IDK. I guess my worry is that hidden deceptions (that is, a deception that you’re doing but aren’t aware of, i.e. don’t have clear access to with most of your mind) will adaptively keep themselves hidden if there’s no clear recourse for keeping the agreement intact (including an amicable separation) when they become revealed.
We do have margin for minor violations of the vows, as long as they are not “unconscionable”. Granted, we don’t have a precise definition of “unconscionable”, but certainly if both of us agree that a violation is not unconscionable then it isn’t.