This brings up the concept of theory of mind for me, especially when thinking about how this applies differently to individual people, to positions/roles in society, and e.g. to corporations. In particular, I would need to have a theory of mind of an entity to ascribe “honor” to it and expect it to uphold it.
A person can convince me that their mind is built around values or principles and I can reasonably trust them to uphold them in the future more likely than not. I believe that for humans, pretending is usually difficult or at least costly.
What a corporation evokes, on the other hand, is not very mind-like. For example: I expect it to uphold bargains when it would be costly not to (in lawsuits, future sales, brand value, etc.), I expect leadership changes, and I expect it to be hard to understand its reasoning (office politics and other coordination problems). (The corporation is also aware of this and so may not even try to appear mind-like.) An interesting exception may be companies that are directed by a well-known principled figure, where having a theory of their mind again makes some sense. (I suspect that is why many brands make effort to create a fictitious “principled leader figure” ).
“PR”, as Anna describes it, seems to be a more direct (if hard) optimization process that is in principle available to all.
I want to note that I am still mildly confused how a reputation of a company that would be based solely on its track record fits into this—I would still expect it to (likely) continue in the trend even having no model of its inner workings or motivations.
Side-remark: Individual positions and roles in society seem to hold a middle ground here: When dealing with a concrete person who holds some authority (imagine a grant maker, a clerk, a supervisor, …), modelling them internally as a person or as an institution brings up different expectations of motivations and values—the person may have virtues and honor where I would expect the institution to have rules and possibly culture (where principles may be a solid part of the rules or culture, but that feels somewhat less common, weaker or more prone to Goodharting as PR; I may be confused here, though).
This brings up the concept of theory of mind for me, especially when thinking about how this applies differently to individual people, to positions/roles in society, and e.g. to corporations. In particular, I would need to have a theory of mind of an entity to ascribe “honor” to it and expect it to uphold it.
A person can convince me that their mind is built around values or principles and I can reasonably trust them to uphold them in the future more likely than not. I believe that for humans, pretending is usually difficult or at least costly.
What a corporation evokes, on the other hand, is not very mind-like. For example: I expect it to uphold bargains when it would be costly not to (in lawsuits, future sales, brand value, etc.), I expect leadership changes, and I expect it to be hard to understand its reasoning (office politics and other coordination problems). (The corporation is also aware of this and so may not even try to appear mind-like.)
An interesting exception may be companies that are directed by a well-known principled figure, where having a theory of their mind again makes some sense. (I suspect that is why many brands make effort to create a fictitious “principled leader figure” ).
“PR”, as Anna describes it, seems to be a more direct (if hard) optimization process that is in principle available to all.
I want to note that I am still mildly confused how a reputation of a company that would be based solely on its track record fits into this—I would still expect it to (likely) continue in the trend even having no model of its inner workings or motivations.
Side-remark: Individual positions and roles in society seem to hold a middle ground here: When dealing with a concrete person who holds some authority (imagine a grant maker, a clerk, a supervisor, …), modelling them internally as a person or as an institution brings up different expectations of motivations and values—the person may have virtues and honor where I would expect the institution to have rules and possibly culture (where principles may be a solid part of the rules or culture, but that feels somewhat less common, weaker or more prone to Goodharting as PR; I may be confused here, though).