I don’t use “fake belief” as a category for myself when dealing with beliefs and it’s not a category that EY proposed in those sequences posts either. It’s just just as a chapter heading to bundle a bunch of related essays together.
Eliezer says/implies that real beliefs have to be about anticipation control, and that you can call any other beliefs fake/improper. From Belief as Attire:
“I have so far distinguished between belief as anticipation-controller, belief in belief, professing, and cheering. Of these, we might call anticipation-controlling beliefs ‘proper beliefs’ and the other forms ‘improper beliefs’.”
I don’t think the category of “fake belief” would be helpful for dealing with that struggle around that question.
Yeah, it sounds like “corruption is always bad” involves anticipation control and making predictions. Something along the lines of “there aren’t any cases where the utilitarian consequences of corruption are a net positive”.
When it comes to the category of “belief in belief”, I think there are examples that are typical for rationalists. “How to Measure Anything” is for example a book that gets people into a state where they believe that everyone should read it because they think the argument is internally consistent but not because it got them to improve their lifes by starting to measure things or they have example of quantification of uncertainty for major decisions being very valuable.
I think that “everyone should read the book” is a legitimate belief, because it implies the prediction that the benefits of reading the book are worthwhile. Whether or not it’s true is different from whether it is a legitimate, anticipation-controlling belief.
For this to be an example of belief in belief it’d have to be something like “I say that everyone should read it but I don’t actually anticipate that reading it will be worthwhile for people”.
I think that “everyone should read the book” is a legitimate belief, because it implies the prediction that the benefits of reading the book are worthwhile.
It’s possible to believe that everyone should read a certain book because you are making predictions that reading the book will have certain consequences.
It’s also possible to believe that everyone should read a certain book without making clear predictions that open yourself up to experiences that falsify your beliefs that everyone should read this book.
It’s quite easy to adopt these kind of value signaling beliefs in a way that doesn’t make predictions.
Eliezer says/implies that real beliefs have to be about anticipation control, and that you can call any other beliefs fake/improper. From Belief as Attire:
“I have so far distinguished between belief as anticipation-controller, belief in belief, professing, and cheering. Of these, we might call anticipation-controlling beliefs ‘proper beliefs’ and the other forms ‘improper beliefs’.”
Yeah, it sounds like “corruption is always bad” involves anticipation control and making predictions. Something along the lines of “there aren’t any cases where the utilitarian consequences of corruption are a net positive”.
I think that “everyone should read the book” is a legitimate belief, because it implies the prediction that the benefits of reading the book are worthwhile. Whether or not it’s true is different from whether it is a legitimate, anticipation-controlling belief.
For this to be an example of belief in belief it’d have to be something like “I say that everyone should read it but I don’t actually anticipate that reading it will be worthwhile for people”.
It’s possible to believe that everyone should read a certain book because you are making predictions that reading the book will have certain consequences.
It’s also possible to believe that everyone should read a certain book without making clear predictions that open yourself up to experiences that falsify your beliefs that everyone should read this book.
It’s quite easy to adopt these kind of value signaling beliefs in a way that doesn’t make predictions.