I’m greatly relieved by the reassurance that it is intended that mature FAIs can modify their injunctions, which are not self protective. Mature humans also should be able to do so though. Given agreement on that, we can surely agree that humans should use injunctions including an injunction against self-deception, but we disagree on which ones we should use. One strong concern I have is that most humans, like yourself for instance will tend to choose those injunctions that they want an excuse for obeying anyway because departure from them is emotionally costly rather than choosing those which they actually have the most reason to expect to make things work better. For instance, instead of an injunction not to lie, one which reduces the conflict between your altruism and your wish not to lie, I recommend trying the “Belldandy style be nice” injunction that you tried on a few years ago and found too emotionally costly. With time it would become, like not lying, cheaper to be nice than not to be, and the impact on your efficacy would greatly improve. A better parallel to lying, which most nerds would actually benefit from and therefor should actually try to install in themselves, is one against interrupting non-nerds. It frequently seems like one has a brilliant idea that might matter a lot and which must be explored before it is forgotten, but in practice this intuition is extremely unreliable, yet if it is to be obeyed it must be obeyed without serious prior deliberation. In such (frequent) cases, nerds tend to find it very emotionally costly and SEEMINGLY negative expected utility to refrain from interrupting non-nerds, yet they fairly reliably make an in aggregate costly mistake when they do so and harm their reputations. On rare occasions an extremely valuable idea may be lost by not interrupting in this manner, just as extremely valuable revenue may be lost by not robbing a bank, but on average we can look and see that the non-interrupting (with non-nerds) and non-bank-robbing policies have a better track record.
WRT politicians.
“Have the ones who’ve lied more, done better?”
Lately, in the US at the presidential level, I would say clearly yes with respect to negative campaigning such as Swift Boat and “I invented the internet”. Even Clinton famously ultimately did better by lying, as the Republicans were hurt far more reputationally by the impeachment process than he was.
In cases where the politician who told more lies won, has that politician gone on to rule well in an absolute sense?
Surely sometimes, but I think that there’s significant adverse selection so generally no. However, evidential decision theory isn’t the final word. Even if lying is strong evidence of badness it isn’t necessarily a major cause (especially in thoughtful adults) of said badness. The inside/outside view and meta-level vs. object level questions do come up here thought
Is it actually true that no one who refused to lie (and this is not the same as always telling the whole truth) could win political office?
Not quite, but they would have to be roughly as self-deceiving as the public to do so in any reasonably fair election. You have yourself said that good lie detectors could be dangerous because they could ensure sincere sociopathic morons won office and that this would likely be worse than lying egoists. Some gerrymandered congressional districts might enable truthful electioneering, but not nomination as the candidate for the relevant party.
Are the lies expected, and in that sense, less than true betrayals of someone who trusts you?
Sort-of, but not to a substantially different degree than is true in almost all social interactions with non-nerds.
Are there understood Rules of Politics that include lies but not assassinations, which the good politicians abide by, so that they are not really violating the ethics of their tribe?
Definitely.
Will the world be so much worse off if sufficiently good people refuse to tell outright lies and are thereby barred from public office; or would we thereby lose a George Washington or Marcus Aurelius or two, and thereby darken history?
I would say that the world has become much worse with time for this reason, as the scenario you describe has largely occurred.
I’m greatly relieved by the reassurance that it is intended that mature FAIs can modify their injunctions, which are not self protective. Mature humans also should be able to do so though. Given agreement on that, we can surely agree that humans should use injunctions including an injunction against self-deception, but we disagree on which ones we should use. One strong concern I have is that most humans, like yourself for instance will tend to choose those injunctions that they want an excuse for obeying anyway because departure from them is emotionally costly rather than choosing those which they actually have the most reason to expect to make things work better. For instance, instead of an injunction not to lie, one which reduces the conflict between your altruism and your wish not to lie, I recommend trying the “Belldandy style be nice” injunction that you tried on a few years ago and found too emotionally costly. With time it would become, like not lying, cheaper to be nice than not to be, and the impact on your efficacy would greatly improve. A better parallel to lying, which most nerds would actually benefit from and therefor should actually try to install in themselves, is one against interrupting non-nerds. It frequently seems like one has a brilliant idea that might matter a lot and which must be explored before it is forgotten, but in practice this intuition is extremely unreliable, yet if it is to be obeyed it must be obeyed without serious prior deliberation. In such (frequent) cases, nerds tend to find it very emotionally costly and SEEMINGLY negative expected utility to refrain from interrupting non-nerds, yet they fairly reliably make an in aggregate costly mistake when they do so and harm their reputations. On rare occasions an extremely valuable idea may be lost by not interrupting in this manner, just as extremely valuable revenue may be lost by not robbing a bank, but on average we can look and see that the non-interrupting (with non-nerds) and non-bank-robbing policies have a better track record.
WRT politicians.
“Have the ones who’ve lied more, done better?”
Lately, in the US at the presidential level, I would say clearly yes with respect to negative campaigning such as Swift Boat and “I invented the internet”. Even Clinton famously ultimately did better by lying, as the Republicans were hurt far more reputationally by the impeachment process than he was.
In cases where the politician who told more lies won, has that politician gone on to rule well in an absolute sense?
Surely sometimes, but I think that there’s significant adverse selection so generally no. However, evidential decision theory isn’t the final word. Even if lying is strong evidence of badness it isn’t necessarily a major cause (especially in thoughtful adults) of said badness. The inside/outside view and meta-level vs. object level questions do come up here thought
Is it actually true that no one who refused to lie (and this is not the same as always telling the whole truth) could win political office?
Not quite, but they would have to be roughly as self-deceiving as the public to do so in any reasonably fair election. You have yourself said that good lie detectors could be dangerous because they could ensure sincere sociopathic morons won office and that this would likely be worse than lying egoists. Some gerrymandered congressional districts might enable truthful electioneering, but not nomination as the candidate for the relevant party.
Are the lies expected, and in that sense, less than true betrayals of someone who trusts you?
Sort-of, but not to a substantially different degree than is true in almost all social interactions with non-nerds.
Are there understood Rules of Politics that include lies but not assassinations, which the good politicians abide by, so that they are not really violating the ethics of their tribe?
Definitely.
Will the world be so much worse off if sufficiently good people refuse to tell outright lies and are thereby barred from public office; or would we thereby lose a George Washington or Marcus Aurelius or two, and thereby darken history?
I would say that the world has become much worse with time for this reason, as the scenario you describe has largely occurred.