Right, so, that first one is also true of perfectly rational agents, so tells us nothing interesting. (Unless you quantify “they make better decisions when given the truth” as “in expectation” or “on average”, rather than “as events actually turn out”—but in that case I once again doubt the claim as it applies to people you’ve met.)
Yes, in expectation over how the events can turn out given the (very rough and approximate) probability distributions they have in their minds at the time of/right after receiving the information. For every single person I know, I believe there are some situations where, were I to give them the truth, I would predict (at the time of giving them the information, not post hoc) that they will perform worse than if I had told them something other than the truth.
This is why I said “make better decisions” instead of merely “obtain better outcomes,” since the latter would lend itself more naturally to the interpretation of “as things actually turn out,” while the decision is evaluated on the basis of what was known at the time and not through what happened to occur.
Right, so, that first one is also true of perfectly rational agents, so tells us nothing interesting. (Unless you quantify “they make better decisions when given the truth” as “in expectation” or “on average”, rather than “as events actually turn out”—but in that case I once again doubt the claim as it applies to people you’ve met.)
Yes, in expectation over how the events can turn out given the (very rough and approximate) probability distributions they have in their minds at the time of/right after receiving the information. For every single person I know, I believe there are some situations where, were I to give them the truth, I would predict (at the time of giving them the information, not post hoc) that they will perform worse than if I had told them something other than the truth.
This is why I said “make better decisions” instead of merely “obtain better outcomes,” since the latter would lend itself more naturally to the interpretation of “as things actually turn out,” while the decision is evaluated on the basis of what was known at the time and not through what happened to occur.