Reasoning well, but getting things wrong because the world is complicated and you got unlucky.
Reasoning badly, because you are dumb.
Reasoning badly, because you are biased, and on some more-or-less subconscious level not even trying to reason well.
Reasoning well, having a clear model of the world in your mind, but more-or-less subconsciously and unthinkingly presenting technically true facts in a deceptive way that leaves other people confused, without ever technically lying.
Reasoning well, having a clear model of the world in your mind, but very consciously, and with full knowledge of what you’re doing, presenting technically true facts in a deceptive way intended to make other people confused, without ever technically lying.
Reasoning well, having a clear model of the world in your mind, and literally lying and making up false facts to deceive other people.
In a perfect world, we would have separate words for all of these. In our own world, to save time and energy we usually apply a few pre-existing words to all of them.
(I think that last statement is wrong; we aren’t applying a few pre-existing words in order to save time, we’re applying pre-existing words because the millions of people who created and established the use of those few pre-existing words were largely clueless about the differences between these 7 separate instances, because Scott Alexander wrote this list in 2023 instead of hundreds of years ago).
I think this is a neat model improvement from Scott Alexander’s list of media lies from his series on media/news companies:
(I think that last statement is wrong; we aren’t applying a few pre-existing words in order to save time, we’re applying pre-existing words because the millions of people who created and established the use of those few pre-existing words were largely clueless about the differences between these 7 separate instances, because Scott Alexander wrote this list in 2023 instead of hundreds of years ago).