You’re far more invested in the terminology than I agree with. I can understand being frustrated that humans don’t weigh the concept “alice earnestly endorsed harmful falsehoods” as heavily as “alice benefitted herself over the group by spreading falsehoods”, but that’s not a problem with language, it’s an effect you can see in the language, caused by human cognitive evolution.
Most of these conversations should actually be addressed on the object level. If you care that it’s Alice as opposed to Charlie who’s espousing the ideas, or that Dean (who’s not present to agree or disagree) is going to be unduly swayed, be aware that you’re in hard-mode politics, not simple truth-finding.
I agree with your second-half comment quite a bit: intentionally misleading statements are, in fact, more harmful than honest-but-wrong (even if motivated) beliefs. In the lying case, the intent is to harm (or to privilege the liar over the group) and the lies will change as necessary to maximize the harm. In the motivated reasoning case, it’s probably not going to get better, but it’s not likely to get a lot worse. Bad actors are, in fact, worse than incompetent ones. To the extent that we have limited capability for detecting and addressing falsehoods, a focus on intent seems reasonable.
Also, Robin Hanson’s little voice in my ear is reminding me to mention hypocrisy and personal denial of responsibility. I’m almost certainly mistaken on some things which benefit me. I don’t want to punish such errors very strongly, lest I be punished for them when found out.
The terminology thing in the OP was I think most intended to highlight an underlying mood, that I wanted to make sure (in the subsequent discussion) people knew I wasn’t missing, as well as framing why I thought “this particular mood” was important rather than a somewhat-different mood that I expect Benquo, Jessica and others would have naively expected/preferred me to have.
I’m not certain whether the problem is really the lack of a word, but I think it’s at least useful to have shared concept of “when someone is motivatedly wrong, we have an easier time coordinating around that because we’ve read this blogpost.” (I designed the rhetoric of the blogpost to facilitate saying “hey, Alice is wrong, and I think we should be sitting bolt upright in alarm about this, not just shrugging it off.”)
You’re far more invested in the terminology than I agree with. I can understand being frustrated that humans don’t weigh the concept “alice earnestly endorsed harmful falsehoods” as heavily as “alice benefitted herself over the group by spreading falsehoods”, but that’s not a problem with language, it’s an effect you can see in the language, caused by human cognitive evolution.
Most of these conversations should actually be addressed on the object level. If you care that it’s Alice as opposed to Charlie who’s espousing the ideas, or that Dean (who’s not present to agree or disagree) is going to be unduly swayed, be aware that you’re in hard-mode politics, not simple truth-finding.
I agree with your second-half comment quite a bit: intentionally misleading statements are, in fact, more harmful than honest-but-wrong (even if motivated) beliefs. In the lying case, the intent is to harm (or to privilege the liar over the group) and the lies will change as necessary to maximize the harm. In the motivated reasoning case, it’s probably not going to get better, but it’s not likely to get a lot worse. Bad actors are, in fact, worse than incompetent ones. To the extent that we have limited capability for detecting and addressing falsehoods, a focus on intent seems reasonable.
Also, Robin Hanson’s little voice in my ear is reminding me to mention hypocrisy and personal denial of responsibility. I’m almost certainly mistaken on some things which benefit me. I don’t want to punish such errors very strongly, lest I be punished for them when found out.
The terminology thing in the OP was I think most intended to highlight an underlying mood, that I wanted to make sure (in the subsequent discussion) people knew I wasn’t missing, as well as framing why I thought “this particular mood” was important rather than a somewhat-different mood that I expect Benquo, Jessica and others would have naively expected/preferred me to have.
I’m not certain whether the problem is really the lack of a word, but I think it’s at least useful to have shared concept of “when someone is motivatedly wrong, we have an easier time coordinating around that because we’ve read this blogpost.” (I designed the rhetoric of the blogpost to facilitate saying “hey, Alice is wrong, and I think we should be sitting bolt upright in alarm about this, not just shrugging it off.”)