This is an important line of thought, but I find myself very distracted by use of the word “updating” when you actually mean “publishing”. In my mind, “updating a belief” strongly implies an internal state change, which may or may not be externally visible. It’s a completely separate question of whether publishing or communicating a partial set of beliefs (because we can’t yet publish our entire belief state) is helpful or harmful to one’s goals.
All human interaction is a mix of cooperative and adversarial motives. Looking for mechanisms to increase cooperation and limit competitive motives is excellent, but we need to be clear that this isn’t about updating beliefs, it’s about broader human goal alignment.
Seems like the terminology is still not settled well.
There’s a general thing which can be divided into two more specific things.
General Thing: The information points to 50%, the incentive landscape points to 70%, Bob says “70%”.
Specific Thing 1: The information points to 50%, the incentive landscape points to 70%, Bob believes 50% and says “70%”.
Specific Thing 2: The information points to 50%, the incentive landscape points to 70%, Bob believes and says “70%”.
There are three Things and just two names, so the terminology is at least incomplete.
“Dishonest update reporting” sounds like the name of Specific Thing 1.
In Paul’s post “sluggish updating” referred to the General Thing, but Dagon’s argument here is that “sluggish updating” should only refer to Specific Thing 2. So there’s ambiguity.
It seems most important to have a good name for the General Thing. And that’s maybe the one that’s nameless? Perhaps “sluggish update reporting”, which can happen either because the updating is sluggish or because the reporting is sluggish/dishonest. Or “sluggish social updating”? Or something related to lightness? Or maybe “sluggish updating” is ok despite Dagon’s concerns (e.g. a meteorologist updating their forecast could refer to changes that they make to the forecast that they present to the world).
This is an important line of thought, but I find myself very distracted by use of the word “updating” when you actually mean “publishing”. In my mind, “updating a belief” strongly implies an internal state change, which may or may not be externally visible. It’s a completely separate question of whether publishing or communicating a partial set of beliefs (because we can’t yet publish our entire belief state) is helpful or harmful to one’s goals.
All human interaction is a mix of cooperative and adversarial motives. Looking for mechanisms to increase cooperation and limit competitive motives is excellent, but we need to be clear that this isn’t about updating beliefs, it’s about broader human goal alignment.
Agreed. Changed to dishonest update reporting.
Seems like the terminology is still not settled well.
There’s a general thing which can be divided into two more specific things.
General Thing: The information points to 50%, the incentive landscape points to 70%, Bob says “70%”.
Specific Thing 1: The information points to 50%, the incentive landscape points to 70%, Bob believes 50% and says “70%”.
Specific Thing 2: The information points to 50%, the incentive landscape points to 70%, Bob believes and says “70%”.
There are three Things and just two names, so the terminology is at least incomplete.
“Dishonest update reporting” sounds like the name of Specific Thing 1.
In Paul’s post “sluggish updating” referred to the General Thing, but Dagon’s argument here is that “sluggish updating” should only refer to Specific Thing 2. So there’s ambiguity.
It seems most important to have a good name for the General Thing. And that’s maybe the one that’s nameless? Perhaps “sluggish update reporting”, which can happen either because the updating is sluggish or because the reporting is sluggish/dishonest. Or “sluggish social updating”? Or something related to lightness? Or maybe “sluggish updating” is ok despite Dagon’s concerns (e.g. a meteorologist updating their forecast could refer to changes that they make to the forecast that they present to the world).