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On sincerity — LessWrong

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Comment by paulfchristiano - Here is an account that tries to unify these associations. I mostly took this away from the post rather than coming in with it, and so I think it’s quite similar to what you are saying but maybe a bit cleaner. Conversation or deliberation often has the explicit purpose of discovering truth or making a decision. But we also have a bunch of other reasons we care about how conversations or deliberations go. For example: * They take time and attention that we could spend elsewhere. * They can be fun and interesting, or boring and uncomfortable. * If public, listeners will infer something about us from what we say. * Even if private, thinking clearly about a topic can make it harder to maintain a fiction. * They can effect the balance of power in a group or within an individual. * Sometimes we just don’t want to help other people find the truth. I’m inclined to call a deliberation or conversation sincere to the extent that we are prioritizing mostly the decision-making or truth-seeking function above all that other stuff we care about. Any of those other considerations can lead to a failure of sincerity: I don’t want to spend the time or attention, I want to take the opportunity say something witty, I don’t want to show my true colors, I want to tell an explicit lie, I want to avoid challenging a convenient self-image, I want to avoid lines of inquiry that might make me feel compelled to do something... I think that this mostly captures the associations you describe: 1. “Like truth-seeking” is straightforward. 2. “Not playing pretend” is straightforward. 3. “Healthy stapleclippers” becomes a particular failure of sincerity, where deliberation and inquiry are casualties of conflict between conflicting impulses—my sense of sincerity doesn't require that conflicting impulses get along in a deep sense of finding the best bargain or anything like that, but it does require that they be willing to come to the table and talk it out (or at least not sabotage when

x On sincerity — LessWrong Taking Ideas Seriously World Optimization Frontpage 79 On sincerity by Joe Carlsmith 23rd Dec 2022 50 min read 6 79 Cross-posted from my website . Audio version here , or search "Joe Carlsmith Audio" on your podcast app. Nearby is the country they call life. You will know it by its seriousness. - Rilke 1. Introduction There’s a thing I call “sincerity” that matters a lot to me. In particular, it’s core to how I hope to orient towards the world. And it’s one of the main things I look for in people and communities. My hope, in this essay, is to bring what I mean by sin

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