On Intellectual Dishonesty
aaronsw.com
On Intellectual Dishonesty
1–10 of 35 posts
Re: On Intellectual Dishonesty
#2Dishonesty is defined here as "1) saying that something that is untrue, and 2) saying it with the intent to mislead the other person.".
There's a third part "3) when the person expects you to be truthful". When you make a statement with the intent to mislead somebody but the person is fully aware that he is being mislead, there is no dishonesty. Magicians and illusionists deceive people who expect to be deceived, so that's OK. Same for CEOs and politicians: people are fully aware that words they use are chosen very carefully.
The first part, that a statement must be untrue in order to be dishonest is unneeded, I think. It's irrelevant whether you say something that's true or untrue, what matters is whether the audience is going to form a belief that is correct or not. For instance it's easy to lie to people by phrasing a statement with a triple negation. Few people parse triple negations properly.
The kindle single "Lying" (20 pages; $2 or so), by Sam Harris argues really well in favor of total and completely honesty (but not unnecessary rudeness). He defines lying as "to intentionally mislead others when they expect honest communication", which is the best definition I've come across.
Re: On Intellectual Dishonesty
#3Feynman: I would like to add something that's not essential to the science, but something I kind of believe, which is that you should not fool the laymen when you're talking as a scientist. . . . I'm talking about a specific, extra type of integrity that is not lying, but bending over backwards to show how you're maybe wrong, [an integrity] that you ought to have when acting as a scientist. And this is our responsibility as scientists, certainly to other scientists, and I think to laymen.
Re: On Intellectual Dishonesty
#4Advertising and marketing fails on all counts. "Truth in advertising" is the biggest lie of all.
Re: On Intellectual Dishonesty
#5When I lie I must think about the other guy, the person I am trying to deceive, in one of two ways:
(1) he is an aggressor and I must lie to defend myself, (2) he is a good person but I'm doing him an important favour.
Thus for example: (1) I deceive during wartime by feeding false information to enemy spies or painting wooden boxes to look like tanks, (2) I lie to a family member in order to protect his feelings.
These are 'good' lies. How does it manifest with bad lies?
I conjecture that the bad guys think in precisely the same ways!
So, for example, Hitler really thinks he is is the victim and needs more breathing room, (2) the conman believes his mark is naive and will benefit from learning the ways of the world.
In order to accomplish this the liar has to be intellectually dishonest. He must adopt conspiracy theories or other crazy explanations. He must ignore the nagging feeling from his conscience or impute it to the enemy's supposed injustices.
This makes me doubt the existence of bad intentions. Or if they do exist, they are strictly unconscious. Everyone sees himself as a good guy or a victim.
Re: On Intellectual Dishonesty
#6What the author classifies as "intellectual dishonesty" is what I'd usually call "lack of scientific rigor."
If the problem or discussion at hand is one that requires rigor to be meaningful or productive, then lack of rigor is definitely a problem, but it's not an action in bad faith.
Lack of rigor becomes bad-faith acting at the exact moment someone says "interesting result, send me your data and method of collection so I can try to duplicate" (i.e. 'send me the serialized representation of your rigor') and your response includes an excuse for why that isn't available anymore, or can't be shared, or will cost the asker a prohibitive amount of money or time, etc.
Re: On Intellectual Dishonesty
#7What the author classifies as "intellectual dishonesty" is what I'd usually call "lack of scientific rigor." If the problem or discussion at hand is one that requires rigor to be meaningful or productive, then lack of rigor is definitely a problem, but it's not an action in bad faith. Lack of rigor becomes bad-faith acting at the exact moment someone says "interesting result, send me your data and method of collectio…
I would define intellectual dishonesty, in its most basic form, as lying to oneself. If you're intentionally lying to others, you're being dishonest with them. But if you're glossing over your own second-guesses, or taking shortcuts you know to be lazy, or not bringing as much rigor to a situation as you know you are capable of bringing, then you are in some ways "lying" to yourself. Either you are not using your full intellectual capabilities, or you are convincing yourself that you have when you have not.
In this sense, "lack of scientific rigor" would be a subset of intellectual dishonesty. It's not always undertaken in bad faith, but when it's undertaken consciously, then it's dishonest.
Re: On Intellectual Dishonesty
#8Dishonesty is defined here as "1) saying that something that is untrue, and 2) saying it with the intent to mislead the other person.". There's a third part "3) when the person expects you to be truthful". When you make a statement with the intent to mislead somebody but the person is fully aware that he is being mislead, there is no dishonesty. Magicians and illusionists deceive people who expect to be deceived, so…
I disagree with your assessment of CEOs and politicians. For me, at least, it's because I've seen them lie so many times over so long that I no longer really trust what they say. I expected & would like to expect they tell the truth.
In other words, I still "expect" honest communication from CEOs and politicians and am frustrated by their lying.
Re: On Intellectual Dishonesty
#9Feynman: I would like to add something that's not essential to the science, but something I kind of believe, which is that you should not fool the laymen when you're talking as a scientist. . . . I'm talking about a specific, extra type of integrity that is not lying, but bending over backwards to show how you're maybe wrong, [an integrity] that you ought to have when acting as a scientist. And this is our responsibi…
And from the HN article "intellectual honesty requires bending-over-backwards to provide any evidence that you might be wrong."
The article is so close to a direct Feynman quote that it makes me wonder if the author was subconsciously plagiarizing Feynman. Normally, I wouldn't mind (subconscious plagiarism is everywhere). But in an article about intellectual honesty I would expect the author to "bend over backwards" to identify and declare potential sources of plagiarism. ;-)
Re: On Intellectual Dishonesty
#10What the author classifies as "intellectual dishonesty" is what I'd usually call "lack of scientific rigor." If the problem or discussion at hand is one that requires rigor to be meaningful or productive, then lack of rigor is definitely a problem, but it's not an action in bad faith. Lack of rigor becomes bad-faith acting at the exact moment someone says "interesting result, send me your data and method of collectio…
This brought to mind Mendel's experiments on inherited traits, which I don't believe anyone has been successful at reproducing as they were stated. It's unknown whether he got extremely lucky with his pea experiments or fudged the data, but he should not have had a large enough sample to provide the kinds of results he used to extract his laws of inheritance. This was during a different era in scientific research that did not demand nearly the kind of rigor we see today, yet somehow we still got along.
The more egregious kind of dishonesty is something like the Bell Curve, where a single exceptional example from a study (one out of 21 if memory serves) was used to essentially propose that minority racial groups were genetically inferior.