From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Tue Jul 16 2002 - 03:05:25 MDT
Why do people lie? The main reason seem to be to create an imaginary,
better reality-image in others so that they will behave differently or
to maintain previous misrepresentations. Seen at this abstract level
lying isn't different at all from most communications, with the
exception that it deliberately doesn't deal with the real state of the
world.
Hence the only surefire way of reducing lying would be to make it harder
to not refer to the real state of the world. This is closely related to
making exposure more likely. Reducing the incentives for lying might be
helpful too, but does not prevent it altogether - quite a few of our
lies are not based on any external incentives but simply internal states
like avoiding embarassment.
So what to do? Openness and transparency might work to some extent, but
even if the facts that disprove a lie exist in the open, they can be
hidden by clutter. How many actually checks out posted news stories? How
many famous scientific experiments have actually been replicated? Hence
a good tool against lies would be a way of making it easier to check
claims - we likely already have enough transparency in many domains for
this to be useful. The ideal would be something like a smart search
agent gathering evidence pro or con a statement (here the entire
semantic web and reputation estimation discussion starts anew -
important stuff!).
Another approach is to make openness and transparency pay. In the
current climate it might be interesting to see if a company could earn
investor and customer confidence (and hence money) on being more open or
even transparent. The trick is to add the transparency where it is
needed (so as not to get an undue disadvantage compared to opaque
competitors) and important.
In the end, I think the big issue is whether trust is on the increase or
decrease. It is a cultural issue, and not just about what pays and
doesn't pay, but what symbols and values are promoted by ourselves. When
integrity becomes highly valued, then trust will also increase.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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