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The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life
An individual, working alone, will have natural doubts. They will think to themselves “Can I really do XYZ?,” because there’s nothing impolite about doubting your own competence. But when two unconfident people form a group, it is polite to say nice and reassuring things, and impolite to question the other person’s competence. Together they become
... See moreEliezer Yudkowsky • Rationality
The link between intentional deception and cognitive limitations was made five centuries ago by Machiavelli. “Men are so simple and so ready to follow the needs of the moment,” he wrote, “that the deceiver will always find someone to deceive.”
Timur Kuran • Private Truths, Public Lies: The Social Consequences of Preference Falsification
As a rule of thumb, whenever communication is discreet—subtle, cryptic, or ambiguous—it’s a fair bet that the speaker is trying to get away with something by preventing the message from becoming common knowledge.
Robin Hanson • The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life
That people show off these illegible globs in public only makes sense from a signaling perspective: They are saying, “look at how many nodes I have in my brain, amazing nodes, I have so many nodes that a peon such as yourself can’t even guess what’s going on here!”