[esahione]

Humans are notoriously good at coming up with bullshit explanations for both random/statistical & deterministic phenomena. Why do we want AI to do the same? "Trust"?

Please.

I work in finance (investment strategy; ensemble trading models) and I trust my algorithms more than I'd trust 99% of the portfolio managers out there. And these PMs are incredibly capable at coming up with bullshit explanations for market moves on short notice.

[esquire_900]

You are right. In that sense, the AI that puts out the best bullshit will eventually "win", as in general with humanity.

Your perspective (and most readers here) is very different then those of the general population though. The creator of an AI has a deep understanding of how it came to live (even if it does not fully grasp the current learned decision making). But for the average Joe, it's impossible to correctly decide to trust an AI or not.

So even though you're completely right, it's the direction we'll go in anyway. Either humans or other AI's vouch for an algorithm, and 99% of the population will just go with it. It's crap stacked on other crap, and some entities in the right place hugely abuse their position, but it's the only way.

[hos234]

> Humans are notoriously good at coming up with bullshit explanations

This is true, but bullshit stories have benefit not just to one side but both sides of the relationship more often than not, which is why evolution hasn't got ride of lying - its not a bug its a feature (for certain class of problems)- https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/06/lying-ho...

[kerkeslager]

Uh, could you point out what part of that article you think supports your claim that "bullshit stories have benefit not just to one side but both sides of the relationship more often than not"? I just read it and didn't see anything that indicated that.

In the past few years I've worked pretty hard on building habits of honesty. Not from an ethical perspective--I'm an atheist and don't see any inherent reason to follow any prescriptive ideology--but from a self-benefit perspective. Cooperation is highly beneficial, moreso perhaps than at any time in history, and honesty allows a deeper level of cooperation with my peers. It's surprisingly difficult, as someone who viewed themselves initially as an already-honest person, but it yields major benefits. In the long term, I'm not even convinced that lying benefits the liar, let alone the person being lied to.

[ysavir]

I just want to "second" this message. It's an attitude I've adopted and has been highly beneficial. It might seem like an uphill battle at first, with plenty of challenges, but ultimately has none of the challenges once the habit is steady. Rather, there are no challenges regarding honesty, because there is only one course of action available.

Some people may respond to it poorly, but I've learned to see this as a test of character. People worth interacting with and investing in will appreciate that honesty. People that don't appreciate it will likely be a source of conflict sooner or later anyway.

Perhaps the only valid "challenge" is learning how to be honest in a productive and beneficial way, but this challenge is distinct from challenges that _result_ from being honest.

[hos234]

Doesn't the pie chart show to make others laugh, to protect others feelings, to maintain social norms, for economic/personal advantage (usually benefits family), to escape harm (again usually benefits your family when you don't get yourself killed while dealing with evil) etc

Both honesty and lying are tools. You choose how you use them. Whether to benefit others or to take advantage of others is a choice you make.

But there will be situations where the tool of honesty wont work, and if you walk into those situations having convinced yourself that lying isn't a tool available, then people who don't think that way will be better prepared than you to handle those situations.

Basically be aware where lies can be used. Don't just dismiss it totally as only useable for evil.

During Hitler's rise people like to point at the Honest folk who stood up against him like Carl Goerdeler, Dietrich Bonhoeffer. But there were people like Wilhelm Canaris who lied day in day out and did all kinds of damage and saved a whole lot of lives.

[kerkeslager]

> Doesn't the pie chart show to make others laugh,

I'd question whether this actually is lying. Lying implies intent to deceive. For a scientific study, it makes sense to include this in the data, but I'm not sure it counts as lying. I'm not sure a priest, rabbi, and imam have ever walked into a bar together, but I'm pretty sure nobody is worried about whether it's true when I say they did.

> to protect others feelings,

As I've pointed out elsewhere, I don't think this actually helps the person being lied to in the long run.

> to maintain social norms,

Is there even an argument that this benefits the person being lied to?

> for economic/personal advantage (usually benefits family),

Doesn't benefit the person being lied to.

> to escape harm (again usually benefits your family when you don't get yourself killed while dealing with evil) etc

Again doesn't benefit the person being lied to. It's also a bit of a stretch to extrapolate "avoidance" from the chart to what you're saying, and I'd argue that the situations where you're lying to evil that might kill you are pretty unusual. I'd absolutely have no qualms lying to Nazis during the Third Reich, but that's not a fact which has any bearing on my life right now.

[blackflame]

Warning: Do not try this advice when your wife asks if the pants make her butt look fat. The benefits of lying have been proven over and over again in this scenario.

[kerkeslager]

That's simply not true in my experience. I suspect you haven't actually tried what you're saying over any significant period of time to make the claim you're making.

You're lying to avoid a conflict which is simply not that large in the grand scheme of a lifelong relationship. If I think pants make her butt look fat, that's not necessarily even a problem: it doesn't mean I'm not attracted to her in those pants, or that you even need to be attracted to her in any specific pants, or that she should even base her clothing choices on your opinions. And in a more general sense, why is she asking questions she doesn't want an answer to? If your relationship can't handle communicating honestly about very minor things like this, you're totally screwed when it comes to real issues, like the changing nature of attraction as you age, or asking for what you need to feel fulfilled in a relationship, or concern for the person's health at their weight. If you can't communicate in a really insignificant situation like this, how are you going to communicate when there's anything of actual significance?

Honesty with kindness is a skill, and it's certainly not trivial, but lying isn't the kinder option, even in this case.

Coming at it from the other side of things: when someone lies to me to spare my feelings, there's a lot of times where I know they're lying, and that means I can't trust them to give me honest feedback when I really don't know. If I can't trust someone to tell me something negative, then I can't trust them when they tell me something positive either.

[taneq]

The correct answer to this is an appreciative "oh yes, yes they do."

[ysavir]

It was probably lying that got you in this situation in the first place.

[kerkeslager]

True.

I'm honest much earlier in relationships about much more significant things, so it's highly unlikely that I'll end up married to someone who couldn't handle honest in this situation.

[blackflame]

But how do you handle people that take offense to honesty?

[_0ffh]

I'd like to point out that these "bullshit stories" are not necessarily lies. They could just be the post hoc rationalisation of hunches.

[grabbalacious]

One of the issues is that humans don't reason what the current situation is prior to emotional response and action. Rather their emotions about the situation are inputs into the reasoning process.

e.g. The fear elicited upon perceiving a particular person causes the conclusion that he is dangerous, not vice versa.

The multifarious causes of emotions are notoriously difficult to trace, and can indeed be somewhat noisy. Thus most people are effectively just rationalising when asked why they behaved as they did.

[im3w1l]

This is a perspective I have not heard before. Iiuc, you are saying that there is a risk that the AI will come up with plausibly deniable things and just give us the rationalizations.

[Kalium]

There are two ideas here, I think. First is that humans aren't actually very good at plausible explanations of decisions or causes. We're very good at providing acceptable justifications after the fact. So good at it, that when combined with the deep-seated human need for the world to have order, that people readily confuse the two.

Second, it may not be desirable to have AI that replicates this. Teaching a machine to give us post-hoc justifications the way we do to one another may not be as helpful as it sounds.