[munificent]

Here's an interesting question: If most people in a society believe corruption is at level X when it's actually at X+N, is it better to expose the reality or not?

Being a member of a society that you believe has low corruption disincentivizes you from being corrupt yourself because people generally want to follow the surrounding norms. So it's probably good for people to believe that corruption is better than it is.

But exposing corruption is also necessary to root it out and actually punish the people involved.

How does one make the trade-off for when disclosure is net helpful for reducing overall corruption? Does it depend on X and N?