On Intellectual Dishonesty

http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/intellectualdishonesty

by wglb • 15 years ago

92 34 15 years ago

gizmo2• 15 years ago

Dishonesty 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.

oconnor0• 15 years ago

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.

mdc• 15 years ago

I agree. We tend to accept lies from politicians because they "always" lie and we don't expect otherwise. But understanding that this is the practical reality at the moment doesn't mean it should be acceptable. We should push back and expect more.

Every time someone repeats the lie that lying politicians are expected and accepted, they're helping make the lie true. Stop it.

graysnorf2• 15 years ago

The difference being that the magician deceives you for your own benefit and at your request. Though the CEO and politician deceive you (or lie with the intent to deceive), you didn't ask them to.

cma2• 15 years ago

Feynman: 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.

MichaelGagnon• 15 years ago

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. ;-)

cma2• 15 years ago

Yep, I read it and immediately felt that I had read that same phrase somewhere else.

wnight• 15 years ago

I don't credit the creators of fire, and indoor heating, every time I turn the thermostat up. I similarly see no reason to try to credit the "original" speaker or author unless I'm using a sizable chunk of their work verbatim.

Especially as while Feynman said that I highly doubt he was the first to think it. He was, very likely, merely distilling things he'd heard before much as the current author was.

anothermachine• 15 years ago

I also instantly thought of this when I read Aaron's post. It is a bit dishonest not to credit this famous promulgator of the idea.

more from Feynman, via

"Cargo Cult Science", adapted from a commencement address given at Caltech (1974)

quoted at https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Richard_Feynman

There is one feature I notice that is generally missing in "cargo cult science." It's a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty — a kind of leaning over backwards. For example, if you're doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid — not only what you think is right about it; other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you've eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked — to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated.

Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them. You must do the best you can — if you know anything at all wrong, or possibly wrong — to explain it. If you make a theory, for example, and advertise it, or put it out, then you must also put down all the facts that disagree with it, as well as those that agree with it...

In summary, the idea is to try to give all of the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgment in one particular direction or another.

drcube2• 15 years ago

Advertising and marketing fails on all counts. "Truth in advertising" is the biggest lie of all.

drcube2• 15 years ago

I guess lying is bad for science. It's cool if you're just trying to make money.

Seriously, advertising that isn't lying is called "information". And very very few advertisers stick to simply informing people about their product and its verified functions.

It's always "This is so cool! Everybody is using it! Impress your friends! Pick up chicks! It won't hurt.". Lies, all.

Keep the downvotes coming.

wrathchild• 15 years ago

When 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.

RickHull• 15 years ago

> Or if they do exist, they are strictly unconscious. Everyone sees himself as a good guy or a victim.

Generally, I agree with your thrust, but not so strongly as you have phrased it. Self-acknowledged "bad guys" do exist.

feralchimp• 15 years ago

What 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.

jonnathanson• 15 years ago

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.

flatline• 15 years ago

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.

funkah• 15 years ago

Nice little write-up. I think I should take "This is an impractical standard to apply to everyday life" more to heart. In conversation I sometimes find myself adding unnecessary caveats to what I say, sort of similar to his "slept in one time in 2003" example. And he's right, trying to hold yourself to this standard of honesty all the time in real life will make people think you're weird.

graysnorf2• 15 years ago

On the other hand, be careful with this approach. It can be very difficult to get candid feedback in environments with a certain expectation of etiquette.

One advantage you may be winning for yourself with your caveats, without even realizing it, is a degree of credibility. By being careful that what you say is correct, and not merely "Basically right, more or less. Kind of.", you may find it much easier to convince people when you _do_ take stronger positions.

I think Aaron's counterexample is pretty terrible. Recalling one time you slept in once in 2003 is really not pertinent to the spirit of the question. The point is clearly not to ask you whether you have ever failed to show up for work on time, but whether you have reason to believe that it may be particularly difficult for you now, perhaps because you live far away or have a history of repeated difficulties with time management.

Personally I would recommend erring on the side of accuracy. I've witnessed plenty of cargo cult programming. "This technology will perform well enough for us" could mean from one person "I have run benchmarks on representative hardware and know that, under conditions I am about to explain, this technology will work for us", and from another "I have read about someone else using this technology in some way for something. I don't remember where I read it. Probably a blog post that made it to hacker news."

tokenadult• 15 years ago

A widely linked reprint of Richard Feynman's "Cargo Cult Science" commencement address at Caltech:

http://www.lhup.edu/~DSIMANEK/cargocul.htm

The original Caltech posting of the speech text, in .PDF format:

http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.pdf

"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 layman when you're talking as a scientist. I am not trying to tell you what to do about cheating on your wife, or fooling your girlfriend, or something like that, when you're not trying to be a scientist, but just trying to be an ordinary human being. We'll leave those problems up to you and your rabbi. I'm talking about a specific, extra type of integrity that is not lying, but bending over backwards to show how you are maybe wrong, 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."

ivankirigin2• 15 years ago

Huge example of intellectual dishonesty in academia: you effectively can't publish negative results.

tlb• 15 years ago

I suspect the problem is not rejections, but that people don't bother submitting them because it's not exciting.

Has anyone here tried hard to publish a negative result and had it consistently rejected?

ivankirigin2• 15 years ago

Yes, that the researchers don't push to publish them is what is dishonest.

jgamman• 15 years ago

the exception is when the deviation from expectation is significant ie, 5-sigma certainty particles not conforming to speed of light limit would get a pretty quick acceptance.

vph• 15 years ago

Yes you can. When the answer to a unsolved problem could be either positive or negative, you can always publish negative results.

What you can't publish are things that are not novel and things that are worst than existing methods.

oinksoft• 15 years ago

> indeed, if you were intellectually honest all the time people would think you were pretty weird.

See the biography of Stonewall Jackson. People thought his practice somewhat peculiar, but it earned him respect.

radley• 15 years ago

It's called lying by omission:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie#Lying_by_omission

paulgerhardt• 15 years ago

On Intellectual Dishonesty

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