The Food Pile Guard who could not know: a tragedy
I hope this isn’t inappropriate. But I wanted to share these three tweets from Ronny Fernandez who goes by @Ratorthodox on Twitter. Every so often you see something so powerful, so profound that even though you didn’t write it, you have to let others know about it.
The Tweets
“People implementing strategies that depend on them not seeing the strategy clearly for their success is such a sadness, and when you see it, it’s hard to unsee.”
“Here's a fake example I like, you're applying for the prestigious role of to food pile guard. Four strats are available:
1) Be honest and steal from the food pile.
This doesn't work because the interviewer asks: will you steal from the food pile?
And you're like: Yep!
2) Be dishonest, and steal from the food pile.
This works sometimes, but the interviewer is going to ask if you are going to steal from the food pile, and you will have to lie, and lying can be hard, and this is an experienced interviewer.
3) Be honest and honorable and do not steal from the food pile.
This might get you the job, but then you don't get to steal food from the food pile.
4) Be honest and honorable and then later steal from the food pile.
You would never steal from the food pile. You were there throwing stones enthusiastically at the last food guard who stole from the food pile. Stealing from the food pile is disgusting and you feel this in your very soul.
The interviewer looks into your heart and sees this clearly. You get the job.
But then one night, you are there alone, and boy, YOU. ARE. HUNGRY. And not only are you hungry, your family is hungry. And there is SOOO much food in the food pile. Who would notice a tiny scrap has gone missing? And what's the point of being the food pile guard if you can't sneak a piece on occasion anyway? Everybody knows that's why you apply to become a food pile guard in the first place.
Strategy 4 works best, but it cannot work by its nature if you already know that is what you are doing, because if you did know that that is what you were doing, then you would have to lie to the interviewer, and you'd be stuck with strategy 2 again.”
That’s it
There it is, the tragic grandeur and cruelty of human experience. At any rate, a huge slice of it. So much suffering and moral failure originate here.
Now when I saw this Tweet, I’d been aware of the phenomenon. Recently I made a note in which I remarked that the difference between neurotypicals and many autistic people is not the capacity of neurotypicals to be Machiavellian- many autistics can do that - but the capacity of the neurotypical to be Machiavellian without being aware of it. I understood that the capacity to hide your purposes from yourself plays a big role, in human life but I didn’t see how big.
But upon reading the Tweet, I got it. It is deeply useful for us not to understand ourselves precisely because we’re bad at lying.
This is why we’re such hypocrites.
This is why we convince ourselves that we’re fundamentally different from the wicked because it is useful for us to believe that we are fundamentally superior. This is where the mania for punishment comes from- far out of proportion to its usefulness- because a mania for punishment both reflects and reinforces our sense of qualitative otherness from the deviant.
That we cannot know ourselves because our ignorance of ourselves is useful is a truism. What this phenomenon explains is why it is useful for us not to know ourselves. It explains when we try to know ourselves, in any morally relevant sense, we generally confabulate, make things up, and congratulate ourselves for our wisdom.
It explains why, at the level of society, demands we know ourselves are either violently opposed (Socrates) or are recuperated into narcissistic tale-spinning (Hippie-Woo self-exploration).
This is why evil is usually pathetic. The bearer of ill will can’t even look at themselves.
This makes me think about the unknowable space beyond humanity. Transhumanism raises questions like what would society be like if we were much more intelligent? What if we were immortal? What would society be like if we could swap in and out of bodies? and so on. But I wonder about other questions. What would society be like if we could remove our capacity to lie to ourselves? What would society be like if we could see ourselves from the outside? What would society be like if we could remove our capacity to lie to others? What would society be like if we could bind ourselves to our own values? Of course, some people would refuse these changes, but others wouldn’t, how would these groups regard each other? How would this change the allocation of trust? Would society be better, worse, or unimaginably far sideways?
First off, I totally agree that twitter thread is getting at something real and important, so I appreciate this post simply for that reason.
Secondly, if you haven't read it, Cixin Liu's The Three-Body problem novel (and subsequent series) does a provocative job of describing a hyperintelligent alien species, but one in which its impossible for the entities to lie to themselves or each other. It's definitely worth checking out for that reason alone (and I think it's generally a good read).
Finally, I think this idea might be crucial to understanding part(s) of the link between autism and intelligence. Speaking personally, I've never conceived of myself as "autistic," but there were many aspects of autism/Aspergers that I did identify with, so I've often wondered whether I would have been diagnosed with it were I a Zoomer or Generation Alpha. I think that there was a real increase in autism diagnosis because of people similar to me leaning into/seeking a diagnosis because enough incentives had switched from such a diagnosis being "bad" into being "good." If we assume the real distribution of neurotypes has remained roughly stable for the past 30 years (admittedly an assumption), then I think less/in ability to self-deceive might be a primary factor for autism, but one which is mostly orthogonal to intelligence. So people who are intelligent but have lesser ability to self-deceive will end up as "nerds," a group which would include people who have Asperger's to those who are just a little socially awkward. Whereas those who are intelligent and have "typical" ability to self-deceive will be the popular kids/leaders of whatever area they find themselves in. (High ability to self-deceive and high intelligence seems like seems likely to produce especially high-variance outcomes, with CEO and grifter being equally likely). But, the main takeaway is, I now can construct a D&D style alignment chart with intelligence as one axis and ability/willingness/ease of self-deception as the other. And who doesn't love a good alignment chart?