The hostile telepaths problem

Published on October 27, 2024 3:26 PM GMTEpistemic status: model-building based on observation, with a few successful unusual predictions. Anecdotal evidence has so far been consistent with the model. This puts it at risk of seeming more compelling than the evidence justifies just yet. Caveat emptor.Imagine you're a very young child. Around, say, three years old.You've just done something that really upsets your mother. Maybe you were playing and knocked her glasses off the table and they broke.Of course you find her reaction uncomfortable. Maybe scary. You're too young to have detailed metacognitive thoughts, but if you could reflect on why you're scared, you wouldn't be confused: you're scared of how she'll react.She tells you to say you're sorry.You utter the magic words, hoping that will placate her.And she narrows her eyes in suspicion."You sure don't look sorry. Say it and mean it."Now you have a serious problem. You don't have an internal "actually mean it" button. And yet here's Mom peering into your soul and demanding that you both have that button and press it. Trying to appease her didn't work. She needs you to be different — and she's checking.What can you do now?This is a template for what I've come to call "the hostile telepaths problem". I think it's a common feature of social problems. The hostile telepaths problem is when you're dealing with a being (a) who can kind of read your internal experiences and (b) whom you don't trust won't make your situation worse due to what they find in you.There are lots of solutions to the hostile telepaths problem. I don't claim to know all of them. But recognizing some common ones has helped clarify a lot of my thinking — particularly around self-deception and akrasia.And getting very clear on the nature of the problem makes identifying real solutions way easier. This fact produces some previously-surprising-to-me predictions, especially for trauma processing and for making emotionally difficult decisions.I'll try to spell out what I mean with some theory and a few examples. Newcomblike self-deceptionThere's one really tricky solution to the hostile telepaths problem. It deserves some special front-loaded attention before I name some other solutions.Here I'll try to spell out its logic with a modification of https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/newcomb-s-problem


https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/5FAnfAStc7birapMx/the-hostile-telepaths-problem