
On Intellectual Dishonesty - wglb
http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/intellectualdishonesty
======
cma
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
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. ;-)

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

------
feralchimp
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
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.

------
gizmo
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
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
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.

~~~
gizmo
I completely disagree. For every voter with an IQ of 120 we have a voter with
an IQ of 80. For every voter with an IQ of 130 we have a voter with an IQ of
70. There is a huge part of the population that cannot be persuaded with
argument or reason. But the problem isn't just that the majority is uneducated
or unintelligent. It's also about the team dynamics that are at play here. The
moment you answer a question "incorrectly", you become the enemy in the eye of
the voter: somebody from the other team. It betrays weakness.

This is why so many politicians are completely unable to concede a single
point, even when it's completely obvious they're wrong, even when conceding
the point wouldn't damage the strength of their argument. The rules political
rhetoric are simple: disagree with all arguments and facts of those you oppose
and never ever ever admit you're wrong. The moment you say you made a mistake
your opponents will mercilessly use it against you and your supporters will
perceive you as weak.

The whole political game is not fact based and never has been, in no country
at no point in history. It's about teams. And people want their team to _WIN_
, facts be damned.

~~~
thebigshane
Perhaps there are legitimate reasons for lying (we can save that for a
separate thread). But it's still lying.

I would argue that lying has nothing to do with expectations. Magicians and
comedians lie, but we are okay with it and we (hopefully) don't believe those
statements. We just get our chuckles and forget about them.

Many (not all) people expect politicians and other leaders to lie. And like
you said, maybe we need them to lie, maybe the world is better for it. And I
am sure there are plenty of politically correct terms to use for those
instances instead of lying.

But if the statement is false, then it is false. It doesn't matter how the
recipient of the message interprets it, that's their problem.

------
tokenadult
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."

------
wrathchild
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
> 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.

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

~~~
tlb
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?

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

~~~
burgerbrain
Is it really feasible to publish _everything_?

And if you do publish everything, then everything will be lost in a sea of
noise... you'd need to create "ultra-publishing" to resolve that...

------
oinksoft
> 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
It's called lying by omission:

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

~~~
paulgerhardt
See also: Implicature

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implicature>

------
Create
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Feynman>:

"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the
easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that. After
you've not fooled yourself, it's easy not to fool other scientists. You just
have to be honest in a conventional way after that."

We've learned from experience that the truth will come out. Other
experimenters will repeat your experiment and find out whether you were wrong
or right. Nature's phenomena will agree or they'll disagree with your theory.
And, although you may gain some temporary fame and excitement, you will not
gain a good reputation as a scientist if you haven't tried to be very careful
in this kind of work. And it's this type of integrity, this kind of care not
to fool yourself, that is missing to a large extent in much of the research in
cargo cult science.

"Cargo Cult Science", adapted from a commencement address given at Caltech
(1974) <http://www.lhup.edu/~DSIMANEK/cargocul.htm>

------
maeon3
To be the most honest person in the world you have to be good at knowing when
to lie, cheat, deceive, mislead and steal. People who never do any of those
things are forced into positions where they must lie, cheat, deceive, mislead
and steal... Unless they understand the spirit of the game and bring in the
whole picture with words like justice, fairness, catch-22's, war, and love.

do you tell the genius ax murderer who is trying to kill you that you have
changed your name and new location when he asks? Why not? It's dishonest.

------
funkah
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.

~~~
graysnorf
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."

------
drivebyacct2
Maybe this is why people who are vehemently anti-science can't understand the
rigor that is (supposed to be) at play in scientific "theories", etc.

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

~~~
drcube
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.

