18 KiB
The power of Truth
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Author: u/Izeinwinter *
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/3ol5es/the_power_of_truth/
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Score: 9
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Created: 2015-10-13T13:57:54
Post:
So, inspired by the liar in a truthful world post, I had an idea..
You wake up after a night on town with a headache, a very strange tattoo on your left arm, and a very funny (dis)ability.
First: You can no longer speak with deceptive intent.
You can tell stories - if it is clear they are stories. You can use parables and metaphors. - if you believe said parables and metaphors communicate your point clearly to the audience you are speaking to. You cannot intentionally mislead anyone by spoken or written word. Being "Technically truthful" just does not work for you. Basically, in everything you say or write, you find you are trying to communicate as honestly and clearly as your powers of communication and knowledge of the subject at hand allows.
This is not an oracle. You can be wrong. You cannot, however, pretend to greater certainty than you actually possess.
Nor are you compelled to talk to people - silence is always an option.
Now, for the upside. Everyone is compelled to believe you are telling the truth as best you know it. Cynical politican, jaded 4chan member, religious fanatic? Noone ever believes you to be a liar, no matter what you say.
How do you use this?
Comments:
u/notmy2ndopinion [+17] Concent of Saunt Edhar (14 minutes later)
I would become a news reporter or political commentator similar to Jon Stewart. Everything I say would be considered to be truthful, often funny/entertaining by revealing what others leave unsaid, and I'd be able to exercise an incredible amount of influence over state/national discourse.
If I could figure out a way to tattoo others and compel them to speak truths as well, I'd start a movement to have all public speakers pre-commit to receiving the tattoo before they address large crowds. Before receiving a tattoo, they'd have to take courses in logic, rationality, and they'd be tested for delusional tendencies as well as their ability to admit when they are wrong. The process for receiving a tattoo of truth will be open for revisions via a democratic forum and all of the tattooed will publically renew their vows on a yearly basis to adhere to the Principles. I think this will go far towards creating a group of reliable leaders.
Granted, someone could fake a tattoo and if everyone in the world has the tattoo... then we're in the Invention of Lying territory. Hm. I don't know how to prevent that from happening.
u/Izeinwinter [+7] (46 minutes later)
Fake tats obviously don't grant the second compulsion. They'd just be ink.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+3] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (30 minutes later)
QR-code linking to their truth teller's registry info tattooed underneath.
u/Red_Navy [+2] (6 hours later)
NOT PARANOID ENOUGH! Anybody who wanted to deceive the masses wholeheartedly and completely would simply need to manipulate you. Hmm, using this power to ones advantage seems irritatingly difficult.
u/qznc [+11] Chaos Legion (3 hours later)
Let's look at the evil side as well: Sell myself as the ultimate ad. Customers will have to convince me, then I can easily convince the rest of the world. I'm not especially robust against manipulation, so Coca Cola should easily be able to convince me that Pepsi is disgusting or harmful.
That makes for a paradox loop. If someone convincingly lies to me and I repeat it back to him, Will he believe his own lie?
u/Quillwraith [+11] Red King Consolidated (4 hours later)
It doesn't make people believe that you're right, it just makes them believe you're honest.
u/NotAHeroYet [+5] City of Angles Municipal Government (12 hours later)
You can't lie about how certain you are. if you know you're not robust against manipulation it doesn't work out too well, since you might feel obligated to add that.
u/Rouninscholar [+3] (4 minutes later)
Run for office, try to make the world a better place by fixing the parts that I know are wrong, and we can ignore the parts I feel iffy on.
u/Bowbreaker [+2] Solitary Locust (a day later)
Problem is that just because they believe you doesn't mean they don't also still believe in whoever they'd have voted for instead. That and it is hard to get campaign funding when you can lie to neither your sponsors nor your constituents. All a reporter has to do to blemish you is ask you about one of all the shitty things you had to do to come to office. Your awkward silence will be damning as hell.
u/Rouninscholar [+1] (a day later)
You have pr people for that. Would you vote for a guy who says "I'm going to try to fix both our economy and then the global economy" if you believed him?
u/Bowbreaker [+1] Solitary Locust (a day later)
Only if he also seems capable.
u/Rouninscholar [+1] (a day later)
I would be hiring the best advisors I can find, and listening to their advice, and I would ignore any and all bribes, and funding that people offer me would be put into a fund that would pay out to several important organizations, based primarily on my advisors.
I'm not saying I'm perfect, but I would make things better, and that is what we need right now
u/Bowbreaker [+1] Solitary Locust (a day later)
And who would give you the money a politician needs to be successful in the media? I mean, I trust you already right now but that doesn't mean I'd vote for you. And if you say things that many people disagree with then they'd think you have been duped, no matter how much they trust you to not be lying.
u/Rouninscholar [+1] (a day later)
You don't really need money to get elected, especially with the advent of the Internet. I would take some small amount of that fund probably and use it to do some basic campaigning, but YouTube and public speaking are what is important, start small and become a mayor first, I'm still you g
u/eaglejarl [+1] (a day later)
You don't really need money to get elected, especially with the advent of the Internet. [...] YouTube and public speaking are what is important
How many elected politicians are you aware of who you are confident conform to these two statements?
u/Izeinwinter [+1] (a day later)
.. "Quite a few". Money is much less important outside the US. Even in the US.. well, people do still sometimes get elected without selling out first. In this particular case, you have a unique resource, which should generate attention for free - How attractive it makes you to voters depends on who you are, but the average person doesn't have massive skeletons in their closet which they would absolutely need to hide to get elected. So, yhea, getting elected to some office ought to work. Being effective once there?
u/eaglejarl [+1] (a day later)
"Quite a few"
Your assertion that money doesn't matter and Internet is all you need runs counter to most of what I know about the election process in the USA. Could you please provide names of politicians who have gotten elected purely on the strength of YouTube and public speaking, without spending more money than a member of the 99% could afford -- let's say $10,000 to be very generous.
Money is much less important outside the US
Oh, we're assuming this isn't a US election? You didn't say that at first. Okay, I don't know anything about non-US electioneering so I'll go with it. It still seems dubious, though.
Even in the US.. well, people do sometimes get elected without selling out first
I'm confused. Before, you asserted that "You don't really need money to get elected", but now you seem to be implying that it's very rare. Given the prevalence of millionaires in federal office I suspect that anyone who does get elected to high office without taking outside money did so because they had plenty of their own.
Are you talking about only local offices, maybe? Small town mayor, town council, that sort of thing? Because that I would definitely agree with.
Even the mayorship of New York or other major city isn't a cheap campaign.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+2] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (8 minutes later)
That sounds almost exactly like the Iregara in Deadly Silents by Lee Killough.
u/ulyssessword [+5] (an hour later)
Also, halfway like Elspeth from Radiance.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+2] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (an hour later)
In particular, I'm thinking of the ability to tell stories if they were clear they were stories. In the novel, a character tells the protagonist a story in "classic" Iregara style. Every other paragraph starts with a disclaimer. "It is said that the hunter looked like this." or "We might suppose that the man sought his wife for so many years."
I've just ordered a copy from Amazon just so I can go into more detail when I have the text in front of me. This should be a classic, it's a crime it's not available as an eBook.
u/None [+2] (38 minutes later)
So, Messiah powers? You'd have to be mildly deluded, but then again, you did just wake up with superpowers.
u/Jiro_T [+2] (an hour later)
You can use parables and metaphors. - if you believe said parables and metaphors communicate your point clearly to the audience you are speaking to.
Whether something communicates a point to the audience is on a spectrum. You might think that something is only understood by 99% of the audience, or 95%, or 50%.
u/Izeinwinter [+5] (2 hours later)
The tattoo doesn't care that someone in a large audience might misunderstand. It cares about your intentions. As long as you are being as clear and honest as you know how, it passes muster. The entire idea is that it is pretty darn immune to the sort of gaming which is standard in stories with truth magics, but it is also not out to cripple you socially more than it has to.
u/Jiro_T [+4] (5 hours later)
It's always possible to be just a little bit more clear and honest. Add just one more disclaimer, so that you're understood by 99% of the audience instead of by 98%. Then there are other things you can do to get to 99.5%, and then to 99.7%. If you refuse to go from 99.7% to 99.9%, knowing that it is statistically likely that three people in the 1000 person audience will misunderstand you, have you "intended" that three people will misunderstand you, and does the tattoo therefore prevent you from refusing? (And if the tattoo allows this, why doesn't it allow you to refuse to go from 51% to 95%?)
u/Izeinwinter [+1] (11 hours later)
Because it runs of your intent. Speaking in a way 49 percent of an audience will misunderstand means you don't give a shit about being understood, and will thus not fly. It doesn't require you to sit down and formally work out the optimal phrasing before letting you open your mouth, but if you try to actively game it like this, when you open your mouth you will find you are using which ever phrasing, you, in your heart of hearts, consider to be most likely to be understood and heard. This doesn't mean infinite qualifiers, because you bloody well know that will just cause most people to tune out .
u/NotAHeroYet [+1] City of Angles Municipal Government (12 hours later)
In other words, you mean it can be gamed accidentally, but you cannot replicate such gaming?
u/Jiro_T [+1] (13 hours later)
"Because it runs on your intent" doesn't help. After all, you have intent (that three people are misled) in the 99.7% case, and it doesn't run on your intent there. So there must be some percentage where at less than that percentage, intent matters, but at greater than that percentage, intent no longer matters.
u/Izeinwinter [+2] (17 hours later)
I really doubt you actually think like that. If for some bizarre reason this is how you would actually think of the clearest communication you can manage, the power would simply strike you mute in any crowd of any size.
u/Gurkenglas [+2] (2 hours later)
Become a notary whose authentification (written or otherwise) no tinker can forge.
u/Sailor_Vulcan [+1] Champion of Justice and Reason (10 hours later)
You can no longer speak with deceptive intent.
In that case, use sign language or body language to deceive people.
Nor are you compelled to talk to people -silence is always an option.
What's the reach of this effect? Can it work over the phone? Through writing? Through a video?
Don't tell anyone that you can't lie, or you will be taken advantage of. Get people you trust to lie for you. If someone asks you if you are able to lie, look really busy and preoccupied and do not answer. Most people are not going to believe that you have this weird superpower/hindrance going on unless someone asks you on public television.
People are compelled to believe you are telling the truth as best you know it. You can use this. People will be more willing to trust you if they always think you are being honest, which means you can give them advice and point out when they're doing something stupid, and they'll believe you.
This is assuming that the compulsion actually works. Can people resist the compulsion?
u/Izeinwinter [+2] (11 hours later)
Reach: Yes, yes, and yes. As long as the communication has not been edited, the effects persist. It vanishes if anyone so much as adds a comma. If, for example, you wanted to write a book with the effect intact, that would be possible but you would pretty much have to learn LaTeX and do your own typesetting and final edit.
Body language deception works, but is limited - if someone bursts into a room and asks where Martha is, you can point them in the wrong direction and that will work. ASL.. counts as speaking. Saying one thing and communicating something else somatically, will just result in people believing what you said, and also consider you a weirdo. I suppose you could use this for very effective comedy if you have talents in that direction. Re: resistance. No. They are not compelled to believe you are right, but the primary effects are symmetrical - you cant be deceptive, and people consider the fact that you are being honest a self-evident truth.
u/NotAHeroYet [+1] City of Angles Municipal Government (12 hours later)
Am I understanding this right?
The effect won't manifest if you use body language, in other words, but if you use a language that you know is a real language, you are obligated to speak truth as you best understand.
Is this the case for any language?
can you lie in morse code, when you attempt to communicate in it?
can you lie in morse code when you forget it exists and tap your foot nervously, even though you do know it is a language, because you don't mean to be communicating in morse code?
can you speak nonsense that conveys no useful information, as far as you are concerned, even if it isn't part of a language?
if you're taught a language wrong, does the effect bleed through, even though you aren't speaking it with the correct comprehension, i.e. if you were taught: all statements in english are false unless you add a not in certain, grammatically correct places, would that still convey honest intention?
Does the trueness still apply when you speak a language the listener cannot understand or when they listen in the wrong language?
If so, you'd make a good diplomat, especially if you trust your government to be honest.
u/Iydak [+1] (12 hours later)
If I had to guess:
- yes
- no
- yes, but the chance of tapping out something coherent is effectively zero.
- yes
- yes, but it would not be long before you realized that you had been deceived.
- It would be clear to them that you are speaking honestly, but they would still not know what you are trying to convey.
u/NotAHeroYet [+1] City of Angles Municipal Government (13 hours later)
one last question. are you obligated to try to speak in the language other people speak, or can you give french speeches to englishmen and germen speeches to spaniards?
u/eaglejarl [+1] (a day later)
You cannot, however, pretend to greater certainty than you actually possess.
So I can always determine my own level of confidence by trying to say "I am 75% confident" and seeing what actually comes out of my mouth? (Or binary searching to the number i can say, if it's working on the "can't speak" model instead of the "changes your speech" model.)
I'd be perfectly calibrated on everything.
u/Izeinwinter [+1] (a day later)
This works. The answer you get might be "I don't even know enough about this to assign a reasonable confidence" but it works.
u/diraniola [+1] (a day later)
Learn self hypnosis. Let my honesty be manifest as I chose it. If I can force myself to truly believe something with complete conviction, or rather, get somebody else to convince me, then I can spread any message with perfect sincerity.
u/Izeinwinter [+1] (a day later)
Self-hypnosis and similar techniques of auto-delusion all require you to tell yourself things that are not true. And you can't do that anymore. Trying too much of this sort of thing would just mean progressively stripping yourself of all your illusions as you invite the magic ever deeper into your psyche. I leave it to you if "Perfect self-knowledge by friday" is a sensible goal.
u/diraniola [+1] (a day later)
It is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know your enemies but do know yourself, you will win one and lose one; if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle.
Looks like I'll be half way to invincibility in battle by Friday, then.
Alternatively, I could hire a hypnotist to change my mind for me. I may not be able to lie to myself, but if I simply tell myself that I chose this path, I should be able to stay on it, even if I don't know where it leads at the time.