Venkatesh Rao

There are perhaps benevolent cases. Pretending Santa is real for eg. There are even cases where you might in fact really know things others don’t, but merely exaggerate them (eg product visionaries projecting reality distortion fields and crafting personal myths)

But in general, when I see people being more righteously certain than events merit, my priors point to corruption, not special knowledge. I think people mostly do this unconsciously. Risk taking leads to self-talk to boost felt certainty and lower courage needs.

You want to take a 1 in 10 shot. You only have enough courage for a 1 in 2 risk. So you talk confidently, get others betting with you, misrepresent the risks both to actually reduce it for yourself and gain some courage from social proof kool-aid. You’re socializing your risks.

How often do you see people say openly, “this is a wild outlier bet, but I’m making it anyway because I’m tempted by the upside; don’t follow me unless you want to be as crazy as me”

Adults don’t tell adults lies about how certain the world is unless they want to exploit them. It’s a form of dehumanizing contempt that unfortunately works as a self-fulfilling prophecy. Tell a captive audience of adults “Santa is real” long enough, they’ll turn into children.

I didn’t enjoy that attempted recent takedown of Taleb. I think it was a tedious misfire. Taleb’s real corruption lies in his posture of confident halo-effect certainty which goes against every actual cogent point he’s made, which would recommend a humble, no-Santa-lies posture.

Basically, the Golden Rule for a complex, uncertain world is this: perform the actual uncertainty you feel about the world. Don’t knowingly act more certain than you feel. Unless you’re talking to children or mentally/physically injured adults who need some temporary kindness.

(the converse risk also exists: sandbagging, or acting *less* certain than you feel, but is IMO less of a catalyst for corruption because it is self correcting — the first time you sandbag, people learn to see through your bluff)