Unfakeable Signals of Good Faith

These methods help you win even if the other guy isn't operating in good faith. And if everyone adopts these methods, then it becomes win-win-win!

The community on LessWrong is one of the best places on planet Earth for surfacing truth. This is largely because of the social protocol / culture they have for rewarding changing your mind and collaborative truth seeking. Their rules work great if everyone adopts them, but it requires BOTH parties to adhere to it. What I’d like to do here is define a protocol that works even if you are the only one doing it¹. This is extremely powerful because it allows you to surface truth & learn from any community on earth (even if they are actively hostile & aren’t learning from your interactions).

From LessWrong’s new user guide

I submit this as part of the onboarding guide for the Open Research Institute.

The Idea In a Nutshell

(1) how to signal good faith

Start every encounter in the following frame:

1. Assume the other person is operating in good faith

2. Assume they default perceive you as NOT operating in good faith

   1. (because most interactions they have are not, and they’re exhausted by it)

Now all you have to do is offer them something that only a good faith actor can do. There are two options: (1) recognition of their idea (2) novel contribution.

A novel contribution is an unfakeable signal of good faith, because it requires:

• knowledge of the thing (aka, the ground truth, aka the “territory”)

• knowledge of what THEY know about the thing (you can tell what is novel from their prespective, what is old news, and/or what is too far beyond their level)

• willingness to cooperate

Recognition is the easier version of this: instead of saying something novel, you say something that is true about the thing, but that they haven’t yet said.

(2) how to still benefit from bad faith

If the other person is operating in bad faith, this protocol immediately reveals them. If they do not respond to you with (1) recognition or (2) a novel contribution, then they are either unable, or unwilling to. In either case, you can stop here, and save your energy. If you happen to perform this test in public (like on social media, or an open letter/blogpost) then there’s still benefit even in this failure case: you’ve broadcast your knowledge, and potentially helped someone else.

At this point you CAN go further and learn something novel: decode THEIR knowledge about the thing.

Learning about someone’s perception of the thing is a separate topic from learning about the thing, but it’s still useful, novel information. Understanding a worldview that you weren’t aware of before, even if it is inaccurate, is still learning about the world². It opens up an ability to communicate to anyone else who holds that worldview, to either persuade them, or better communicate with good faith actors who hold that worldview.

Real World Example: Emailing a Researcher

If you’re emailing a notable researcher like Andy Matuschak, and you actually have something that he’d be interested in, you should lead with it. Saying “can we have a call and I will explain it?” makes you indistinguishable from a bad actor.

https://x.com/andy_matuschak/status/1914095442024927564

From the receiver’s point of view, an incompetent good actor, and a bad actor, are functionally the same. In both cases, it’s a waste of time for them: it’s either lose-win, or lose-lose.

To avoid the lose-lose scenario: show your work. Don’t email Andy, write something in public, and then @ him or email it to him. This switches it to win-win because the possible outcomes are:

• Your thing is actually valuable, Andy sees it & responds

• Your thing is actually valuable, you get no response, but someone else notices you and wants to collaborate/give you money

• Your thing is NOT valuable, and you receive that feedback

You are much more likely to receive feedback asking in public because someone other than the notable person can respond, OR the notable person is more likely to respond because their answer will help others. Win-win³.

The Bad Wins When the Good Does Nothing (Or Is Incompetent)

Writing & spreading this is very important to me because I keep seeing good people failing at this. They despair at the noisy information environment, and how difficult it is to stand out. But I hope this is a wake up call to realize that if you are a good actor, it is completely within your control to fix this.

Good people will be mistaken for a bad actor, get upset, despair and give up. It of course takes more work to signal yourself, to do the work & publish it publicly, but your other option is despair. Doing the work is energizing, you are growing. Despair drains you, you are withering. The correct choice is obvious.

If you follow this protocol, you will start winning, because you are adding value to the world & growing. You will probably be recognized & rewarded fairly quickly, because the biggest bottlneck on planet earth right now is not money, or resources, it’s competent people who are willing to cooperate. You will also be participating in shifting the culture towards an information environment that accelerates everyone’s learning.

Good actors WANT to be tested, and want to be challenged. The only people that win when it’s difficult to discern the good / competent, from the bad / incompetent, is the latter. If I am incompetent, I’d rather NOT waste someone like Andy’s time, I’d rather get feedback from someone closer to my level, and to keep growing.

We don’t need to change everyone’s behavior, just the behavior of the good & competent, so we can find each other.

1. This is the general framework of scalable, bottom-up cultural change. You identify something that (1) confers benefit even if only YOU do it, AND (2) the benefit increases if everyone does it. This is categorically different from patternsof behavior that benefit you, but stop working as more people do them (such as: clickbait).

2. Learning about how gravity, or insurance, works is learning about the universe. Learning about how flat earthers, or young voters in the US, THINK those things work is ALSO learning about the universe! Both things increase your ability to predict the reality that you live inside.

3. It’s actually triple win because you benefit, Andy benefits, AND the entire culture shifts. Andy having to respond to less emails opens up his attention for more opportunities, and more people asking in public means they get more feedback and they grow. This has positive exponential downstream effects.