Vitalik Buterin on Warpcast

Vitalik Buterin pfp

Vitalik Buterin

One meta belief I have, is that I think "on the face pursuing idealistic objective A, but actually being tilted toward selfish objective B" is better than "openly pursuing objective B". Many seem to believe the opposite, typically saying something like "at least the latter is honest". I feel like what this misses, is that maintaining the face of pursuing idealistic objective A, and using A to coordinate a large coalition, is a pretty big speed bump against attempts to pursue B too brazenly. When "the mask comes off", things actually become much worse, and strategies that pursue B at high costs to other values (including A, and also often general human decency) become unlocked. Are there any good arguments against this intuition I have? (Whether generalized, or about specific situations)

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DV pfp

@degenveteran.eth

Sir, I've seen both sides in the military For example in basic training the drill Sergeant is the meanest person ever But behind the scenes (later in my career I worked with them) they are the nicest people. You see the switch flip as soon as they walk outside to the troops. I've ALSO seen the opposite in politics etc as I worked at the presidential level (yes I have pics to prove it) I'd be open to discussing verbally as too much could get misinterpreted via text. DM anytime sir.

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⋆♱ 9̷0̷†մղ ♱⋆ pfp

⋆♱ 9̷0̷†մղ ♱⋆

What if you fall to the facade you’re holding up?, if you make peace with openly pursuing what you want to regardless of what other people think, that is always the best option.

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phil pfp

The defense is that it erodes trust. If reliable people condone saying one thing while doing another, then it gives bad actors an excuse to do it more brazenly. Similar tactics include greenwashing, ESG, or the use of charitable donations to offset e.g. poor working conditions.

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✳️ dcposch on daimo pfp

✳️ dcposch on daimo

One counter is that hypocrisy can actually enable worse behavior. If you already have a cover story, why not go big? Here in SF we have city services nonprofits with flowery mission statements, where many of them are effectively embezzlement fronts ($1b/year from the city budget). Would they have gotten away with it as long as they have as normal for-profit contractors? Probably not.

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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp

Venkatesh Rao ☀️

The danger is this easily degenerates into hypocrisy which corrupts the soul and turns into worse things. The hidden motive doesn’t even need to be selfish. It can even be noble or selfless as it is with naive Straussians/Great Man theorists. So long as there is a gap between visible and hidden postures, corruption can sneak into the gap. Otoh Neal Stephenson argues hypocrisy was the greatest virtue of virtue of Victorian culture.

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J. Valeska 🦊🎩🫂 pfp

J. Valeska 🦊🎩🫂

it depends on how many people is going to feel betrayed when the mask goes off.. and the proximity of this people.. (and these factors maybe different for you or any other. .depending on your values and what are you optimizing on your life) optimizing loyalty and friendship.. and betraying friends.. to get B while chasing A.. is the death.. for me .. but people with no empathy may feel the opposite.. different people, different values, different answers.. another argument is people does not chase just A, we are multi task and multi goal.. we have short, mid and long term goals that may crash at some point.. and contradictions.. always are there.. we are not perfect binary machines with a defined set of outputs (like LLM) we can be chaotic and that's part of the human beauty (and one of our best features)

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Colin Johnson 💭 pfp

Colin Johnson 💭

It erodes public trust, generally, when this happens at a high enough frequency. It also bolsters the Russian defense: “Everyone is evil and selfish even when they purport to put on a good face”

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polymutex pfp

Seems fair, so long as there exists sufficient accountability and/or credible exit mechanisms against the strategy of switching to a brazen pursuit of B in the future.

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mleejr pfp

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Jason pfp

Counter to finding a hole in the argument. How do you be good at pursuing A without selfishly finding positive reinforcement loops associated with objective B??

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casslin.eth pfp

why this is particularly bad: 1) it leads to intellectual dishonesty, and can only have a slippery slope from there; 2) it leads to race to the bottom: ppl are encouraged to do virtue signaling as much as possible while actually pursuing selfish goals as much as possible as the arbitrage space in virtual signal --> selfish goals are huge. And it left ppl who do not do virtue signaling as much in a disadvantages place, basically, create an incentive for ppl to virtue signal as much as not doing anything real as much. AND I believe we've already seen how this hurt ETH community.

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Connor McCormick ☀️ pfp

Connor McCormick ☀️

I think "on the face pursuing idealistic objective A, but actually being tilted toward selfish objective B" is strictly inferior to "on the face pursuing idealistic objective A, while also acknowledging that you benefit from selfish objective B"

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Anuraj R pfp

the problem is that, in order to use this for coordinating large coalition, the people need to believe that at least pursuing the idealistic objective A is a genuine goal rather than just selfish objective B, otherwise it doesn’t work. It comes off as sneaky without the genuineness which people don’t like. Convincing the “genuineness” part of pursuing the idealistic objective A is not easy and might not give the speed you are expecting. Occasionally you can get away with it but at the cost of credibility

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PhiMarHal pfp

A-street B-sheets implies psychopath levels of duplicity. The magnitude of the damage they can do is unbound. B-street is more predictable.

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Brown pfp

Wanna hear what GPT o1 says?

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Arjan | That Poetry Guy pfp

Arjan | That Poetry Guy

I see some comments about erosion of trust, but that's besides the point of this message, I think. I rather have someone pursuing A as a facade and ending up believing in it, than someone who has completely given up on humanity and decency who simply goes for B and "f*ck the haters". We have too much of that going around.

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Theo Beutel pfp

This adds even more ambiguity and increases the chance of conflict within a community, when it’s hard enough to somewhat align a community in DAO contexts (seen that even within working groups and core teams). We also have language barriers, cultural diversity and rarely get the chance to build up in-person trust, so I‘m doubtful how this theory works out in practice.

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xnatasx pfp

Yes, I said this for years. USA might be bad, but at least they have to pretend to desire democracy, justice and hence can be pressure to aligne to those values. China and similar do not = more dangerous

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parseb pfp

Prefigurative or bust.

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