Interesting that this quote was initially about stock options at tech companies. It turned out that stock options did become nearly universal in tech compensation, and companies that granted them outcompeted companies that did not. So the management that was ostensibly “doing a massive blag at the expense of shareholders” wasn’t really, time vindicated their practices and things like option backdating and not treating them as an expense weren’t even really necessary, but it took a few years. It wasn’t obvious in 2002 that this is how it would play out.
And relevant to the title quote: maybe it should be amended to “good ideas do not need a lot of lies to gain public acceptance eventually”. The dynamic here is that a significant part of public opinion is simply “well, this is how things work now, and it seems to be working”, and any new and innovative idea by definition is not going to be how things work now. The lies are needed to spur action and disturb the equilibrium of today. But if you’re still telling lies a few years in, you’ve failed and it’s a bad idea to begin with.
The flip side is that good ideas with honest framing often lose to bad ideas with better marketing. Being right isn't enough if you can't communicate it and most people don't have the patience to evaluate the honest version.
This is what scares me the most about AI. You have a handful of really big companies trying to outdo each other as they race to implement it and deploy it as quickly as possible.
To try and justify their outrageous capital spending on data centers; they are incentivised to exaggerate its current capabilities and also what it will be capable of 'soon'.
There is no time to evaluate each step to make sure it is accurate and going in the right direction, before setting it loose on the public.
Having worked in public advocacy advertising, I’d frame it like this:
“Good ideas don’t need lies” is a compelling ideal but in practice, public acceptance isn’t a reliable signal of truth or societal benefit. It depends on incentives, narratives, and how information is presented.
History shows that even harmful or suboptimal ideas (like coal power) can gain widespread support if presented persuasively, while genuinely beneficial ideas can struggle if they’re complex or unintuitive.
A useful heuristic is: if an idea relies on misleading claims to survive scrutiny, that’s a warning sign. But public acceptance itself is not proof of goodness or correctness.
In short: persuasion and truth are related—but far from identical.
Something interesting about my experience with the Iraq War was that, as a 9 year old living in DC at a wealthy, liberal private school, everyone knew from the beginning it was all a lie. I only learned fairly recently that a vast majority of the country thought invading Iraq was a good idea.
With the current moon mission I'm reminded of how whenever someone from NASA is interviewed they like talking about how the billions spent are justified because of the practical results of the research - Velcro, Tang, etc. It always seemed like a stretch, but I have the unpleasant feeling the US is going to lean the true value of being the research leader when it's gone.
I completely disagree with the title. Good ideas should be either self evident or at least become clearly apparent with strong evidence. Typically that is not the case.
People are social critters that typically fear originality, and not by just a little bit either. Most people find originality repulsive no matter how well qualified a good idea may be. Instead, most people look towards social validation. A socially validated bad idea has vastly superior acceptance for most people as compared to any good idea.
We all like to think we are rational actors, but most of us aren’t and never will be.
This is also a good reminder that Paul Krugman opposed the Iraq War from the start. The Iraq War is still the most important part of populist narratives about elite untrustworthiness, but populists never ask about exceptions, and if we judge people and institutions by their stand on the Iraq war today, it has to go both ways.
my opinion is that lies have no relevance to if the idea is good or bad. liars lie and honest people are honest. ideas are not people and do not care who it is that thought them up.
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I’m kind of conflicted and confused faced with this message on this site, especially with the content of the post. Can someone explain why I’m feeling annoyed?
It is also a useful trick to keep in mind the opposite of critical thinking - following the herd. Just copying everyone around you is often a great strategy. So good that even if everyone around you are making mistakes it can still be the dominant strategy (there is a reason a lot of people who don't like war are cowed into silence when war fever descends). Most people are using it.
That implies that it is ridiculously easy to be right when everyone else is wrong. People aren't trying to be right. Any sort of principle-based analysis easily outperforms the herd. When leaders in society start lying that is indeed one of those situations. Pretty much any situation where everyone knows something and the hard statistics are telling a different story is.
The more pressing problem is how to go from a lovable Cassandra to someone who can preempt major events and convince the herd to not hurt itself in its confusion. Coincidentally that is how markets work, people who have a habit of being right are given full powers to overrule the mob and just do what they want. Markets don't care if everyone believes something. They care if people who got the calls right last time believe something.
In this case, the US hasn't seen a good outcome to a war since something like WWII and even there they waited until the war was mostly over and the major participants in the European theatres were exhausted before getting involved. The record is pretty bad. Iraq was an easy call to anyone who cares about making accurate predictions.
> My reasoning was that Powell, Bush, Straw, etc, were clearly making false claims and therefore ought to be discounted completely, and that there were actually very few people who knew a bit about Iraq but were not fatally compromised in this manner who were making the WMD claim
At the risk of missing the point, I have to say that knowing what we know now, this is a very poor heuristic. Predicting a lack of WMD was not only correct by mere coincidence, but also irrelevant to the decisions made about the war in Iraq.
What is this blog post even saying? When you can't distinguish a lie, trust the room vibes? Seeking comfort won't give you any answers or get you closer to the truth.
Not enough people ask "why". They instead argue about effectiveness or correctness. At some point you have to determine whether you're chasing the truth to make a decision or just for its own sake. In the vast majority of cases what you want is a decision that will produce the desired results. That's the real reason why lies happen and why merely knowing the truth doesn't get you anywhere and often nobody cares.
EDIT: for the sanity of any late replies. My bad. I replaced the part about AI with something I thought was more interesting.
Interesting that this quote was initially about stock options at tech companies. It turned out that stock options did become nearly universal in tech compensation, and companies that granted them outcompeted companies that did not. So the management that was ostensibly “doing a massive blag at the expense of shareholders” wasn’t really, time vindicated their practices and things like option backdating and not treating them as an expense weren’t even really necessary, but it took a few years. It wasn’t obvious in 2002 that this is how it would play out.
And relevant to the title quote: maybe it should be amended to “good ideas do not need a lot of lies to gain public acceptance eventually”. The dynamic here is that a significant part of public opinion is simply “well, this is how things work now, and it seems to be working”, and any new and innovative idea by definition is not going to be how things work now. The lies are needed to spur action and disturb the equilibrium of today. But if you’re still telling lies a few years in, you’ve failed and it’s a bad idea to begin with.
The flip side is that good ideas with honest framing often lose to bad ideas with better marketing. Being right isn't enough if you can't communicate it and most people don't have the patience to evaluate the honest version.
I'm not sure. Don't underestimate the power of inertia.
I bought an EV last year and it's definitely been a "good idea" for me. Luxurious ride, fuel costs a tenth, doesn't stink.
Seems such an obvious upgrade it slightly confuses me take-up hasn't been quicker among people who like me can charge at home.
This is what scares me the most about AI. You have a handful of really big companies trying to outdo each other as they race to implement it and deploy it as quickly as possible.
To try and justify their outrageous capital spending on data centers; they are incentivised to exaggerate its current capabilities and also what it will be capable of 'soon'.
There is no time to evaluate each step to make sure it is accurate and going in the right direction, before setting it loose on the public.
Having worked in public advocacy advertising, I’d frame it like this: “Good ideas don’t need lies” is a compelling ideal but in practice, public acceptance isn’t a reliable signal of truth or societal benefit. It depends on incentives, narratives, and how information is presented.
History shows that even harmful or suboptimal ideas (like coal power) can gain widespread support if presented persuasively, while genuinely beneficial ideas can struggle if they’re complex or unintuitive.
A useful heuristic is: if an idea relies on misleading claims to survive scrutiny, that’s a warning sign. But public acceptance itself is not proof of goodness or correctness.
In short: persuasion and truth are related—but far from identical.
2004, actually, with a minor update in 2008. This was the same principle I used coincidentally at the same time to also disbelieve the same thing.
Something interesting about my experience with the Iraq War was that, as a 9 year old living in DC at a wealthy, liberal private school, everyone knew from the beginning it was all a lie. I only learned fairly recently that a vast majority of the country thought invading Iraq was a good idea.
Makes me think of academic papers that overhype their contribution. Also makes me think about AI hype.
Idk I think they kind of do, tackling climate change is a good idea and at this point I’m ready to lie if it will make ppl do something
Somewhat counter quote...
"Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you’ll have to ram them down people’s throats." -- Howard Aiken
...to mean that, usually, the good ideas are the crazy sounding ones...
With the current moon mission I'm reminded of how whenever someone from NASA is interviewed they like talking about how the billions spent are justified because of the practical results of the research - Velcro, Tang, etc. It always seemed like a stretch, but I have the unpleasant feeling the US is going to lean the true value of being the research leader when it's gone.
Date is actually (2004). The (2008) was just a single paragraph update (now immaterial) added at the top in response to making the news back then.
Ideas do not compete based on how true they are but how easily they are remembered.
Terrence McKenna said something similar…
“The truth doesn’t require your participation, only bullshit does.”
I completely disagree with the title. Good ideas should be either self evident or at least become clearly apparent with strong evidence. Typically that is not the case.
People are social critters that typically fear originality, and not by just a little bit either. Most people find originality repulsive no matter how well qualified a good idea may be. Instead, most people look towards social validation. A socially validated bad idea has vastly superior acceptance for most people as compared to any good idea.
We all like to think we are rational actors, but most of us aren’t and never will be.
It is a bit overstated as a universal rule, but as a practical heuristic it is excellent
So, why does Anthropic need so much aggressive marketing lately?
the author of this post has a book called Lying for Money which I'd definitely recommend.
Good maxim with general applicability: cryptocurrency, wars in the middle east, online age verification checks.
This is also a good reminder that Paul Krugman opposed the Iraq War from the start. The Iraq War is still the most important part of populist narratives about elite untrustworthiness, but populists never ask about exceptions, and if we judge people and institutions by their stand on the Iraq war today, it has to go both ways.
my opinion is that lies have no relevance to if the idea is good or bad. liars lie and honest people are honest. ideas are not people and do not care who it is that thought them up.
This explains why Fauci lying to the American people about masks so that they'd be "available for healthcare workers" landed so poorly.
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I’m kind of conflicted and confused faced with this message on this site, especially with the content of the post. Can someone explain why I’m feeling annoyed?
"Any idea"
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It is also a useful trick to keep in mind the opposite of critical thinking - following the herd. Just copying everyone around you is often a great strategy. So good that even if everyone around you are making mistakes it can still be the dominant strategy (there is a reason a lot of people who don't like war are cowed into silence when war fever descends). Most people are using it.
That implies that it is ridiculously easy to be right when everyone else is wrong. People aren't trying to be right. Any sort of principle-based analysis easily outperforms the herd. When leaders in society start lying that is indeed one of those situations. Pretty much any situation where everyone knows something and the hard statistics are telling a different story is.
The more pressing problem is how to go from a lovable Cassandra to someone who can preempt major events and convince the herd to not hurt itself in its confusion. Coincidentally that is how markets work, people who have a habit of being right are given full powers to overrule the mob and just do what they want. Markets don't care if everyone believes something. They care if people who got the calls right last time believe something.
In this case, the US hasn't seen a good outcome to a war since something like WWII and even there they waited until the war was mostly over and the major participants in the European theatres were exhausted before getting involved. The record is pretty bad. Iraq was an easy call to anyone who cares about making accurate predictions.
> My reasoning was that Powell, Bush, Straw, etc, were clearly making false claims and therefore ought to be discounted completely, and that there were actually very few people who knew a bit about Iraq but were not fatally compromised in this manner who were making the WMD claim
At the risk of missing the point, I have to say that knowing what we know now, this is a very poor heuristic. Predicting a lack of WMD was not only correct by mere coincidence, but also irrelevant to the decisions made about the war in Iraq.
What is this blog post even saying? When you can't distinguish a lie, trust the room vibes? Seeking comfort won't give you any answers or get you closer to the truth.
Not enough people ask "why". They instead argue about effectiveness or correctness. At some point you have to determine whether you're chasing the truth to make a decision or just for its own sake. In the vast majority of cases what you want is a decision that will produce the desired results. That's the real reason why lies happen and why merely knowing the truth doesn't get you anywhere and often nobody cares.
EDIT: for the sanity of any late replies. My bad. I replaced the part about AI with something I thought was more interesting.