Truth, Lies and Bullshit; distinguishing classes of dishonesty
Martin W. A. Caminada · International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence · 2009
In this paper, we distinguish three important classes of dishonesty that can occur in multi-agent systems, as well as in human society. In particular, the distinction is being made between lies and bullshit, following the work of Harry Frankfurt. The difference is that someone who tells a lie has access to the truth, whereas the concept of bullshit requires no knowledge of the truth at all. That is, the liar knows that what he says is not true, whereas the bullshitter has no proper knowledge to support the statements he or she is making. We point out that different situations, in multi-agent systems as well as in human society, provide strong individual incentives for bullshit. Overall, our analysis is meant to identify some particularly troublesome issues regarding reasoning in