From the "Bonus: reputation" section: > As we've seen over the past few years, loudly proclaiming something, regardless of whether or not it's true, even when

From the "Bonus: reputation" section: > As we've seen over the past few years, loudly proclaiming something, regardless of whether or not it's true, even when there's incontrovertible evidence that it's untrue, seems to not only work, that kind of bombastic rhetoric appears to attract superfans who will aggressively defend the brand. What does by Dann Luu mean by "loudly proclaiming something, regardless of truth, [seems to work]"? Let's try to make the claim more precise and testable. Since I'm interested in the broader claim, let me "carve out" (put aside) Dan's specific point about attracting superfans, which I find persuasive. With that said, here are some attempts to reframe the broad claim: Reframing #1: "Some people are persuaded of false things when a company loudly proclaims them." Yes, this seems obvious. But it isn't particularly useful in guiding action. The claim doesn't say anything quantitative. Reframing #2: "On net, the accuracy of a population's belief goes down when a company loudly proclaims a false belief." Maybe, maybe not. I would expect it largely depends on what happens next; i.e. whether there is some kind of response. Here are two kinds of reactions that favor not lying. First, getting caught in a lie can damage brand reputation. Second, lying calls more attention to an issue which would have otherwise drifted out of public awareness as the news cycle churns. These depend on how much credibility people assign to the organization and their claims. Reframing #3: "On net, it is in an organization's self-interest to loudly proclaim a falsehood about its quality." Maybe. It depends on many factors. This is the most interesting public policy question! If such a tactic works (see reframing #2 above), it is clearly a negative externality (a downstream effect than an actor does not feel directly). How does wise public policy address externalities? One classic way is to internalize the cost -- by making the actor feel the pain themself. In #3 above, one way to internalize the externality would be to impose some penalty or cost for lying. How to do this in a targeted, effective, non-delayed, and legal way is non-obvious to me. By non-delayed I mean temporally-immediate consequences provide better signal to correct a decision. This isn't just human nature; it is fundamental to the credit-assignment problem in reinforcement learning. The problem of delayed feedback goes deeper than just credit-assignment; it has to do with fairness too. Often, the decision-maker isn't a monolith: the leadership composition changes over time. It may be impractical to punish one cog in the system without imposing a cost on the rest of the system, many of whom had nothing to do with the decision.