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Self Reflective Sentences and Persuasion

Honestly, I will be brief, but I have already spoken 3 falsehoods.

Ian Ayres, guesting at the Freakonomics blog, reflects that

"People who say that they're going to be brief often aren't.

Indeed, the very time taken to say that you are going to be brief works to negate the claim. You couldn't honestly begin by saying, "I'm only going to say the words that are absolutely necessary."

Wouldn't it better to forgo this temporal throat clearing entirely? Or if you have to say it, why not say it at the end: "I have a lot more to say, but I'm stopping now because I want to be brief."

Of course, one of the strongest reasons for starting with this statement of intent is as a soft form of commitment. I'm giving the audience permission to cast aspersions toward me if I speak for too long."

When I say "I am going to be brief", I am already not brief: and so the sentence is false.

Raymond Smullyan has spent his entire life examining sentences whose truth value are reflective. I highly recommend his books. But don't treat them as simply logical puzzles with no application to decision making.

One of my top 10 posts on due diligence is taken from Smullyan's writings.

Back to the NY Times, as Ayres goes on to how the commitments we try to make using certain sentences fail.

How, what would have been very interesting would have been for Ayres to review all of the answers his colleague, Dubner's, problem on the prisoner's dilemma.

Dubner set up an interesting prisoner's dilemma game: you get to ask one question of three people and then based on their answer, you decide who to play a one shot prisoner's dilemma game.

The PD game is basically a mutual situation in which:

a) you try to convince another person to play a strategy A, by saying that you will play A also, but;

b) it is obvious that should the other person play strategy A, you would play B contrary to what your are trying to do in a).

In Dubner's problem, the answers have the same sort of self reflective truth properties that Ayres was talking about.

Here are a couple of examples, and my own analysis.

1. Where do you want to go out for dinner six months from now?

Recall, six months in jail is what both parties would get if they played A. But if you play A, and I play B, then I get off with nothing and you go to jail for 5 years.

Does this sentence commit me to playing A, if you do? I don't think so - it suggests that we have interests in common but nothing more.

2. Given that I'm in the Mafia do you realize what my business associates would do to you if you betrayed me?

Recall, betraying in this context means I play A and you play B. Does this commit me to playing A in the expectation that you won't risk getting whacked by my Mafia friends?

No, because if I am really in the Mafia, I wouldn't say it.

3. Weren't we at your house watching the Mets beat the Yankees 11-2 that night?

Recall, that in this situation, this means that we are both shutting up or playing A. This isn't bad as a sentence because it conveys my intention to remain silent because we have "nothing to talk about". But if we say it, and since it is false, how can you trust someone who says false things?

I don't know what Dubner, Levitt or Ayres is going to do with the answers to Dunber's interesting version of the dilemma game, but I certainly hope that we see some analysis on the strategic force of the answers.

Full post as published by Misleading Advertising Law on May 30, 2008 (boomark / email).