[extropy-chat] Who thinks the Bush admin lied over Iraq? On what basis?

[Eliezer S. Yudkowsky]

Brett Paatsch wrote:
> I've only had time to dip into some ongoing threads but I notice that 
> both Robert Lindauer and Dan Clemmensen have
> stated that they think that "we", meaning the US, or the Bush 
> administration, (I'm not part of any of those "we") deliberately lied or 
> misrepresented the reasons for invading Iraq.
>  
> Whilst I do tend to that view, I am not utterly convinced of it yet. And 
> yet it is an important fact, or otherwise, to establish or not surely? 
> One thing that I suspect most extropian or transhumanist list posters 
> might agree on, is that the Iraq and terrorism business has grabbed a 
> big chunk of the worlds attention. Attention that might have been 
> directed far more profitably (to the net human good) elsewhere.

The term "lie" only applies to social systems or individuals whose 
(collective) minds are sufficiently directed to finding truth that there 
exists knowledge inverted to create a lie.  If you're mired down in a 
political system devoted to finding evidence for particular theories, 
selectively passing on arguments for particular theories, not contradicting 
the boss, etc., the boundary between dishonest lies and honest mistakes is too 
fuzzy to be worth pursuing.  If Bush were a scientist publishing a paper on 
WMD we'd call it a lie.  But I think it very probable that Bush believed Iraq 
had WMD.  Practically everyone did, including me.  You can say we were all, 
including Bush, fooled by a self-deceiving intelligence system for which Bush 
was partially responsible; but the fact remains, we believed it at the time.

-- 
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky                          http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence