That doesn’t seem like the real problem being solved or highlighted? Communication is a vector here that is surfacing a fundamental competitive force and strategy between actors?
Information is power. Knowing something, and that being representative of reality and providing predictive ability related to that thing provides you power in a number of ways (ability to predict and intervene or not depending on desired outcomes being a huge one).
Someone presenting you plausibly correct, yet misleading information (a good lie) provides them a major advantage (short term, or long term depending on the situation). It allows them to influence your behavior and actions in a way they can likely predict and influence your ability to predict or react accurately to something.
A lie detector (as compared to an objective truth detector) would tell you if you were being manipulated or mislead intentionally. Very different from a ‘do they actually know what they are talking about’ aka truth detector like you are referring to, but a very valuable tool if one existed in a competitive world like the one we exist in.
I think we're saying the same thing. People manipulate one another through communication, not only in a criminal-justice setting, but also in business and relationships. Using "false-confidence" as a metric is simply reminding us that deception has no connection with objective truth. You can lie even while communicating something that is objectively true. You can also lie while intentionally displaying outrageously high false-confidence (i.e., jokes). It is easier to reason about this topic if we choose the right name.
Reading your description though, the only way I can imagine such a machine working would be by analyzing what is said against an objective truth - and that is what the false confidence value is measuring?
If I’m confident of something that is wrong, my false confidence number would be very high - especially if I believed it, right?
Information is power. Knowing something, and that being representative of reality and providing predictive ability related to that thing provides you power in a number of ways (ability to predict and intervene or not depending on desired outcomes being a huge one).
Someone presenting you plausibly correct, yet misleading information (a good lie) provides them a major advantage (short term, or long term depending on the situation). It allows them to influence your behavior and actions in a way they can likely predict and influence your ability to predict or react accurately to something.
A lie detector (as compared to an objective truth detector) would tell you if you were being manipulated or mislead intentionally. Very different from a ‘do they actually know what they are talking about’ aka truth detector like you are referring to, but a very valuable tool if one existed in a competitive world like the one we exist in.