Eliezer, that is Tyler’s best suggestion.

Tom, that is only true if you can change your beliefs without changing your observable behavior. That seems to be false for most humans.

Ray, if you choose not to work at it, you can become not less self-deceived.

Michael, many of us have been married a lot longer than you, and have seen contrary indications.

What I would say actually makes good marriage and good familial relationships most unlikely in the US is a distorted idea of equality. We aren’t biologically wired for equality and so long as we are playing status games we can’t achieve it for long or without discomfort, but lower relative status in a small social group which generally avoids playing status games is not very costly. Rationality solves the need to use status conflicts to resolve disagreements, but when it fails, defaulting to status or to intensity of preference (always a major criterion in human or primate social groups) works better than looking for mutually unsatisfactory compromises.

OTOH, maybe people are usually just not smart enough or self-controlled enough for this proposal to work well and it requires that both parties be very smart and that one be at least fairly self-consciously rational as well (it’s pretty disastrous for the less dominant party when the more dominant one is highly unreasonable). The only couples that I have seen that have my unqualified approval meet this criterion, but one shouldn’t criticize society for not universalizing solutions dependent on scarce resources. Probably the only fairly high confidence unpopular and anecdotal advice I have for fairly typical people is, “if you have high socio-economic-status and intelligence, use more intoxicants, odds are that you can afford to, and you probably need to loosen up. If you have low socio-economic-status and intelligence use fewer intoxicants, you probably don’t need to loosen up so much and need the inhibitions you have. Becoming Mormon is probably a good idea instead. Also, live somewhere relatively inexpensive.”

To perform a belief it might be useful to believe it yourself. It seems to me there are mechanisms in human psyche (i belive that psyche is more than just a conscious mind) to enable for self-deception such as forgetting, selective perception, choosing not to think, etc. I’d say these are largely unconscious. So if you want to belive something very hard even though you know it’s not true (=self-deceive), i think it’s possible make that happen. An example might be defence mechanisms against traumas. Or capture-bonding (Stockholm syndrome). These are extreme examples, i’d think this happens in smaller scale in every day life.

I reserve analytical space for a model where the celebrity is nontransparently, consciously, self-interest maximizing. It seems strange to me that one would advocate reserving no analytical space for such a model of individuals who effectively acquire or maintain a disprorportionate share of a scarce, valued social good. It would be like reserving no space for an analytical model of top earning poker players as positively deviantly good bluffers and social manipulators.

HOWEVER, I do see the value of publicly performing a belief that such celebrities are as dumb as they “act”. Because if acting dumb has value to celebrities, it may have situational social value to an observer, too. So expect HA to non-anonymously espouse an opinion that celebrities are dumb, and bioscience Ph.D.’s working on their 3rd post-doc postion are really, really smart. At least when it’s in my apparent self-interest.

“If they could stay out of rehab and/or jail more frequently, and if their relationships were not constantly in chaos, I might believe that. . .”

While I think HA does systematically overestimate the rationality of celebrities and wealthy individuals (many relevant abilities, such as a good singing voice, height, and social charisma are poorly correlated with rationality, so we should expect their rationality to be less exceptional than their celebrity on average), particularly given his survival-focused account of self-interested rationality, it’s worth noting that many celebrity blowups are manufactured for profit. Historically, movie studios matched up their stars to create buzz, and today individual celebrities and their publicists do the same.

WRT jail time, check for availability bias. Paris Hilton aside, it’s quite rare for major celebrities able to afford top-notch legal representation to be imprisoned, and they enjoy the benefits of flouting the law many times for each instance in which they are brought to account.

Rehab? Does a period in rather luxurious rehab outweigh the social and happiness benefits of a hedonistic lifestyle?

If they could stay out of rehab and/or jail more frequently, and if their relationships were not constantly in chaos, I might believe that. . .

Compare with – say – Fortune 500 executives, dotcom internet millionaires, bond traders, etc. . .

Also, I have doubts as to a universal agreement on the semantics involved here. A person that has learned to let certain aspects of life slide off their back so that they may enjoy life despite its disappointments would likely be labeled as “self-deceived” by many.

There’s a considerable amount of study on survivors and the survivor mentality, and much of it involves people simply refusing to accept their fate. Now, of course, that can easily devolve into genuine self-deception, but everyone who has looked life square in the face and decided to be happy anyway is not self-deceptive.

Nor are depressed people more in tune with reality. They are for the most part simply neurotic. Their sensitivities exaggerated until the simple social gaffe is laced with personal malice, et cetera. That others don’t pick up on the gaffe is seen as being dense or insensitive, but many others do see the same things in life, but choose to let it go.

As far as the self-deceived go, there certainly are plenty of them out there. I had the distinct blessing to be both athletically and intellectually gifted, and was always much happier being my “nerdy” self than my “cool” self. (Considering the usual company here, I’m assuming I can say such a thing without sounding pretentious.)

The typically “cool” person that would fit into the mold of the self-deceived are never really all that self-deceived; they’re shallow. The things that get other people down don’t affect them because the river just doesn’t run that deep. Which brings me back full circle to my original point, how does one intentionally self-deceive?