It is, very much so. I wouldn’t advocate it. But it doesn’t have the cost that believing a lie does. If you can’t face an inconvenient truth (and there may be valid reasons for that, especially if you have other pressures at the time) it’s much better to turn away than to lie.

“There’s only one way to tell if a man is honest – ask him. If he says yes, then you know he’s crooked.” – Groucho Marx

I developed an irrational commitment to “honesty” after playing the Ultima computer games as a child. As a result, I spend a ridiculous amount of energy trying to figure out how to deceive people by saying true statements when telling a lie would be a lot simpler.

That said, I think that there are reasonable arguments in favor of allowing certain possible falsehoods to stand. For example, imagine a thought occurs to you that there is a certain reasonable possibility that your ‘sister’ is actually your ‘mother’, and your ‘parents’ are actually your ‘grandparents.’ You might decide not to investigate, since you believe (perhaps not unreasonably) that if the truth was your ‘sister’ was actually your mother, you’d suffer serious mental upset. You compare this possible mental upset with the discomfort of the alternative, not being certain of the truth of who your parents are, and decide that you’d prefer uncomfortable uncertainty to a chance of painful certainty or relief (this seems in keeping with a study of people’s preferences, if I remember right).

Also, wishful thinking might be good for you to a degree. I recall some study suggesting depressed people tend to have more realistic views of the world than the non-depressed. Also, I recall reading the Mark Twain quotation, “With arrogance and ignorance, success is assured.” To some extent, would we embark on difficult matters that were worthwhile in retrospect, if we had known how much we would suffer, and how much we were mistaken when taking on an endeavor? Perhaps it’s better to be a bit arrogant and ignorant—to an extent. My thought is, when should we overcome our biases and when should we leave them alone?

One final thought that I’ve contemplated—maybe it’s more economical in some cases to allow ourselves to be biased, if others will correct our biases for us. Would in some cases it make sense to be more lawyer-like in our advocacy of an idea, because others will be sufficiently lawyer-like in opposition to the idea, and debate would perhaps be more vigorous than if we were all calm-headed scientists?

That is, if I choose to be more honest about relationships, might I end up being less honest about other things? Or will expressing courage in one area give me more courage in other areas?

I see personal overcoming bias as an act of monumental arrogance – the belief that by overcoming our own biases, we will become more able to overcome the biases in the world, and help improve that world. We don’t know it’ll work, but we can only be sure of that once enough people have tried. So we’re the lab rats that will hopefully answer that question, Robin.

I don’t know if honesty makes the honesty muscles tougher, but I do think that it would be a catastrophic step if I were to say, for the first time, “I will willingly deceive myself on this.” Dishonesty propagates. Once you lie about something, you have to lie about every truth entangled with the original truth, lie about how you chose your arguments, lie about what kinds of arguments are valid, lie about whether you lied. Dishonesty to yourself double propagates for triple, because you cannot even choose to remain silent.

Honesty may or may not become any easier, but willing self-deception certainly would get easier over time.

Another possibility is that over time we become more efficient in using our willpower, through learning what works and what doesn’t. This might cause us to feel we’re gaining willpower, when in reality we’re just getting more bang for our buck.

Mike, sounds like you are saying both Tylers are right in different cases.