While Jeb’s cautionary observation about what experience really teaches is important, and something I am sure most readers of this blog would agree with, after reading Robin’s link I wondered if 25 years ago I was as receptive to the dissonance message. (If my own future self couldn’t convince my present self, then Robin is probably on to something.)

More professional readers should also read Eddie Harmon-Jones and Judson Mills “Cognitive Dissonance”, which was published in 1999. The range of experiments was quite enlightening, at least for me.

Here is another one: People are very bad at task of discerning which elements of their lives are foreseeable consequences of their own decisions and which elements are just random noise.

We want to invent explanations for things. We want them to be the result of our own skill and strategy. Or if things go badly, we want to believe that someone conspired against us. We’re not well equipped to deal with random outcomes.

The successful old person probably imagines that most of his successes were due to his wise choices. He probably doesn’t spend much time dwelling on the possibility that he made bad decisions ex ante and somehow he got lucky.

Even a dedicated rationalist who was determined to ascertain whether he had drawn the right lessons from life would find it a very difficult task.