Tag Archives: Self-Deception

To learn to be more (epistemically) rational,  i.e., to better discern and tell the truth, it would sure help to have good ways to regularly test ourselves.  Eliezer and I have both requested folks to give thought to how we could better test our (epistemic) rationality.

It seems relatively easy to test someone's ability to make accurate and calibrated forecasts in novel contexts.  Given them some info on a new topic, limited time and resources to make estimates, and then evaluate their accuracy.  We might presume that any residual after controlling for IQ, info, effort, and related expertise was (epistemic) "rationality." 

My main worry about this approach is it doesn't get at the fact that some topics test one's rationality more severely than others.  It can be much harder to be honest when you care a lot about a topic, when others care about your opinion, or when you don't expect your opinions to be scored against reality anytime soon. How can we test rationality in these cases?

Over twenty years ago some psychologists worked out a twenty item questionnaire for evaluating how much people lie to themselves to look good, on topics important to them.  (A related twenty question survey looks at lies to others.)  They "validated" these "scales" by running a lot of tests comparing them to other scales. 

Alas, I doubt that these tests would work as well if respondents knew that they were being tested for rationality.  And surely couldn't tell someone their score and then give them the test again and expect it to be as informative.  So these tests are a valuable but limited resource.

Which is why I haven't linked to them here in this post, yet.  First I want folks to ponder:  how best could we spend this limited resource to test our rationality?

Added 1Apr: The test is in here; don't look unless you've thought about whether waiting might be better.

The biggest of blindspots spring up when our minds form opinions about our minds. Here the question is: when we change our opinions, are we aware of that fact? The obvious answer is yes; the true answer is hinted at by Goethals and  Reckman’s 1973 experiment:

High school students were asked their opinions on a variety of social issues, including on how children should be bussed to school and whether it would help with racial integration. [...]

A couple of weeks later the students were invited back for a further discussion on the bussing issue. This time, though, they were split into two groups, one that was pro- and one anti- the bussing issue. [...]

The two groups had separate discussions about the bussing issue, but amongst their number had been planted an experimental confederate. The confederate was armed with a series of highly persuasive arguments designed to change the participant's minds on the issue. Experimenters wanted to turn the pro- group into an anti- group and the anti- group into a pro-group.

The confederates turned out to be extremely persuasive (and/or the students were easy to sway!) and the two groups were successfully turned around.[...]

But what happened when they were asked about this change of opinion?

Continue reading "Be sure to mind when you change your mind" »

Consider these points:

1. Our entire life stories are fixed by our genetics and our childhood environment (nature and nurture, more broadly), both of which we did not choose;
2. Our bodies are slowly growing more frail and debilitated until we die of something such as heart disease, cancer or stroke (or accident before then);
3. Even if someone develops a cure for aging, most of the experts who have studied the issue estimate about a 50/50 chance that our species will survive this century;
4. We live on a giant rotating planet, in an unimaginably large universe that is almost all empty space, and appears to be lifeless;
5. The fact that we were designed by evolution to value or desire certain things doesn’t seem to justify actually valuing or desiring them;
6. While most people believe in some sort of religion that provides cosmic context, the thousands of religions contradict each other, and all appear to be fictions created by men;
7. While most people believe in an “afterlife,” people don’t believe that parts of a crazy person’s mind go to Heaven when he loses them; by extrapolation, all of a person’s mind doesn’t go to Heaven when you lose all of it.

My point is not to push these beliefs onto anyone who resists them.  I suspect, though, that most OB readers already think they are facts.  And I suspect that many otherwise religious people, in their heart of hearts, already believe the above too.

My point, instead, is to make an observation about the above set of facts, which I’ll call “the human condition,” in the pessimistic sense.  My observation is this: while all of the above facts can be considered an insult or injury, there is one more that goes largely unnoticed.  The final insult is that we are not supposed to talk about the human condition.  Indeed, we are not even supposed to acknowledge its existence.  I call this last insult the “Meta-Human Condition”—the salt in the wound.

Continue reading "The Meta-Human Condition" »

Often when I’m dreaming I “feel” that I’m awake.  When I’m awake, however, I always  “feel” that I’m awake and have no conscious doubt (except in the philosophical sense) that I’m not dreaming.

But logically when I “feel” awake I should believe there is a non-trivial chance that I’m dreaming.  This has implications for how I should behave.

For example, imagine I’m considering eating spinach or chocolate.  I like the taste of chocolate more than spinach, but recognize that spinach is healthier for me.  Let’s say that if the probability of my being awake were greater than 99% then to maximize the expected overall quality of my life I should eat the spinach otherwise I should pick the chocolate. 

Rationally, I should probably figure that the chance of my being awake is less than 99% so I should go with the chocolate.  Yet like most other humans I don’t take into account that I might be dreaming when I “feel” awake.

Over the long run you would likely reduce your inclusive genetic fitness if when you  “feel” awake you act as if there is a less than 100% chance of your actually being awake.  For this reason I suspect we are “genetically programmed” to never doubt that we are awake when we “feel” awake even though it would be rational to hold such a doubt.