Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

I used to think people deliberately lied about their intuitions, but I now think it's mostly unconscious.  People have evolved to actually believe irrational things they would otherwise have to pretend to believe.  It takes less effort than lying, and comes across as more genuine, because it is.  This particular kind of cognitive bias seems to correlate negatively with autism, causing some of the social difficulties associated with autism.

If you're the kind of person who reads Overcoming Bias, the big lesson to learn here is not that the truth is less socially acceptable than your beliefs.  Rather, it's that you need to make more conscious effort to lie about your true beliefs in order to succeed socially among competitors who do this instinctively and unconsciously.

Ask yourself: do you want to say rational things, or say things that it's rational to say?  You can't have it both ways.

Expand full comment
algal's avatar

This is quite interesting and plausible. Yes, reported moral intuitions are likely distorted by the desire to look good. But does this really imply that reported moral intuitions are biased away from "moral truth", in the direction of looking good?

I think there are two distinctions here that it's helpful to spell out. The first distinction is whether signaling affects our reported intuitions consciously unconsciously:1. Lying. bias in reported intuition, in comparison with actually felt intuition.2. Self-delusion / socialization. bias in actually felt intuition, in comparison with what the felt intuition would be in the absence of social pressure.

The second case is the interesting one. As your discussions hints, it's a bit of a judgment call if the second case is best interpreted as the unconscious idiocy of self-delusion or the unconscious intelligence of taking into account others' opinions.

And I think that highlights the second distinction here, which is whether signaling effects distort or correct intuitions that are shaped in the absence of signaling effects:1. inner voice. our moral intuition functions mostly accurately outside of social pressures2. collective intelligence. moral intuitions are most accurate when they are shaped by taking into account others' opinions of those intuitions.

What's interesting to me here is that it this question seems independent of the first one, since both the inner voice and collective intelligence scenarios are tenable whether or not the social pressures act consciously (via lying) or unconsciously (via self-delusion/socialization).

Expand full comment
21 more comments...

No posts