How purposely deluded and self-deceived are we about ourselves? If we were just rarely and a bit deluded, the subject would be of only moderate intellectual importance. Studying self-deception might offer interesting clues into human nature, but it wouldn’t help much to achieve other goals.
I'm currently working on a psychology project that focuses on self-deception and its effects on depressive realism. Right now I have to figure out a way to manipulate self-deception in order to attempt to find a causal relationship. Fail.
Self deception is a requirement of specialization. None of us our carpenters, and carpentry is not innate. We can only be carpenters because we self deceive. Going deeper, is is even not ourselves that are deceiving. Much of what we accept about ourselves is determined by external signals. When carpenters have tools and walk around a half finished house, they have no choice but to be something not innate.
First, I think the mechanisms we have for NOT deceiving ourselves in a measurable way across scads of technical fields are outstanding. We build machines, and software of quickly increasing complexity that do increasingly subtle tasks. We have NOT run in to a limit yet on what we can do without severely additional methods.
Second, the deceptions we have as commonplace only survive where they can do the least damage. It may not seem like that as you look at some common mistake, but those who are wrong about investing tend not to be professional investors, those who are wrong about physics don't build machines, etc. etc. Even within the individual few people hold on to deceptions that cost them much.
Finally, I think you are the man with a hammer. OK, you have a few hammers, but you carry them around looking for things that MIGHT be nails. And you see a lot of nails around you. Are there really more nails around you then there are around a priest or an astrologer? Probably not, but you make your living with your hammer...
You might want to do some stuff to quantify the total "deception load" on society, just as we talk about "mutation loads" on certain organisms. I suspect properly examined it is really quite small.
At a guess, research into self-deception will of course be research into the forms that self-deception takes. Much of that is going to be ex post facto moral posturing or ideological, of exactly the sort that humans won't abide being investigated. So this is really an explanation based on careerism: it's not in our interests to be constantly controversial.
>I’ve been thinking about what I call group self-congratulation– the ways in which groups of people (sometimes very large ones like nations or races) tell themselves and others that they (the self-congratulating groups) are especially wonderful.
For an example of a self-congratulatory group, check the pollyanna discussion of donations in the last two entries of Less Wrong, where critical thought is abandoned in gushing self-adulation. Anyone challenging the prevalent self-delusion of moral purity gets "voted down"; that is, a mechanism is in place ("karma"-what a term for use by rationalists!) to enforce the self-congratulatory mindset. If you want to study self-congratulating groups, look next door.
The assumption that truth in general is important is implicit in the question, and I think it's a poor assumption. Truth is a nice academic idea, but it isn't very high on most folks' lists.
The Hanson/Falkenstein thesis that status/envy drives everything is far more plausible than the idea that the truth matters much. And if you give up the idea that most folks care about the truth (except perhaps as a point-scoring mechanism), it's all rather simple.
Going back to Russ' related post from about 4 days ago or so, he was using the behavior of Greenspan, Rubin, Summers, and Fed gov'r Gramlich as an example of such behavior.
What jumped out at me was the differing motives applied to similar men for the same kind of mistakes. One was considered to have made mistakes because of his ideology, while others were led astray by their egos. None of the causes were really quantifiable however, and were completely dependent on the person making the claim. So those with an anti-market bias would see Greenspan as an ideologue and Rubin as an egoist while their pro-market counterpart would simply turn those reasons around.
Point being that a lot of smart people doing a lot of hard work and research still walk away with their views predictably tilted by their own emotionally inspired interpretations.
Choice b) from above fits this since everyone has a self-deception issue except the one making the observation of course. Approaching true objectivity requires a person to come very near something that might initially tasted like cynicism, but in fact is a healthy dose of mistrust for virtually everyone, and everything. i.e. I'm willing to accept that Rubin, Greenspan, et al are all influenced somewhat equally by their incredible egos, and their ideologies don't necessarily run that deep.
Picking out a phenomenon called “self-deception” or “bias” implies that you intend to arrive, after your bold slashing through the delusions, at some sort of objective truth.
Well biases certainly do exist so if one was to attempt to arrive at an objective truth - as objective as possible anyway - how else would they begin but to question them? I know you cite Freud, but something more specific to counter would be helpful I guess.
No offense meant, but you seem to think the asking in and of itself is crude or perhaps arrogant, but I don't see the logic in that.
Our tendency to self-deceive affects all of our beliefs, including our beliefs about our own self-deception. The answer to your question therefore seems to be none of the ones you listed, but rather this self-referential feature of the mechanism generating self-deception.
mtraven's point is a wonderful retort to the naive and often disingenuous ways bias is discussed on this blog. Consider signalling: It may well be that the most important issue is not narrow truth about specific claims but a) about establishing identity b) finding members of a tribe you trust and c) understanding your own desires. Even from a purely econ autistic viewpoint, some "useless" signalling may be essential to establish common knowledge. Knowing that someone reads the same books or watches the same tv may mean a lot in terms of deciphering even routine "factual" statements. For example if I ask you to flip a "fair coin" are we discussing probability or are you trying to trick me and cheat me? Without signalling and establishing your appropriate identity, even the most ordinary statements are fraught with danger.
seems a potentially useful way to track word and phrase usage trends over time.
the link (if it works) reflects a search on "self deception" over the period 1800-2000. This particular search result looks a bit uneven, perhaps because the phrase is used so infrequently. YMMV.
I think that I put more effort than most into finding and rooting out self deception, but acknowledge that much work remains.
To the extent I don't do as much as I should, I think the main reasons are c and d, and also e) avoidance of anticipated psychological pain, f) laziness.
I suspect that for typical people, a and b play more of a role than they do for me.
I'm currently working on a psychology project that focuses on self-deception and its effects on depressive realism. Right now I have to figure out a way to manipulate self-deception in order to attempt to find a causal relationship. Fail.
Self deception is a requirement of specialization. None of us our carpenters, and carpentry is not innate. We can only be carpenters because we self deceive. Going deeper, is is even not ourselves that are deceiving. Much of what we accept about ourselves is determined by external signals. When carpenters have tools and walk around a half finished house, they have no choice but to be something not innate.
Good questions.
First, I think the mechanisms we have for NOT deceiving ourselves in a measurable way across scads of technical fields are outstanding. We build machines, and software of quickly increasing complexity that do increasingly subtle tasks. We have NOT run in to a limit yet on what we can do without severely additional methods.
Second, the deceptions we have as commonplace only survive where they can do the least damage. It may not seem like that as you look at some common mistake, but those who are wrong about investing tend not to be professional investors, those who are wrong about physics don't build machines, etc. etc. Even within the individual few people hold on to deceptions that cost them much.
Finally, I think you are the man with a hammer. OK, you have a few hammers, but you carry them around looking for things that MIGHT be nails. And you see a lot of nails around you. Are there really more nails around you then there are around a priest or an astrologer? Probably not, but you make your living with your hammer...
You might want to do some stuff to quantify the total "deception load" on society, just as we talk about "mutation loads" on certain organisms. I suspect properly examined it is really quite small.
At a guess, research into self-deception will of course be research into the forms that self-deception takes. Much of that is going to be ex post facto moral posturing or ideological, of exactly the sort that humans won't abide being investigated. So this is really an explanation based on careerism: it's not in our interests to be constantly controversial.
>I’ve been thinking about what I call group self-congratulation– the ways in which groups of people (sometimes very large ones like nations or races) tell themselves and others that they (the self-congratulating groups) are especially wonderful.
For an example of a self-congratulatory group, check the pollyanna discussion of donations in the last two entries of Less Wrong, where critical thought is abandoned in gushing self-adulation. Anyone challenging the prevalent self-delusion of moral purity gets "voted down"; that is, a mechanism is in place ("karma"-what a term for use by rationalists!) to enforce the self-congratulatory mindset. If you want to study self-congratulating groups, look next door.
I think the question is imperfect.
The assumption that truth in general is important is implicit in the question, and I think it's a poor assumption. Truth is a nice academic idea, but it isn't very high on most folks' lists.
The Hanson/Falkenstein thesis that status/envy drives everything is far more plausible than the idea that the truth matters much. And if you give up the idea that most folks care about the truth (except perhaps as a point-scoring mechanism), it's all rather simple.
I think you'll find this more revealing of a trend:http://ngrams.googlelabs.co...
Most likely b)
Going back to Russ' related post from about 4 days ago or so, he was using the behavior of Greenspan, Rubin, Summers, and Fed gov'r Gramlich as an example of such behavior.
What jumped out at me was the differing motives applied to similar men for the same kind of mistakes. One was considered to have made mistakes because of his ideology, while others were led astray by their egos. None of the causes were really quantifiable however, and were completely dependent on the person making the claim. So those with an anti-market bias would see Greenspan as an ideologue and Rubin as an egoist while their pro-market counterpart would simply turn those reasons around.
Point being that a lot of smart people doing a lot of hard work and research still walk away with their views predictably tilted by their own emotionally inspired interpretations.
Choice b) from above fits this since everyone has a self-deception issue except the one making the observation of course. Approaching true objectivity requires a person to come very near something that might initially tasted like cynicism, but in fact is a healthy dose of mistrust for virtually everyone, and everything. i.e. I'm willing to accept that Rubin, Greenspan, et al are all influenced somewhat equally by their incredible egos, and their ideologies don't necessarily run that deep.
Picking out a phenomenon called “self-deception” or “bias” implies that you intend to arrive, after your bold slashing through the delusions, at some sort of objective truth.
Well biases certainly do exist so if one was to attempt to arrive at an objective truth - as objective as possible anyway - how else would they begin but to question them? I know you cite Freud, but something more specific to counter would be helpful I guess.
No offense meant, but you seem to think the asking in and of itself is crude or perhaps arrogant, but I don't see the logic in that.
Do we self-deceive ourselves about the relative importance of self-deception?
Troy Camplin actually makes essentially this point in an earlier comment, which I hadn't read when I posted my own.
Our tendency to self-deceive affects all of our beliefs, including our beliefs about our own self-deception. The answer to your question therefore seems to be none of the ones you listed, but rather this self-referential feature of the mechanism generating self-deception.
mtraven's point is a wonderful retort to the naive and often disingenuous ways bias is discussed on this blog. Consider signalling: It may well be that the most important issue is not narrow truth about specific claims but a) about establishing identity b) finding members of a tribe you trust and c) understanding your own desires. Even from a purely econ autistic viewpoint, some "useless" signalling may be essential to establish common knowledge. Knowing that someone reads the same books or watches the same tv may mean a lot in terms of deciphering even routine "factual" statements. For example if I ask you to flip a "fair coin" are we discussing probability or are you trying to trick me and cheat me? Without signalling and establishing your appropriate identity, even the most ordinary statements are fraught with danger.
Mtravern, Great comment. Not sure I completely agree, but it's a good counterweight to the OP and much of the comments above yours.
indidentally the google books ngram viewer
seems a potentially useful way to track word and phrase usage trends over time.
the link (if it works) reflects a search on "self deception" over the period 1800-2000. This particular search result looks a bit uneven, perhaps because the phrase is used so infrequently. YMMV.
I think that I put more effort than most into finding and rooting out self deception, but acknowledge that much work remains.
To the extent I don't do as much as I should, I think the main reasons are c and d, and also e) avoidance of anticipated psychological pain, f) laziness.
I suspect that for typical people, a and b play more of a role than they do for me.