I might get time to make a post about this at some point, but roughly:
- Self-deception can be dangerous - There is no way to assess the safety of a proposed self-deception, because in order to do so you'd have to give the truth of the matter an unstinting sober look of the sort that would make future self-deception impossible - People often think that they self-deceive about X, when in fact what they deceive themselves about is their own belief on X - cf I believe that people are nicer than they really are - I get from this that a lot of people are harbouring this huge lurking pessimism about humanity, that they don't dare to look at in the face, and so try to convince themselves that they've banished through self-deception, whereas they might actually feel *more* optimistic about humanity if they could look at it square in the face. - In practice, of course, people self-deceive about far more than the things they've admitted to in this post, and in ways that seem to have much greater potential for harm. I think that allowing the harmless cases people talk about here also bolsters the more harmful cases that we don't admit to when we talk about this.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2009-07-11 07:35 am (UTC)- Self-deception can be dangerous
- There is no way to assess the safety of a proposed self-deception, because in order to do so you'd have to give the truth of the matter an unstinting sober look of the sort that would make future self-deception impossible
- People often think that they self-deceive about X, when in fact what they deceive themselves about is their own belief on X - cf I believe that people are nicer than they really are
- I get from this that a lot of people are harbouring this huge lurking pessimism about humanity, that they don't dare to look at in the face, and so try to convince themselves that they've banished through self-deception, whereas they might actually feel *more* optimistic about humanity if they could look at it square in the face.
- In practice, of course, people self-deceive about far more than the things they've admitted to in this post, and in ways that seem to have much greater potential for harm. I think that allowing the harmless cases people talk about here also bolsters the more harmful cases that we don't admit to when we talk about this.