From: Robin Hanson (rhanson@gmu.edu)
Date: Tue Jun 17 2003 - 09:49:53 MDT
On 6/17/2003, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote:
>... I would venture
>that the vast majority of social self-deception is temporary - it makes
>sense to believe the girlfriend-lie while trying to obtain a sexual favor,
>but not when choosing a long-term mate. If you really make yourself believe
>a sub-par girlfriend is a great choice, you will damage your reproduction
>potential. ...
Actually, I think we more often self-deceive on the big choices than on the
little ones. We self-deceive more about a wife than about a girlfriend.
Yes the instrumental advantages of truth are larger, but the social benefits
from self-deception are even more larger.
>... I do not know if in the long run there could be situations
>where self-deceiving minds would have a stable and significant survival
>advantage over truth-seekers. The paper Robin quoted
>(http://econpapers.hhs.se/paper/cwlcwldpp/1319.htm) seems to imply
>otherwise. For now I will wait and see. Only when I see as an empirical fact
>that a mind can lie to itself, live forever and beat the Bayesian market
>competition, would I consider switching to the dark side.
That paper did not consider or try to model the usual arguments for
self-deception. The interesting question will be whether our descendants
find it harder or easier to lie. Humans give away so many clues
unconsciously that they find it hard to lie. But we don't seem to know
enough to tell whether this will be more or less so in the future.
Robin Hanson rhanson@gmu.edu http://hanson.gmu.edu
Assistant Professor of Economics, George Mason University
MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444
703-993-2326 FAX: 703-993-2323
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