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Roko comments on Let There Be Light - Less Wrong
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It's possible, although seems unlikely on priors, that I'm relatively unusual in preferring that I actually be nice/smart/reasonable/friendly/etc. over preferring that I think that I'm those things. This seems to me much like preferring that my family be actually alive and well, over my merely thinking that they are alive and well.
From a purely practical standpoint, people might notice if you actually have negative personal traits, even if you signal not having them relatively well due to your positive self-image. They will then think you are an arrogant, deluded person (who also has whatever negative traits you are trying to signal away.)
Have you ever met one of those people who tells bad jokes all the time? This seems an quintessential example of someone with a strong false positive self-image.
What predictions does this model let you make? When have you seen it compellingly confirmed in situations where other models would have had you predict something else? It sounds dangerously vulnerable to epicyclic adaptation to individual cases that don't align with it.
The 'fake it until you make it' school of self-improvement is based around this kind of model. For example, if you want to be a self-confident person and derive the benefits of self-confidence, start out 'faking' self-confidence and mimicking the behaviours and signals of self-confident people. Other people will generally respond to this as they would respond to someone who is 'actually' self confident and a virtuous circle will result in you eventually not having to fake the self confidence any more.
A prediction of this kind of model might therefore be that the best way to improve self-confidence is to consciously mimic the behaviours of self confident individuals rather than to try and 'internally' improve your self confidence. Anecdotally I see some evidence that this works but I also see some evidence that evolution has made people better at detecting fakers than a naive version of the model might suppose.