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JGWeissman comments on Positive Thinking - Less Wrong
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It isn't the relevant question. There is no such pill. You can't do it. Yet there are millions of people who are able to do it!
I believe this is because their subconscious, rational decision-making process can compute expected utility without being aware of their own operation, and thus being hindered from setting beliefs so as to maximize utility rather than correctness.
This isn't wrong - it's adaptative! If your decision-making were purely conscious, you would be unable to choose beliefs that are false but likely to lead to preferred outcomes.
It is far more likely that their subconscious hack of a decision making process executes a heuristic to rationalize as a conscious belief the belief being professed by high status people, that heuristic having evolved because it has been adaptive.