Related to: Will your real preferences please stand up?
Last week I read a book in which two friends - let's call them John and Lisa so I don't spoil the book for anyone who wanders into it - got poisoned. They only had enough antidote for one person and had to decide who lived and who died. John, who was much larger than Lisa, decided to hold Lisa down and force the antidote down her throat. Lisa just smirked; she'd replaced the antidote with a lookalike after slipping the real thing into John's drink earlier in the day.
These are good friends. Not only was each willing to give the antidote to the other, but each realized it would be unfair to make the other live with the crippling guilt of having chosen to survive at the expense of a friend's life, and so decided to force the antidote on the other unwillingly to prevent any guilt over the fateful decision. Whatever you think of the ethics of their decision, you can't help admire the thought processes.
Your brain might be this kind of a friend.
In Trivers' hypothesis of self-deception, one of the most important functions of the conscious mind is effective signaling. Since people have the potential to be excellent lie-detectors, the conscious mind isn't given full access to information so that it can lend the ring of truth to useful falsehoods.
But this doesn't always work. If you're addicted to heroin, at some point you're going to notice. And telling your friends "No, I'm not addicted, it's just a coincidence that I take heroin every day," isn't going to cut it. But there's another way in which the brain can sequester information to promote effective signaling.
Wikipedia defines the term "ego syntonic" as "referring to behaviors, values, feelings that are in harmony with or acceptable to the needs and goals of the ego, or consistent with one's ideal self-image", and "ego dystonic" as the opposite of that. A heroin addict might say "I hate heroin, but somehow I just feel compelled to keep taking it." But an astronaut will say "I love being an astronaut and I worked hard to get into this career."
Both the addict and the astronaut have desires: the addict wants to take heroin, the astronaut wants to fly in space. But the addict's desires manifest as an unpleasant compulsion from outside, and the astronaut's manifest as a genuine and heartfelt love.
Suppose that in the original example, John predicted that Lisa would ask for the antidote, but later feel guilty about it and believe she was a bad person. By presenting the antidote to Lisa in the form of an external compulsion, he allows Lisa to do what she wanted anyway and avoid the associated guilt.
Under Trivers' hypothesis, the compulsion for heroin works the same way. The heroin addict's definitely going to get that heroin, but by presenting the desire in the form of an external compulsion, the unconscious saves the heroin addict from the social stigma of "choosing" heroin. This allows the addict to create a much more sympathetic narrative than the alternative: "I want to support my family and keep clean, but for some reason these compulsions keep attacking me," instead of "Yeah, I like heroin more than I like supporting my family. Deal with it."
EGO SYNTONIA, DYSTONIA, AND WILLPOWER
Willpower cashes out as the action of ego syntonic thoughts and desires against ego dystonic thoughts and desires.
The aforementioned heroin addict may have several reinforcers both promoting and discouraging heroin use. On the plus side, heroin itself is very strongly rewarding. On the minus, it can lead to both predicted and experienced poverty, loss of friendships, loss of health, and death.
Worrying about the latter factors determining heroin use - the factors that make heroin a bad idea - is socially encouraged and good signaling material. A person wanting to put their best face forward should believe themselves to be the sort of person who cares about these things. These desires will be ego syntonic. Wanting to take heroin, on the other hand, is a socially unacceptable desire, so it presents as dystonic.
If the latter syntonic factors win out over the dystonic factors, this feels from the inside like "I exerted willpower and managed to overcome my heroin addiction." If the dystonic factors win out over the syntonic factors, this feels from the inside like "I didn't have enough willpower to overcome my heroin addiction."
DYSTONIC DESIRES IN ABNORMAL PSYCHOLOGY
There is some speculation that the brain has one last trick up its sleeve to deal with desires that are so unpleasant and unacceptable that even manifesting them as external compulsions isn't good enough: it splits them off into weird alternate personalities.
One of the classic stereotypes of the insane is that they hear voices telling them to kill people. During my short time working at a psychiatric hospital, I was surprised by how spot-on this stereotype was: meeting someone who heard voices telling him to kill people was an almost daily occurrence. Other voices would have other messages: maybe that the patient was a horrible person who deserved to die, or that the patient must complete some bizarre ritual or else doom everybody. There were relatively fewer voices saying "Hey, let's go fishing!"
One theory explaining these voices is that they are an extreme reaction to highly ego dystonic thoughts. Some aspect of the patients' mental disease gives them obsessive thoughts about (though rarely a desire for) killing people. Genuinely wanting to kill people would make you a bad person, but even saying "I feel a strong compulsion to kill people" is pretty bad too. The best the brain can do with this desire is pitch it as a completely different person by presenting it as an outside voice speaking to the patient.
Although everything about dissociative identity disorder (aka multiple personality disorder) is controversial including its very existence, perhaps one could sketch a similar theory explaining that condition in the same framework of separating out dystonic thoughts.
SUMMARY
A conscious/unconscious divide helps signaling by allowing the conscious mind to hold only socially acceptable beliefs, which it can broadcast without detectable falsehood. Socially acceptable ideas present as the conscious mind's own beliefs and desires; unacceptable ones present as compulsions from afar. The balance of ego syntonic and dystonic desires presents as willpower. In extreme cases, some desires may be so ego dystonic that they present as external voices.
Ok, but then what?
I mean, this idea sounds about right to me (in general terms) and has direct consequences for my life. I'm in such a conflict right now, so I'm very motivated to find a way to deal with it.
(In case that you're addressing this in an upcoming post soon, feel free to ignore this comment until then.)
I'm currently facing opposition between two different personalities and their associated goals. Roughly speaking, one side has a very stable, mildly entertained, completely withdrawn lifestyle that takes over the whole day, and the other has fairly specific, time-intensive, but exciting ambitions and is seething with hatred over all the wasted potential and seeming incompetence and tyranny of the dominant slacker side. (I'm willing to be arbitrarily explicit, but don't want to derail into my crap unasked.) The situation is quite similar to the heroin addict, though not yet as unstable. Either side makes it look to me and to others as if it were the victim, exactly as you describe.
The conflict is clearly causing me much suffering and is not a satisfactory state of affairs, but it's not clear at all to me what I can do about it. Here's a (probably incomplete) list of things I've unsuccessfully tried over the last years (please note that I'm compressing quite some time and am focusing directly on the conflict, so this sounds probably more intense than it really is):
Accept fully the desires of both sides as valid. They are not, strictly speaking, in conflict. I can totally imagine spending, say, working some hours on a long-term goal and some other hours relaxing, or maybe find ways to integrate them. This does nothing. Sure, I don't hate myself for the conflict anymore, but it doesn't resolve it and one side is still utterly dominant for months until the other violently takes over.
Try to trace exactly what the conflict is. This was specifically influenced by the Method of Levels and PCT, according to which there must be 2 (or more) control systems that attempt to control for contradictory reference values. I've spent plenty of hours on that, but can't actually identify any direct conflict. I do not get a situation where I can feel both sides pulling in different directions. Rather, I get completely mind-wiped by one side, which takes over, conflict-free, then background suffering builds up, another mind-wipe, the other side rules. If I try to become aware of the background suffering, I just get a completely unfocused, unspecific build-up of pressure in my head and stomach that is intensely painful. I can concentrate on this for hours, but get no further insight or connection to anything whatsoever out of it. (I have found MoL-like analysis useful for other minor issues, though.)
Different kinds of meditation. Vipassana. Concentration. Noting. Chanting. Prayer. Trying to be aware of as many internal events as possible. Ditto external. Focusing on rest. All this leads either nowhere or gets the results described in 1) and 2).
Drugs. Anti-depressants, uppers, downers, psychedelics, dissociatives, omega 3, whatever. Some make it feel like I'm resolving something (particularly the entheogens), but nothing changes. I always walk away with "oh, that's why I'm suffering, now I got it!" and a few days later, at most, it's all back.
Contracts. I've set up multiple contracts with myself, trying to negotiate conditions that are getting closer to resolution, but they hold no power and after a few days I start abandoning them, regardless of how severe the contract was.
Finding out what "my purpose" or "my real values" are, by introspection and writing. I don't even get fake results that seem convincing at first, like with the drugs. I have lots and lots of pages of psycho-analytical babble, though.
Using CBT and The Work to repair broken or harmful thoughts. Did absolutely nothing for me. Most of the time, I don't even have thoughts. (This wasn't always the case. When I first meditated at 15, I found it hard to sit for 5 minutes and not get overwhelmed by my thoughts. Now I go blank quite often and then get bored.) And the thoughts I found were mostly not about me (but about stuff I read, like what's good about Python, or explaining to myself how spaced repetition works so that I don't forget the explanation). The few worries I could dig out were not really responsive to the approach. If I try investigating my feelings using these techniques, I simply get no results. "What's this anxiety about?", "What does it predict?", "Who would I be without it?", all just gets a mental shrug and "don't know / don't care". I might as well ask what an itch is "about" or "who I would be without it".
Using operant conditioning, trivial inconveniences and similar "behaviorist" tools to get rid of one side or keep it in check. (I've tried this with both sides, at different times of course.) No results, except that I changed a few food preferences in the process. Essentially every single akrasia tactic described on LW fails me here.
Blatantly and totally picking sides, embracing one personality as the only true one. (Again, did this with each side eventually.) This lead me to actively harm the other, often destroying things, leaving associated communities, the like. Of course, I made my decision public and took full responsibility for the previous conflict and for the new direction I was going to take. This feels great for typically a few weeks (and can trigger quite a manic episode), but then the other side comes back, "willpower" gets drained and I descend into total apathy. There isn't even active opposition anymore; both sides are perfectly willing to commit "suicide" by now and let the other side take over, as long as this damn suffering finally ends, but they don't go anywhere.
Give up. I've sat down, stared at a wall and said to myself, "I'm tired of this bullshit and will do nothing anymore! I won't influence anything, won't want anything, prefer nothing, decide nothing, just sit here and stare at this wall. Whatever happens then, I don't care.". I spent a few hours more or less catatonic, then had some kind of peace for a few days, but the background suffering just builds up again and the anxiety, self-hate and pain come back, making it impossible to enjoy anything.
I hope this isn't too incoherent or tl;dr, but I'm frustrated that this looks as if there should be some deep understanding and solution that would actually help me, not just a fancy idea that signals how cynical I am.
Why work on lowering your expectations rather than working on improving your consistency of success? If you managed to actually satisfy your expectations once, that seems to suggest that they weren't actually too high (unless the success was heavily luck based, but based on what you said it sounds like it wasn't.)
Also, that article didn't sound like it was describing narcissists (at least for the popular conception of the word "narcissist"). It more just sounded like it was describing everyone (everyone has a drive for social success) interspersed with describing unrelated pathologies, like lack of "stamina" to follow through on plans and trouble dealing with life events.