A few weeks ago I made a draft of a post that was originally intended to be about the same issue addressed in MBlume’s post regarding beneficial false beliefs. Coincidentally, my draft included the same exact hypothetical about entering a club believing you’re the most attractive person in the room in order to increase chances of attracting women. There seems to be a general agreement with MBlume’s “it’s ok to pretend because it’s not self-deception and produces similar results” conclusion. I was surprised to see so much agreement considering that when I made my original draft I reached a completely different conclusion.
I do agree, however, that pretending may have some benefits, but those benefits are much more limited than MBlume makes them out to be. He brings up a time where pretending helped him better fit into his character in a play. Unfortunately, his anecdote is not an appropriate example of overcoming vestigial evolutionary impulses by pretending. His mind wasn’t evolutionarily programmed to “be afraid” when pretending to be someone else, it was programmed to “be afraid” when hitting on attractive women. When I am alone in my room I can act like a real alpha male all day long, but put me in front of attractive women (or people in general) and I will retreat back to my stifled self.
The only way false beliefs can overcome your obsolete evolutionary impulses is to truly believe in those false beliefs. And we all know why that would be a bad idea. Furthermore, pretending can be dangerous just like reading fiction can be dangerous. So the small benefit that pretending might give may not even be worth the cost (at times).
But there is something we can learn from these (sometimes beneficial) false beliefs.
Obviously, there is no direct casual chain that goes from self-fulfilling beliefs to real-world success. Beliefs, per se, are not the key variables in causing success; instead, these beliefs give rise to whatever the key variable is. We should figure out what are the key variables that arise and find a systematic way of getting those variables.
With the club example, we should instead figure out what behavior changes may result from believing that every girl is attracted to you. Then, figure out which of those behaviors attract women and find a way to perfect those behaviors. This is the approach the seduction community adopts for learning how to attract women—and it works.
Same goes with public speaking. If you have a fear of public speaking, you can’t expect to pretend your fear away. There are ways of reducing unnecessary emotions; the ways that work, however, don’t depend on pretending.
Self fulfilling prophecies are only epistemically wrong when you fail to act upon them. Failing, maybe out of cynicism, sophistication or simply being too clever, rationalizing them away; the result will be the same.
There's a potential barrier there. You can tunnel through it, or not. Tunneling can sound magical and counterintuitive. It's not. There are definite reasons why it can work.
Sometimes, however, you don't know those reasons, but can observe it appears to work for other people anyway. Then you may want to find a way to bootstrap the process, like self pretending. Or trying to copy someone else
For instance, the party example. This might not apply to everyone but, I think the issue starts with even trying to find that optimal way to attract a partner. Do you expect to find a way to be attractive enough to score on your first try ? Perhaps, to really minimize the risk of being rejected ?
Different people have different tastes, and even a single person may react differently to the same stimulus, depending on the conditions in which they find themselves.
Some people don't have an issue with that. They are ready to try as many times and different people as it takes to find one receptive, moving on as soon as it appears as though it won't work with this person in particular.
Not only will they eventually find someone - and some will indeed have to search for longer - but will also act with more confidence, knowing they will succeed at some point.
I know that's how it works for me anyway. I can't take failure, nor rejection. So I try my very best to avoid it, and this involves trying to push the efforts I invest in a single encounter, to their limits, which isn't as efficient as trying as many different persons as is needed to succeed.
This is a big insight among some of the "natural" PUA schools: that seeking tricks can in itself be evidence of a deeper lack of confidence... one that higher-quality women will pick up on.
Or, to put it another way, you can't trick your way to sleeping with a woman who really has higher self-esteem than you. I don't know if that's a true statement, it's more of a pseudo-aphorism to illustrate something that is true: namely, that PUAs who use tricks and lies get women who don't believe they deserve anything better than tricks and lies.