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Anomylous comments on Welcome to Less Wrong! (6th thread, July 2013) - Less Wrong
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I'm 21, in college studying to be a professional musician. Through my teenage years, I would intentionally deceive myself, and act from emotion rather than logic. Luckily for me, I figured out that this was non-optimal before any serious harm was done, and have chosen the path of rationality. It was difficult at first. Although I don't remember for sure, I think I found this site through a late-night Google search, looking for anything that might help me in my quest to vanquish emotion.
I may be a bit of a misfit here. I'm neither a hard scientist, nor particularly excited about AI or transhumanism; I also believe that death is simply the price you pay for getting to live, rather than something to be feared and avoided. However, as mentioned, I'm very interested in learning to live rationally, and in the pursuit of perfection both as a musician and as a person.
One question that I'm pondering right now is this: What is the relative value of the pursuit of rationality and intellectual honesty, versus protecting the happiness of your family and closest friends? It turns out that, when religion gets involved, this is a real choice individuals may have to make. I can give details if anybody is interested.
Rationality doesn't have to be opposed to emotion. Most rationalists I know see emotion as playing a similar role in humans as a utility function plays in an agent. The other stuff decides what you believe, but emotion helps you decide what to do about it. Of course, there is stoic-style rationality, but that's a minority position here. Also the real people I have known to advocate it don't recommend getting rid of all emotions, just harmful ones. Also see this.
There can be epistemic risks to emotion; you can't wishfully think if you wish for nothing, for example. But if you wish for nothing, why would you care whether your beliefs were accurate? Anyway, I think it's possible to learn to cut down on wishful thinking a lot by practice in being suspicious of your thoughts in general, and by internalizing the idea here. Even though it's only partly true.
If you think of rationality of a fight you have with yourself, and your emotions as enemies to be vanquished, you will make becoming rational much harder than if you think of them as misguided friends to be guided to accomplish your shared goals better. See this.
My friends and family, even if they think I'm weird, don't seem to be really bothered by the fact that I'm weird, so your dilemma is outside of my experience. But one thing I can tell you is that I used to de-emphasize my weirdness around them, and then I stopped, and found that being unapologetically weird is a lot more fun.
Yes, it is a rather common question here. In my experience, there is often a way to do both, though it is rarely obvious or easy. Feel free to give the details, and maybe people can help you figure out how you can win without being dishonest.
Details: Said friends and family are Christian, of varying degrees of evangelistic fervor. For a long time, I was very definitely not-Christian, which caused them considerable grief on my behalf. Then, I converted, and there was commensurate rejoicing. My family and friends are honest enough to not try to pretend that being Christian fixes all of their problems, but they also hold Christianity to be a real and good truth, and are happy that I have seen the light, in much the same way that a community of rationalists would rejoice when somebody gave up intentionally deceiving themselves.
I don't believe that being Christian and rationalist are necessarily exclusive, as one of my best friends is both, but I don't know how he does it. Maybe I just never understood the distinction between faith and self-deception, which he seems to be able to make. So, I fall pretty squarely into the label of "deist" - which is not the same thing as having accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior, which I consider, on balance, to be only mildly less ridiculous than the Wiccan phase I went through as a teenager (yeah, that one didn't go over well with the family...)
Were I to recant, they wouldn't abandon me. Instead, they would be distressed on my behalf, and lovingly try to guide me back to the light, causing both parties great frustration when it didn't work. It seems that the best option is to allow everybody to go on assuming I believe as they do, and even tell a few lies to preserve the illusion. This hurts my conscience a bit, but that can be regarded as something I do to care for the people who love me. Or, it could be regarded as weighting truth too lightly and comfort too heavily; that has a name and it's called being a coward.
I also do it. It's really quite simple; I consider it more likely, given the evidence presented to me through my life so far, that God exists than that He does not. That is to say, I make the attempt to discern the universe as it is, and that includes the probable existence of the Divine.
(Mind you, some varieties of protestant are ridiculous).
Now, as to your question:
My advice is: don't do that. Be truthful with your family, and listen to them when they try to be truthful with you.
I wouldn't suggest making a big thing about it; but don't lie to preserve the illusion.
In support of this advised course of action, I present the following arguments:
"Love thy neighbour as thyself". Whether you believe in the existence of Jesus or not, this is still an excellent general principle. If you want to call yourself a rationalist, I would assume that you do not wish to lie to yourself; I therefore advise most strongly against lying to those near to you.
Don't merely consider what your friends and family would feel like if they were to believe what you say. Consider also how they would feel if the deception were to be uncovered; as it well might, as indeed might any deception. A certain amount of "distressed on your behalf" is a small price to pay for a distinct lack of "betrayed".
Finally, if you are still seriously considering lying to your friends and family, I would urge you to read this article first; it puts forward several good arguments in favour of a general strategy of complete (though not brutal) honesty.
That doesn't make any sense. He wants to lie to his family because of how his family would react to the truth. Lying to himself would not serve a similar purpose.
That article is about lying by claiming your ideas have too much support--claiming that your belief is less uncertain than it is, claiming the project will accomplish more or do better things than you really believe it will, and doing so because you hope it will promote your belief. That's the opposite from the kind of lying suggested here, which is to lie to conceal your ideas rather than to spread them and make them look stronger.
...huh. The only reason that I can see for lying to oneself is that one would not like one's own reaction to the truth.
What purpose do you think that lying to oneself would serve, if not that?
I had read the article as being about lying about one's own thoughts and internal mental state in order to achieve what appears to be an optimal outcome; which is exactly what the original poster was asking about.
...it is interesting that we have such wildy varying interpretations of the same aticle.
"reaction" means different things for himself and for his family.
I doubt he would refuse to talk to himself at the dinner table, or constantly tell himself "if you don't listen to me you'll go to Hell", or keep bringing up the subject in conversations with himself to make himself feel guilty. On the other hand, I can see his family doing that.
The case described in the article is a case where someone wants to lie in order to spread his ideas more effectively. While that is a type of optimal outcome, describing it as such loses nuance; there's a difference between lying to spread your ideas and lying to conceal them.
Based on his description of their probable reaction, I doubt his family would do that either. I may be wrong; but all of those would be counterproductive behaviours if indulged in by his family, as they would tend to push him further away.
That is the case described, yes. It just seems to me that you are reading it too narrowly, applying it only to that single case.
I mean, consider the introduction (quote snipped slightly for brevity):
Thus, the introduction is framed in terms of lying in an attempt to follow the greatest expected utility; and then the article goes into depth in regards to why this is a bad idea in practice. The introduction does not specify that that utility must lie in spreading ideas.
Now, the given examples of various types of lie (snipped for brevity in the quote above), are all examples of trying to spread ideas; but that is not the only type of lie that can be told, and those are merely illustrative examples, not an exhaustive list.
Unfortunately, in the real world, family does often do counterproductive things, especially when serious religious beliefs are involved.
By the way, what would you suggest to a gay teenager who is afraid that telling the truth would lead to getting thrown out of the house?
But the reasons he gives don't equally apply to spreading and concealing ideas. Lying to conceal your ideas means bringing it up in response to someone else's actions (or perhaps, their anticipated actions). It's not right to describe that as "to grab the tempting benefits" when the "benefit" consists of not being harassed. "Lie, because someone else might lie" certainly isn't a good description of lying to conceal your beliefs.
I suspect that one of us, probably both, are falling prey to the Typical Family Fallacy. It's similar to the Typical Mind Fallacy, only it applies to families instead.
I'd recommend making sure to have someplace to move to prepared, in advance, before telling his parents. (This might take a few years to set up). The negative consequences, in such a case, appear sufficiently bad to justify caution, even temporary concealment of the truth.
I'd also recommend finding some other mentor, or authority figure, that he can trust to talk about the situation with. This other mentor might be a school counsellor, a priest, an aunt or uncle, a teacher, or a school janitor; anyone reasonably sensible who would be willing to not inform his parents would do.
That seems like a pretty tempting benefit to me.
That is true. It does apply to some other forms of "lie to grab the tempting benefits", though.
There are two kinds of intellectual honesty. Honesty towards yourself and honesty towards others. There nothing irrational about telling white lies to others. You don't need to be open with your family about your religious beliefs.
For a religious person it's a sin to claim to be atheistic but the reverse is not true. For people with a religious background there's usually the idea that religion is important and that religious belief or it's absence has to be a central part of your identity. That's not true.
Emotions generally get stronger when you fight them.