Peacewise comments on Doublethink (Choosing to be Biased) - Less Wrong

33 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 14 September 2007 08:05PM

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Comment author: Kawoomba 06 August 2013 06:37:40PM 1 point [-]

Leaving the morality aside, I doubt such a lunatic dislocation in the mind could really happen. Second-order rationality implies that at some point, you will think to yourself, "And now, I will irrationally believe that I will win the lottery, in order to make myself happy." But we do not have such direct control over our beliefs.

We routinely generate a swath of irrational beliefs, spawned e.g. by deep seated biological biases such as "That girl I just met, she is so special, I will love and cherish her forever and ever." You notice a belief like that makes you happy, then you only do a cursory examination of some worst case boundaries. If you then judge the belief to be mostly harmless, you just do not look at it any closer.

Changing a belief consciously means reflecting on it. Stop the reflecting, and you stop the updating (and keep the happiness).