Psy-Kosh comments on Belief in Self-Deception - Less Wrong

51 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 05 March 2009 03:20PM

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Tags: antitheism self_deception religion belief_in_belief the_dark_side nonstandard_toolbox

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Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 06 March 2009 12:02:26AM 3 points [-]

For what it's worth, in my model of her, when she said "I believe that people are nicer than they really are," she meant, "When I reflect on my emotional attitude towards people, I see that this attitude is of the sort that, in the absence of its actual cause, could have been caused by a falsely high belief (in your sense) about peoples' niceness."

An interesting hypothesis, Tyrrell; but she explicitly explained to me about how, if you think people are nicer than they really are, then this makes you happier.

Comment author: Tyrrell_McAllister 06 March 2009 09:15:27AM 4 points [-]

You're right to call it a mere hypothesis. I hope that I made its tentative nature clear.

But that explanation of hers seems to me to be consistent with my hypothesis. No surprise, because it was part of the data that I was trying to fit when I constructed it.

I would be curious to know more about how she responded when you asked her, "So, are you consistently surprised when people undershoot your expectations?" Did she have anything more to say after repeating the question?

Comment author: Yasser_Elassal 06 March 2009 07:52:47PM 13 points [-]

My hypothesis is that she simply meant, "It makes me happy to pretend that people are nicer than they really are."

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