Don't Believe You'll Self-Deceive

I don't mean to seem like I'm picking on Kurige, but I think you have to expect a certain amount of questioning if you show up on Less Wrong and say:

One thing I've come to realize that helps to explain the disparity I feel when I talk with most other Christians is the fact that somewhere along the way my world-view took a major shift away from blind faith and landed somewhere in the vicinity of Orwellian double-think.

I realize that my views do not agree with the large majority of those who frequent LW and OB - but I'd just like to take a moment to recognize that it's a testament to this community that:

A) There have been very few purely emotional or irrational responses.

B) Of those that fall into (A) all have been heavily voted down.

I hope that Kurige comes back to verify this, but I'll bet that when he said

I chose to believe in the existence of God - deliberately and consciously. This decision, however, has absolutely zero effect on the actual existence of God.

he did not mean, "My belief isn't correlated with reality". Rather, I'll bet, he meant exactly what you meant when you said

telling yourself X doesn't make X true

By saying that his choice had no effect on reality, I expect that he meant that his control over his belief did not entail control over the subject of that belief, i.e., the fact of the matter.

His attribution of Orwellian doublethink to himself is far more confusing. I have no idea what to make of that. Maybe your advice in this post is on point there. But the "absolutely zero effect" quote seems unobjectionable.

"When it comes to deliberate self-deception, you must believe in your own inability!"

That is both contrary to facts, and a pretty effective way to ensure that we won't search for and find examples where we've been deceiving ourselves. Without that search, self-correction is impossible.

"Tell yourself the effort is doomed - and it will be!"

Tell yourself that victory is assured, and failure becomes certain.

One question here obviously concerns doxastic voluntarism (DV). You ask:

"If you know your belief isn't correlated to reality, how can you still believe it?"

Is this a rhetorical question aiming to assert that if you know your belief isn't correlated to reality, you can't still believe it"?

If so, then it just isn't clear that you're right. One possibility is that DV is true (there are, of course, many reasons to believe that it is). And, if DV is true, it's likely that different people have different degrees and kinds of control over their beliefs. After all, people differ with regard to all other known cognitive skills. Some irrational folks simply might have a kind of control over their beliefs that others don't have. That's an empirical question. (Though we normally think that folks who are more rational have greater control over their beliefs.)

You might, however, mean: if you know your belief isn't correlated to reality, you shouldn't still believe it.

That's a normative claim, not an empirical, psychological one. If that's what you mean, then you're in effect expressing surprise that anyone can be that irrational. If so, I guess I'm a little surprised at your surprise. It is a fairly pure case, but it seems to me that it's not that unusual to hear things like this.

When it comes to deliberate self-deception, you must believe in your own inability!

Tell yourself the effort is doomed - and it will be!

Is that the power of positive thinking, or the power of negative thinking? Either way, it seems like a wise precaution.

The positive power of negative thinking. There is a book waiting to happen. Scratch that, google tells me the title is already taken. Either way, the idea is fascinating.

Just what is the difference between deceiving yourself and 'positive thinking'? It is clear that Eleizer advocates telling yourself things that may not actually be true. You may tell yourself "I cannot believe what I know is not true". In some cases you may know yourself well enought to estimate that there is only a 40% chance that the claim could ever reasonably qualify as true no matter how dilligent your pep-talking may be, yet it may still be worth a try. On first glance that seems like it is 60% self deception. Yet there is some sort of difference.

When we go about affirming to ourself that "I am charming, assertive, have an overwhelming instinct to maintain reflective consistency and am irresistible to the opposite sex" we are not so much lieing as we are using the mechanics of our brains to alter our computational hardware to an improved state. But then, a believer could plausibly use the same defence.

Is it the potential for self fullfillment that makes our not-quite-truths 'ok'? We know that by telling ourselves we are assertive or that we can't stand to bullshit ourselves we probably do influence these traits somewhat. Yet again, the more we know ourselves the more we are able to know just to what extent we will be able to modify our cognitive behaviors. If we know that we'll never have the desired trait to a respectable degree then we have less scope to affirm ourselves without blatant lies. Having more self awareness would limit our options for self improvement. Now, there may be something to that connection, but it isn't something I would want to formalise into my understanding of what constitutes 'self deception'.

Could it be that these affirmative non-truths are different because they are self referential? When Eleizer delved into subjectivity he etched into my mind the quote from Robert Dick, "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away". We could almost argue that because we are talking about things that change based on what we believe, we are outside the scope of reality so have free reign. Almost. It still seems to me that as a statement of the state of the universe, "I can't fool myself!" may objectively be nonsense both as a current observation and as a prediction of the future and yet still be worth saying to yourself. That's right. "I can't fool myself and even though I can you'll probably believe me anyway, which helps, so knock 5% off the probability that I'll be able to believe something really idiotic. Thanks, bye."

Maybe the central difference is just that it's a "white lie". If the goal is to create the most accurate map of reality it is quite possibly the case that the optimal strategy is to believe certain false things. Try limitting yourself to only ideally rational behaviors and you may well end up less rational than if you'd taken a few liberties and made allowances for your weaknesses.

I was under the impression that Doublethink involved contradictory ideas, Kurige seem to be talking about descriptions that are not inherently contradictory.

On the subject of not being able to update, I know of an anorexic who claims that even if she were rail-thin, she would be a fat person in a thin body. The knowledge of thinness does not affect the internal concept of self-fatness. (probably formed during childhood)

http://lesswrong.com/lw/r/no_really_ive_deceived_myself/gl I don't think I'd call my situation self deception. I am not making myself "believe the sky is green by an act of will." Rather, something in me says the sky is green, and is not dependent on observations of the sky at all.

No matter how much you're committed to updating your map, you'll face a conundrum when you realize you should have made your map round, and that's not something that you can trivially change about your map. You can understand and minimize the distortions, and use different projections in different situations, but you might always be stuck with a flat map. Knowing the territory is round doesn't change the experience you have of looking at a flat map.

I chose to believe in the existence of God - deliberately and consciously. This decision, however, has absolutely zero effect on the actual existence of God.

If you know your belief isn't correlated to reality, how can you still believe it?

To be fair, he didn't say that the actual existence of God has absolutely zero effect on his decision to believe in the existence of God.

His acknowledgement that the map has no effect on the territory is actually a step in the right direction, even though he has many more steps to go.

It seems to me you are trying to deceive yourself into thinking that you cannot comfortably self-deceive. Your effort may indeed make it harder to self-deceive, but I doubt it changes your situation all that much. Admit it, you are human, and within the usual human range of capabilities and tendencies for self-deception.

" Kurige: One thing I've come to realize that helps to explain the disparity I feel when I talk with most other Christians is the fact that somewhere along the way my world-view took a major shift away from blind faith and landed somewhere in the vicinity of Orwellian double-think."

• I defy the data! Have you considered the possibility that kurige is a troll? This is an exceptionally weird statement even for a Christian...

It sounds like you don't really believe that double-think is impossible; you just have belief in belief in the impossibility of double-think, because you think that belief would be a useful one to have.

As soon as you start "trying to instill a self-fulfilling prophecy", you're going down the same road as the people who say "I believe in God because I think it's useful to have a belief in God."

To be clear, if you're trying to make it impossible for yourself to double-think by planting that thought in your head, that may be a rational strategy. But don't try to convince yourself that it's impossible for other people to double-think just because you wish that were the case; reality is what it is, not what we would like it to be.

Maybe we need to split this into two words. Belief for when it is not supported by fact, or even against the evidence. I mean I've never heard anybody say, "I believe in gravity". Maybe use the phrase "I accept" for supported ideas, as in "I accept quantum mechanics" or "I accept that god does not exist". "Accept" also seems to have less affect than "believe", which may make it easier to change your mind if the evidence changes.

A real-world instance of Moore’s Paradox (“It’s raining, but I don’t believe it is”) occurs several times annually at Autzen Stadium in Eugene, Oregon —

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autzen_Stadium

 [quote:]

Since 1990, Don Essig, the stadium's PA announcer since 1968, has declared that "It never rains at Autzen Stadium" before each home game as the crowd chants along in unison. He often prefaces it with the local weather forecast, which quite often includes some chance of showers, but reminds fans that "we know the real forecast..." or "let's tell our friends from (visiting team name) the real forecast..." If rain is actually falling before the game, Essig will often dismiss it as "a light drizzle", or "liquid sunshine" but not actual rain by Oregon standards.[60]

[60] Baker, Mark (March 6, 2010). "Still Quackin'". The Register-Guard. Archived from the original on September 23, 2010. Retrieved September 20, 2010.

[link to archive:] https://web.archive.org/web/20100923102447/http://special.registerguard.com/csp/cms/sites/web/news/cityregion/24519427-41/essig-game-court-basketball-mac.csp

If I am capable of deliberate self deception, I want to believe that I am capable of deliberate self deception.
If I am not capable of deliberate self deception, I want to believe that I am not capable of deliberate self deception.

I find it amusing that in this article, you are advocating the use of deliberate self-deception in order to ward yourself against later deliberate self-deception.

That said, I feel the urge to contribute despite the large time-gap, and I suspect that even if later posts revisit this concept, the relevance to my contribution will be lower.

"I believe X" is a statement of self-identity - the map of the territory of your mind. But as maps and territories go, self-identity is pretty special, as it is a map written using the territory, and changes in the map can affect the territory as a result - though not necessarily in the exactly intended fashion. So even if deliberate self-deception isn't possible, then some approximation of it probably is.

Moreover, I'd like to question the definition of 'belief' in the context. If we place an emphasis, in the concept, of a belief as something that affects one's actions, then there is such a thing as a false belief that someone holds: that is to say, an assumption someone intentionally makes, regardless of its' truth or falsehood, that they use to guide their behavior for external reasons.

That is to say, acting, or role-playing.

I'm rather a believer in cognitive minimalism - that our brains are very uncomplex. So I would assert that the same system that we use to model others' behavior - or to play others' roles - we use for our own self-identity. So when you say, "I believe X", you're effectively saying, "I act as if X is true". And if we use the same system to act like ourselves, to model our own behavior, as we do to model or act like anyone else, then that's most of what the practical impact of a belief is.

What I'm trying to say is that the only difference between acting a certain way and believing a certain thing is that you only do the acting under certain practical conditions - the belief, insofar as a belief is different from an act, is acting in a certain way all the time, for any reason.

Replace "I believe X because..." with "I act as if X is true because..." and I don't think it's confusing anymore. Self-identity modification as a tool is pretty important to human cognition, not just for trying to convince yourself that what you don't think is true, is.

Edit: Actually, I want to amend that last part now that I think on it. I would assert that there is no difference whatsoever; that all reasonable beliefs are contingent. In fact, a big part of acting rationally is about making your beliefs contingent on the truth or falsehood of the object of the belief. Beliefs that aren't based on accuracy are still contingent, just on things like, "This is beneficial to me in some way." And really, a rational belief is similar, it just goes, "I believe X because it is accurate," with the implied addition, "and accuracy is good to have in a belief," so that boils down to a practical reason as well.

I chose to believe in the model of science—deliberately and consciously. This decision, however, has absolutely zero effect on the actual scientific method. I choose to believe science not because I can show it to be likely true, but simply because it is useful for making accurate predictions. I choose to reject, at least in so far as my actions, my internal beliefs about how the world works when they conflict with the ways science says the world works. I reject my intuition and all my firsthand experience that velocity is additive because relativity says it is not. I reject my intuition and firsthand experience that smaller and smaller particles act like proportionally smaller grains of sand because quantum theory says they behave like waves. I choose to fight every bias I possess as I become aware of it, though I clearly believe and act as if that bias were true when I am not fighting it.

If I cannot choose to reject old beliefs and accept beliefs I do not currently possess, how can I choose to overcome bias or become less wrong?

It seems to me that you are confused.

There are two kinds of belief being discussed here: abstract/declarative and concrete/imperative.

We don't have direct control over our imperative beliefs, but can change them through clever self-manipulation. We DO have direct control over our declarative beliefs, and we can think whatever the heck we want in them. They just won't necessarily make any difference to how we BEHAVE, since they're part of the "far" or "social" thinking mechanism.

You seem to be implying that there's only one kind of belief, and that it should be subject to some sort of consistency checking. However, NEITHER kind of belief has any global or automatic consistency checking. We can stop intellectually believing that we're dumb or incompetent, for example, and still go on believing it emotionally, because although the abstract memory involved has been updated, the concrete memory hasn't.

It isn't even necessary to DO anything in order to have contradictory beliefs; it merely suffices to neglect the cross-checking, and perhaps a bit of effort to avoid thinking about the connection when somebody tries to show it to you.

And that avoidance can take place automatically, if you have a strong enough emotional reason for wanting to maintain the intellectual belief. Even among my clients who WANT to change some belief or fix some problem in their heads, the first step for me is always getting them to stop abstracting themselves away from actually looking at what they believe on the concrete/emotional level, as opposed to what they'd prefer to believe on the abstract/intellectual level.

Imagine how much harder it must be for someone who isn't TRYING to change their beliefs!

If you know your belief isn't correlated to reality, how can you still believe it?

Interestingly, physics models (map) are wrong (inaccurate) and people know that but still use them all the time because they are good enough with respect to some goal.

Less accurate models can even be favored over more accurate ones to save on computing power or reduce complexity.

As long as the benefits outweigh the drawbacks, the correlation to reality is irrelevant.

Not sure how cleanly this maps to beliefs since one would have to be able to go from one belief to another, however it might be possible by successively activating different parts of the brain that hold different beliefs, in a way similar to someone very angry that completely switches gears to answer an important phone call.

I'm going to go off the assumption that this post is deliberate satire, and say it's brilliant.

"Even if it's not true, I'm going to decide to believe that people can't sincerely self-deceive."

All people have a marked preference to believe what they want to believe, especially when there are no direct costs associated with the false belief. The majority therefore prefers the belief in a charitable high power to the uncaring universe guided solely by the laws of physics.

The fact that a minority made by the self-declared rationalists can get by without this belief may have less to do with their rationalism than with the warm feeling of the superiority they feel towards the rest of the mankind. This can at least in part console them for giving up religion. Personally I get my consolation from feeling superior to both groups.

All people have a marked preference to believe what they want to believe, especially when there are no direct costs associated with the false belief. The majority therefore prefers the belief in a charitable high power to the uncaring universe guided solely by the laws of physics.

The fact that a minority made by the self-declared rationalists can get by without this belief may have less to do with their rationalism than with the warm feeling of the superiority they feel towards the rest of the mankind. This can at least in part console them for giving up religion. Personally I get my consolation from feeling superior to both groups.

I chose to believe in the existence of God - deliberately and consciously. This decision, however, has absolutely zero effect on the actual existence of God.

If you know your belief isn't correlated to reality, how can you still believe it?

A good question. Perhaps it could be distance a little more from quote that preceeds it? That quote by itself seems to be rational. (The irrational basis of the deliberate and conscious choice in question is nearly guarunteed but at least out of context.)

What you're saying has supercharged my cognitive flexibility. I never even thought to check whether my self-reported beliefs correlate with thoughts that I have positive affect towards and examine the implications!

Reminds me of Journeyman's comment on my EA article:

I don’t think EAs do a very good job of distinguishing their moral intuitions from good philosophical arguments; see the interest of many EAs in open borders and animal rights. I do not see a large understanding in EA of what altruism is and how it can become pathological. Pathological altruism is where people become practically addicted to a feeling of doing good which leads them to act sometime with negative consequences. A quote from the book in that review, which shows some of the difficulties disentangling moral psychological from moral philosophy:

"'I chose to believe in the existence of God—deliberately and consciously. This decision, however, has absolutely zero effect on the actual existence of God.'

If you know your belief isn't correlated to reality, how can you still believe it?"

It's the difference between someone who's afraid of heights standing twenty feet from a cliff and standing two inches from the cliff. The former knows what will happen if he moves over and looks down, the latter is looking down and feeling the fear.

If you tell yourself you believe in a wall, then you're less likely to worry about what's on the other side.

If you keep telling yourself that you can't just deliberately choose to believe the sky is green—then you're less likely to succeed in fooling yourself on one level or another; either in the sense of really believing it, or of falling into Moore's Paradox, belief in belief, or belief in self-deception.

If you keep telling yourself that you'd just look at your elaborately constructed false map, and just know that it was a false map without any expected correlation to the territory, and therefore, despite all its elaborate construction, you wouldn't be able to invest any credulity in it—

If you keep telling yourself that reflective consistency will take over and make you stop believing on the object level, once you come to the meta-level realization that the map is not reflecting—

Then when push comes to shove—you may, indeed, fail.

I'd phrase this differently. It's pretty clear from general evidence, not just from the examples provided, that people readily can believe contradictory things simultaneously. It's even commonly recognized, so much so that we have a well known word for it: cognitive dissonance. Psychologists use the term to denote the unpleasant feeling we get when we have two or more conflicting beliefs, ideas, or values. The human mind is incredibly plastic, and is constantly changing as we acquire new information. Given how complex the mind is, it's not terribly surprising that updating one belief may not cause a related belief to update if the mind doesn't realize the two are related. But when we eventually realize that there is a contradiction, surely there is a process for correcting it, rather than the weaker belief simply instantly disappearing. In order to infer a little about what that process might look like, we can look at how people reduce and resolve easier to observe types of cognitive dissonance, such as the case where someone's desires are in conflict. Wikipedia provides this example:

Cognitive dissonance theory is founded on the assumption that individuals seek consistency between their expectations and their reality. Because of this, people engage in a process called dissonance reduction to bring their cognitions and actions in line with one another. This creation of uniformity allows for a lessening of psychological tension and distress. According to Festinger, dissonance reduction can be achieved in four ways. In an example case where a person has adopted the attitude that they will no longer eat high fat food, but is eating a high-fat doughnut, the four methods of reduction would be:

1. Change behavior or cognition ("I will not eat any more of this doughnut")

2. Justify behavior or cognition by changing the conflicting cognition ("I'm allowed to cheat every once in a while")

3. Justify behavior or cognition by adding new cognitions ("I'll spend 30 extra minutes at the gym to work this off")

4. Ignore or deny any information that conflicts with existing beliefs ("This doughnut is not high fat")

What might we get if we tried to generalize this to cases where beliefs are in conflict, rather than desires? Here's my guess:

1. Change behavior or cognition ("My belief X is wrong.")

2. Justify behavior or cognition by changing the conflicting cognition ("Well, X2 can still be true even if X1 isn't.")

3. Justify behavior or cognition by adding new cognitions ("X may conflict with Y, but Z can fix the issue." or "If Z is true or the mind/world works like Z, then the apparent conflict between X and Y is explained away!")

4. Ignore or deny any information that conflicts with existing beliefs ("Everyone has the right to their own opinion. Right or wrong, I prefer to believe X", "My belief X doesn't ACTUALLY conflict with Y", "You just can't compare X and Y", or "You can't apply logic to X".)

I wonder if all that is needed to make it easier to choose option 1 is for options 2-4 to become stigmatized. Aka, if every time I am naturally inclined to choose option 4 I am reminded of all discussion on LessWrong about trying not to be an option 4 person, and I naturally identify with the option 1 crowd and want to be more like the option1-ers I admire, then will my gut impulse be more likely to be option 1? Or is changing one's mind destined to always be a struggle of intellect vs impulse?

I thought about believing that people are nicer than they really are before reading this and the previous article and I was worried I did that thing where I believed I succeeded in deceiving myself. Then I unpacked it to be "it is beneficial to act like you expect the next person you meet to be nice because if you believe that they are likely to turn out mean then you will start acting as if you expect them to be a jerk, which is more likely to make them act like a jerk; therefore just act as if you already think they're nice but be prepared to appropriately react to evidence that they're a jerk if they present it." Which I think is straight-forward and not contradictory, right? Because it doesn't tell me to believe anything that conflicts with reality, it just tells me how to act.

I'm curious if this maps at all onto the existence of God. Does acting like you believe God exists cause you to do certain good things that you wouldn't do otherwise?

See... beliefs are emotional statements rooted heavily in cultural heritage and instinct. overcoming them is difficult. So for example no matter how hard I stand in the cockpit screaming at myself that I'm doing something stupid, I still react with a fear response to frightening images shown on a movie screen.

Though I guess the problem here is a definitional one. You define belief a bit more narrowly then I do, so I'm quibbling. I feel the need to bring this up (for your consideration), but I'm not going to pursue it. I'm probably being stupid even bringing it up.

Plenty of people, including myself, seem to understand that they are risk-averse, and yet fail to seek risk-neutrality.

       Tell yourself the effort is doomed - and it will be!

@Eliezer: People are going to misinterpret this far too frequently. Add an addendum to the post to clarify it.