Comment by ndvo on Human Evil and Muddled Thinking · 2015-08-04T19:05:28.860Z · LW · GW

Is it correct to say that he who is not coherent is hypocritical? I'm used to think of hypocrisy as someone who does not apply to himself the criteria he wants to apply to others. I can think of some reasons why it is not plausible that there can be found people completely coherent:

• people are not aware of all their ideas at the same time;
• people change their minds;
• people can hold inconsistent ideas, at least when they are not aware of it;

Another thought: human minds are the environment where memes develop, but one should notice that memes are also the environment in which humans act. That means that even firmly believing something to be wrong someone can still decide to do it, and vice-versa.