“Or take another example: a singles bar. The ones who succeed are the ones best able to convince themselves (at least temporarily) of certain falsehoods: “I’m the hottest guy/girl here.” This is a very clear case where irrationality seems to be rational in some sense.”
In a singles bar, people don’t respond to the beliefs of other people, but to their behavior. The success goes to those who behave appropriately, not to those who hold certain beliefs.
You might say that the best way to behave appropriately is to deceive yourself into thinking you’re actually the hottest, but that is not what is going on in this case either. Offer the person a million dollars if they can correctly answer whether they were on average rated higher than anybody else or not by all members of the appropriate sex in the bar. Unless they actually are extremely attractive and probably the most attractive in the bar, their answer will be ‘no’.
“Method acting” is a very nice metaphor for what’s actually going on: filling the mind with and identifying with a personality/character to the exclusion of normal thought processes, in order to more perfectly portray that other personality/character.
It’s not self-deception though, no more than a child engrossed in pretending to be a dog is engaged in self-deception.
From Scott Aaronson’s lecture notes:
“Or take another example: a singles bar. The ones who succeed are the ones best able to convince themselves (at least temporarily) of certain falsehoods: “I’m the hottest guy/girl here.” This is a very clear case where irrationality seems to be rational in some sense.”
Speaking of Scott Aaronson, his little fiction on more or less this topic is a delightful (and slightly disturbing) read.
That’s a bad example.
In a singles bar, people don’t respond to the beliefs of other people, but to their behavior. The success goes to those who behave appropriately, not to those who hold certain beliefs.
You might say that the best way to behave appropriately is to deceive yourself into thinking you’re actually the hottest, but that is not what is going on in this case either. Offer the person a million dollars if they can correctly answer whether they were on average rated higher than anybody else or not by all members of the appropriate sex in the bar. Unless they actually are extremely attractive and probably the most attractive in the bar, their answer will be ‘no’.
I think a more emotionally neutral term for this technique would be something like “Method Acting”.
“Method acting” is a very nice metaphor for what’s actually going on: filling the mind with and identifying with a personality/character to the exclusion of normal thought processes, in order to more perfectly portray that other personality/character.
It’s not self-deception though, no more than a child engrossed in pretending to be a dog is engaged in self-deception.