Our modern world wouldn't exist without our capacity for self deception

[a_unique_person]

http://business.theage.com.au/business/what-a-web-we-weave-when-first-we-practise-to-selfdeceive-20090607-bzun.html



If people were a lot more realistic, we'd only end up with less innovation.
RATIONALITY tells us we need to be completely realistic about the state of the world and our place in it. But psychological research tells us that's bunkum. It turns out to be healthier and more useful to hold a few unrealistic views about ourselves and the world.
Ed Diener, a professor of psychology at the University of Illinois, tells us that part of our quality of life turns on our personal approach to the world and how we interpret it.
Bruno Frey, a professor of economics at the University of Zurich, has observed that unrealistic optimism and unrealistic perceptions of control contribute to our happiness.
"Persons with these traits are better able to successfully adjust to unfavourable circumstances, including extremely adverse ones," he says.
And people employ many strategies to maintain their self-esteem, such as by ignoring evidence that might undermine it, he says.
In his book The Mind of the Market, Michael Shermer describes four personality traits that psychological research finds to be highly correlated with subjective wellbeing: high self-esteem, personal control, optimism and extraversion.
The thing to note is that the first three of those four involve a healthy degree of self-deception.
If you're wondering whether people's personal happiness is an issue of much importance, you should know that it's highly correlated with the material success that most businesspeople, economists and politicians regard as the object of the exercise.
It wouldn't surprise you that people with big incomes and good jobs tend to be happier than the rest of us, but recent research shows it also works the other way: happier people tend to be more successful materially. So the proposition is that a degree of self-deception not only keeps us happy but also helps keeps the capitalist system moving onward and upward.



Of course I'm quite self aware of what I'm really like, no self deception here.

[Jeff Corey]

The Lake Wobegon Effect and this, too:http://www.apa.org/journals/features/psp7761121.pdf
But the thesis is, erm, stupid. People who drastically overestimate their abilities seem to do stupid things because of their lack of reality testing. And none of the people cited said anything about innovation, just about whether those deluded people were happier.

[slingblade]

high self-esteem, personal control, optimism and extraversion.
The thing to note is that the first three of those four involve a healthy degree of self-deception.


I have always known that. I have always been unable to manage it much or often. At the moment, I cannot manage it at all, and it's...well....it's not good.

[HansMustermann]

The Lake Wobegon Effect and this, too:http://www.apa.org/journals/features/psp7761121.pdf
But the thesis is, erm, stupid. People who drastically overestimate their abilities seem to do stupid things because of their lack of reality testing. And none of the people cited said anything about innovation, just about whether those deluded people were happier.

Well, I don't think he's talking about being completely detached from reality, though.

I'm thinking I see some point, anyway.

For example look at modern capitalism. Some 80% of the companies fair, and they fail early and fail hard. They're obviously made by people who overestimated it all. But it's the other 20% that are the good part of it.

Come to think of it, the same in science. If we didn't have, say, the guys researching alchemy, we wouldn't have ended up with chemistry. If Galileo would have thought, "no way, smarter people than me proved that there can be no more planets or sattellites", well, he wouldn't have helped collapse the old aristotelian system and replace it with the scientific method.

On the down side, I think that quote sees actually just half the issue.

We need not just people who try the impossible, but a realistic way to continuously weed out the failures. Whether it's about the economy or science or whatever, the systems that worked had that "garbage collecting" so to speak. The ones which didn't, well, didn't.

[HansMustermann]

It wouldn't surprise you that people with big incomes and good jobs tend to be happier than the rest of us, but recent research shows it also works the other way: happier people tend to be more successful materially.

That said, I would like to see the above mentioned study, because it sounds suspicious. In fact, it sounds like PR paid for by some motivational scam peddler.

The fact is, there are plenty of poor optimists.

There are plenty of people who shot their chances of being rich or happy precisely by being unrealistically optimistic about their abilities and chances. Think of all the guys who landed up in prison because they thought they can rob a bank and not get caught.

Or think of the abovementioned 80% companies which fail. I actually worked for a dot-com whose boss was utterly optimistic that he only needs to have an IPO and people will give him hundreds of millions. He was so optimistic that he even went personally in debt to pursue that dream. Massively in debt. Nowadays he still goes to work with the bus because he still can't afford a car.

Think of all the banks which were optimistic:

A) that a bubble will keep going on, or failing that

B) that the vast majority of NINJA (No Income, No Job Applicants) will pay back some huge debts. I've actually read one interview after the crisis struck, where someone said they had estimated that no more than 10% will default on their loans.

C) that you can put bogus numbers in a computer, and blindly trust the result. (Something even Charles Babbage wrote about as being stupid.) Same interview.

It only led to those guys being richer because the rest of society failed to weed out the failures, as it should have. In an ideal world, the people who caused that, would be asked to give that money back. In this world, we bailed them out and they gave themselves more bonuses for it.

Well, ok, maybe that kinda illustrates his point. But _my_ point is that it only works if you're the kind of parasite that grew to the point where killing it might kill the host. Banks, major corporations, etc. Doing the same thing as a small fish, just because you're optimistic and deluded, might work very differently.

[Frank Newgent]

My way of remaining upbeat when things look bad is remembering that what's bad today may be a boom compared to what's coming.