Hello and happy new year everyone!
Beijing Baselines took as its guiding mission to identify new measures of rationality and sincerity in the Peoples Republic of China. As well as dry formal definitions, these abstract terms find vibrant expressions in daily life, thought and history.
As we have seen over the 2½ years of this Substack, they have deep expression in Chinese tradition and contemporary politics.
A classic source is found in the Daxue 大學, translated as The Greater Learning, one of the Four Books venerated by Zhu Xi 朱熹 (1130–1200 C.E.) and a staple of the Confucian canon, though composed long before Confucius himself. There we find the arresting statement, "所谓诚其意者,毋自欺也’ [To be ‘sincere’ is not to deceive oneself’]. A boundary condition of sincerity, self-deception has literally been on a special trajectory in Chinese culture for millennia.
Beijing Baselines is wonderstruck by the recent publication of a deep dive into the metrics of self-deception by Lü Jiajian 吕佳健. A brief bio of Dr Lü appears below, followed by a full translation of his groundbreaking essay, Psychological mechanisms of unknowing self-deception and conscience sealing. For those wanting to work through his text in detail, the translation can be found in parallel-text format here.
We lack clear metrics of self deception. As this is written, the need for such metrics seems to pop up everywhere, from Trump and the MAGA Republicans in the USA, to the Israel-Hamas conflict, the Russia-Ukraine war, to gambling on real estate in the PRC. This essay may prove a great help.
Born in Guangdong on 11 November 1954, Lü Jiajian 吕嘉健 is a teacher, academic and essayist. Graduated in Chinese literature and language, Guangxi Normal University. Former director, scientific research department and vice president of Guangxi Wuzhou Normal School, and associate professor of the Chinese Department of Wuzhou University.
Settling in Sydney in 2004, he now lives in Melbourne, Australia. In China, his main research interests were literary theory, literary criticism, cultural studies and educational studies. Emigrating, he took up the study of sociology, psychology, political science...
His main works include Theory of Chinese Regional Culture’(co-author), ‘Cultural Criticism of Contemporaneous Beauty’, ‘Cultural Masterpieces", ‘Research on the Guidance of Linguistics and Law’, ‘Educational Aesthetics’ (co-author), etc.
Publishing some 100 papers and over 300 essays, he has won the Tsang Hin-chi Education Foundation Award, an National Outstanding Teacher Award, and Literary Research Paper awards.
Aisixiang 3 December 2023 (吕嘉健, “无知的自我欺骗与良知封存的心理机制” (in Chinese)
Self-deception determines every aspect of our lives, but the general public is ignorant of this concept. It blinds us to the truth, blurs our judgments about others and our environment, and prevents us from making informed and effective decisions. Once you start blinding, all the 'solutions' will only make things worse.
—Arbinger Society
Lies are not judged on their own, but on the purpose and motives of the liar.
- Pascal Nevo
Exploring self-deception is a prerequisite for exploring social deception.
1. The instinct to 'deceive the brain'.
Can people deceive themselves?
Few people know much about 'self-deception'. It is actually a common and complex psychological phenomenon, imperceptibly running in everyone's heart; the self may not agree it is deception, may be unaware of and unconcerned by it.
As Bacon said, 'Plausible fallacies are pleasant sometimes.'
Let's look at the analysis of a case in point. I saw a narrative on Weibo:
My ex-girlfriend teaches ideology; her mother is a university professor. Visiting her, I found a family that really was completely detached from production, society, and reality. Her family has never survived in society, has never been exposed to labour creation processes like production and management, and has never experienced or seen the processes that ordinary people cannot avoid in society, such as job hunting, work, resignation, and dismissal. Their life is to prepare for and give classes, go home, spend money on weekends, and have fun on winter and summer vacations. She admires ‘the three generations of Marxism, Leninism and Mao Zedong thought’, yett in what she consumes is Westernised, steak being her favourite food. Utterly split spiritually, perfectly able to enjoy Western-style consumer goods while pink the the point of turning purple, and adapting to this divided spiritual world without pretence, guilt, or hesitation. (Slightly abridged)
Are the words and deeds referred to by the narrator self-contradictory self-deception? The prevailing interpretation of self-deception is that deliberately pretending ignorance is deception:
someone who deceives himself must already know the truth, so that the self-deceiver knows that he is being deceived, which seems to exclude him from being a victim of self-deception'; this is the 'self-deception paradox.' (Baidu baike).
This is to oversimplify. The professor’s mother and daughter don’t deceive themselves deliberately, they will use self-definition to show that MLM argues that Communists are entitled to enjoy all the fruits of human civilisation, hence they don’t contradict themselves.
There is no contradiction in self-deception for most people. Facing issues that are inconsistent with self-belief, they either deny the facts, or change the statement of facts, or redefine concepts for the sake of psychological balance or self-esteem. In the course of these mental actions, the subject has no consciousness of self-deception. People never jump out of the self and watch the psychological behaviour of distortion, avoidance, denial or obfuscation in the process of adjusting cognitive dissonance, and the subject is either ignorant or does not care about truth and falsehood and contradictions.
In common sense terms, it is impossible for the ego to deceive itself in a state of clear consciousness. But this is an illusion. Human beings do not deem truth and falsehood as so important, and the brain can unknowingly deceive itself in the subconscious, and will consciously let one concept and knowledge blind another in order to satisfy a strong desire, which is attention bias and leads to 'selective blindness'. Deception takes a turn in the brain, or with sufficient justification and ingenious artistry, gives the ego a pass.
When people engage in social deception, they often need to cooperate with self-deception. At this time, self-deception will use strong words to justify the law, and in the name of nobility, 'only state officials are allowed to set fires'. Men are obsessed with looking at the jade body of other people's daughters, solemnly saying that it is aesthetic, but it is strictly forbidden for their daughters to show off in public. This is self-deception in terms of moral justice.
People often skilfully use instinct to 'trick the brain'. Antonio Damasio pointed out that in Ekman's study, participants were asked to 'create' specific emotional expressions. Participants, the study found, could experience emotional feelings corresponding to their facial expressions. It is also often the case in life that when we smile politely at others, we are actually deceiving ourselves. This is a good explanation for the ability of good actors and others who imitate a variety of emotions to maintain a stable personal style and demonstrate self-restraint. Regina Resnick was the most famous opera singer of her time, playing the angry, frenzied protagonist of the opera for countless nights. I asked her if it was difficult to get out of the role, and she said, 'As long as you learn the technique, it's not difficult at all.' When performing, she only uses her body to express emotions rather than 'feel' them. (Descartes' Errors: Emotions, Reasoning, and the Brain, p.144)
2. Self-deception to deceive others—tacit symbiosis of deception
The programmed model of an actor who 'tricks the audience into a situation' by deceiving the brain into acting out something that is not in his own nature has the significance of a sociological paradigm. In society, having 'led' themselves believe, people then 'lead' others to join them, so as to achieve the purpose of identity interaction.
Self-deception is in fact deceiving others better by deceiving oneself. As direct deception can be detected by others, one can 'honestly' convey misleading information to them without being detected. (Lu Huijing)
Politicians are the world’s best actors, 'social guests' adept at manoeuvring, and good at expressing characters and performance art in various situations, and they are both vocal and emotional, isolating behaviour (acting) from brain feelings, cognitions and beliefs. This proves that people will consciously deceive others through self-deception under the pressure of goal awareness and realistic situations.
Social deception is inseparable from self-deception.
On the level of neurophysiology, we are born with a sense of fairness and some other moral intuition. (Who's in Charge?, p. 177).
In order to act freely in social deception, it is necessary to bypass one's sense of fairness and morality, complete the psychological transformation of self-deception, and then appear frank and sincere in various situations.
Human nature has developed a quite mature technique to solve the psychological disorder of self-deception, so that self-deception and deception can coexist tacitly.
Symbiosis refers to the formation of close and mutually beneficial relations, where one party provides the other with help for survival, meanwhile being helped by the other, and depending on each other.
Human evolution has long formed a psychological mechanism of 'deceiver recognition adaptor', specifically designed to solve the problem of recognition deception. People are very good at 'finding deceivers'. If people are still easily deceived, they are first deceived into believing something, and then they are deceived by the liar, who says what the deceived person believes.
All deception stems from the premise of self-deception, or believing in certain myths, or expecting that outcome, or having such a position, or overestimating one's own moral talents, or being ignorant but self-righteous.
(emphasis added: DK)...
'Self-deception to deceive others' is sequentially logical. First adept at deceiving themselves, people will then recklessly deceive society. Even s/he is her/himself blinded, so there is of course no sense of disobedience or uneasiness of moral reproach when s/he deceives others. If s/he plots a scam, s/he will not use the word 'deception' to describe the design, but will cleverly glorify it, and others will suffer because of it, and s/he will say that he broke it her/himself, that s/he is stupid, greedy, and deserves it.
Let's look at a common phenomenon:
Experiments show that people remember deceivers, trustworthy and neutral information people in particular, especially those with a lower status than themselves, but have a poor memory of those with a higher status than themselves. (Advance, p.393)
This is called 'discriminatory memory difference'.
We all harbour a ‘discriminatory’ social psychology, because we retain a complex ‘servility plus’ utilitarian mentality of calculating power. Failing to register the deception of those in power towards oneself, but out of calculating the gains and losses of capital and consequences; deception of me by someone of weaker status is etched in my memory: I don’t fear losing after retaliation, so I hold a vengeful attitude.
Given human evolution has formed a psychological mechanism of social exchange that solves the problem characterised by costs and gains (Jin, 291) This psychological mechanism of snobbery is a kind of 'self-deception'.
People may have established a rule of thumb for interactive imitation: deceive and bully those who are weaker than themselves without worrying; To endure and forget the fools of the powerful, and when they can't bear it, they numb themselves with self-deception.
People subconsciously construct a kind of rule of thumb for self-deception: tacitly power-driven grand social deception is an irresistible social law, and it is also the unspoken rule of hierarchical society, which can only find loopholes to avoid or minimise further harm. The psychological mechanism of identification-exemption-forgetting can lift the memory of being bullied.
3. Complex and diverse self-deception phenomena
Freud believed that self-deception is formed by motives driving the conscious and the unconscious. Inheriting this idea, many researchers explained the major role of self-deception in self-serving bias, social appropriation, evolution, and other behaviour. As a psychological phenomenon commonly experienced by individuals, self-deception may be the essence of self-serving bias.
The concept of 'deception' is a term that can be flexibly parsed to cover utilitarian, egocentric, and desire-oriented human nature; interpretation is up to the individual. Via language, people endow themselves with pragmatic and speculative values of meaning, and train themselves to interpret advanced semantic interpretations, and to freely modify any facts, beliefs, and concepts. In terms of human nature, people are inherently 'dishonest', and 'self-deception' is an advanced and complex mental and psychological trade-off, as long as they believe in success and peace of mind.
Dan Ariely points out that:
(1) self-deception is an effective strategy to make oneself believe in oneself;
(2) Successfully deceived, you will not flinch;
(3) Self-deception will make you what you pretend to be. (Grotesque Behaviour 4, p124)
The phenomenon of self-deception is complex and diverse:
General vanity leads to self-deception, and when there is a lack of respect, self-deception becomes a 'trick' to psychological balance
Self-deception in judgement and decision-making is easy to lead oneself into a puzzle, because the processing of information and group myths of our position will distort self-perception and perception of others, and the result of credulity tends to self-improvement, and it is often not awakened until failure
Self-deception in the event of failure relies on cognitive dissonance adjustments, such as the ‘sour grapes’ mentality: masking one's incompetence or loss of not being able to get oneself with hypothetical explanations can quickly make oneself forget the unhappiness
Self-justification after making a mistake is often accompanied by self-deception. People are accustomed to acquiescing in the inner cognitive dissonance by rationalising and negating the problem, allowing the false self to coincide with the locked 'self-image'. In fact, they do not pay attention or have the ability to discover the facts that the evidence points to contradictions, but only try to rationalise this 'image'. Self-justification leads one to a vicious circle
The paradox of self-deception is a form of inconsistent words and deeds or multiple personalities. People either 'sang different songs on different hills'; or deconstruct the pressure of self-deception in terms of self-explanatory statements; Or by nature there is no sense of logic, lack the ability to find contradictions, and develop a sense of role in a split personality.
4. We are insensitive to self-deception
Are schizophrenic personalities consciously acquired? If so, how then can one explain one’s different values to oneself? Hypotheses are dual: one lacks either a sense of crisis of value conflict], or of logic.
There are two questions:
When someone lies or falsifies, does she/he undergo hesitation? If not, does the agent realise they are lying or faking? If not, it means that he/she has deceived himself.
When someone is accustomed to lying and falsifying, he/she either denies being dishonest or argues that falsification is not transgression. If they refuse to judge themselves by truth and falsehood and moral values, they will not have the pressure of self-deception, and there is in their consciousness no notion of social or self-deception.
As for the average person who still believes in moral values, the general explanation for why self-deception cannot be detected is:
Most people never examine their own values and ways of thinking; following the principle of realistic utilitarianism, all self-needs are rational, which is out of egocentric personality; If you conduct internal self-censorship, logical contradictions and value conflicts will lead to cognitive dissonance, which shows that some mechanism is preventing internal censorship from happening.
Logic is not a tool of thought provided us by natural evolution, and thinking without logic is the norm for most people, especially the lack of a sense of disobedience to self-violation of logic. Without the habit of logical consciousness, there is no feeling for the conflict of one's own thoughts.
The human brain has no unified self, and schizophrenia is a widespread fact, yet most people do not manifest themselves in the form of madness.
When evaluating others, we use psychological methods; When evaluating ourselves, we use the introspective method, i.e. 'information processing of our position'. (Beyond IQ, p109)
One's own cognitive bias is impossible to find with the introspective method, and under the premise of monitoring our position information, human nature has the psychological behaviour of self-exclusion, isolation, distortion, sealing, and avoidance.
2. Why do people deceive themselves?
Whether it is social deception or self-deception, its essence is not intentional or unintentional, knowing or not knowing, but motive and purpose.
1. Self-deception based on the 'subjective facts' of ignorance
Is self-deception a moral defect, or a cognitive deficiency?
Intentionalist psychologists interpret from moral psychology that the human mind can be divided into different personality systems, and self-deception can be explained by irrational psychological causality. Non-intentional psychologists explain from cognitive psychology that self-deception is caused by human cognitive characteristics, not by human autonomy.
Man's self-deception or subjective intention, which is the emotional mind, the purpose-motivated mind, and the empirical mind, requires the self-rational acceptance of certain conclusions that are believed to be the truth of the facts; Or passively deceive oneself out of subconscious ignorance and confusion.
We misunderstand 'deception' to mean that we know what the truth is in our minds, but we deliberately deceive and falsify it when expressing it, but in fact the 'facts' in our minds are only 'subjective facts', which is called 'lying in ignorance and sincerity'.
Subjective facts, derived from subjective experience, are automatically presented under normal conditions. However, people may not even be able to confirm facts about themselves because of the self-delusion or rational thinking mechanisms in the human brain. (McLenni, Simple Logic, p7)
Deception is based on ignorance or intoxication of the deceived party, and the deceived party gives the right to judge and make decisions to the deceived party. But the defrauder may also be a half-informed or blindly believing delivery intermediary. When deceiving oneself, there is also a deceived party and a deceived party living in the heart. The deceitful party has one goal: to trust himself without using his brain (thoughtlessness).
Subjective facts are closely related to self-constructed cognition and memory.
From an early age, people should learn the habit of confirming facts and communicating facts and cognitions, and avoid the mode of confirming and exchanging ideas, ideas, and judgments. In the people who have embraced the abstract mode of education, they talk about ideas in everything, exchange opinions and judgments, and only assert in a summary manner, ignoring the process of confirming and analysing facts with each other. This became the only way to get used to it.
For example: 'My sister is more generous than my sister.' This judgement simplifies complex issues and moralises concrete matters. This is also a form of self-deception. 'Generosity' is a moral judgement that is abused without setting standards and distinguishing between different situations, and there are two kinds of generosity, such as giving charcoal in the snow and icing on the cake, and there is unprincipled generosity that requires sacrificing oneself to fulfil others, which denies the rationality of self-reservation.
Words such as 'love', 'justice', 'equality', 'ghost in the mind' and 'generosity' are ambiguous meanings and situational complexities. Substituting a simple conceptual evaluation for the determination of facts in a specific situation, and confirming 'subjective facts' is purely moral kidnapping. Believing in subjective facts will produce self-deception.
Once self-deception is initiated, it distorts the facts from the beginning, and after all, it is impossible to confirm the facts, and then there is no doubt about its authenticity. People use self-constructed subjective truths and concepts as the logic of the continuous narrative of coherence theory.
The conclusion based on coherence can be absurd, because it is not based on the reality of the objective world, but on some theory or ideology. And any theory or ideological doctrine can be wrong. (Jane, P25)
A considerable amount of self-deception stems from ignorance of one's own 'coherent conclusions'.
Lawyers in court know that the defendant, witnesses and prosecutors are all subjective truths, and the court is only reconstructing facts, so many lawyers default to the fact that court debate is just a game of truth, in which 'omission and choice' are the key tools.
When people feel and believe that the truth is just a construct, and everyone is only telling one-sided subjective facts, if they are fully focused on their own goals and motivations, they will agree to use the narrative of 'relative truth' to construct their fantasy cognition with our own position, selective justice, extreme feelings, and the expectation and understanding of nature of the focus hypothesis. The focus hypothesis excludes other 'alternative hypotheses', and in the spirit of self-defined moral judgement, they do not care about objective facts and truth-seeking, but operate according to what I think is what they think is, and thus fall into a game mode in which motives and purposes determine the truth of the narrative. This is another kind of self-deception of coherence.
2. Motivational reasoning deceives one's own rationality
First of all, it is necessary to emphasise the premise that the vast majority of people have a rational disorder, and intelligence is only high intelligence, not high rationality. (Beyond IQ)
Who deceives self-deception? Who is this self? In this way, it is easy to define the analysis to get to the heart of the matter. It's not that I deceive me, it's that ‘I1’ deceives me2. I1 is the irrational me, and I2 is the rational me. The irrational me tends to be stronger than the rational me, and it's always the protagonist. I am lazy, immature (too ignorant), and often soft-hearted, and obey the control and command of me1.
Our intellect and emotion, intuition and logic are not unified. There are many potential conflicts in our perceptions, beliefs, ideas, and opinions, and we will have different judgments in different situations and times. We don't really know our own complex hearts.
Elements of rationality include: adaptive behaviour, informed decision-making, effective behaviour regulation, rational goal sequencing, introspection, and evidence calibration. (Super, P16) are constantly controlled, resisted, and tampered with by instinct, realistic utilitarian values, and cultural memes.
We all categorically consider ourselves to be upright, honest, reasonable, and disciplined, and that is self-defining on the level of abstract judgement, because we have an educational archetype that worships abstract values. As for the specific evaluation of their own behaviour, everyone will not give up the right to self-definition, stick to their own reasoning and logic, and do not agree with others, so they will not think that it is self-deception and lying.
When we are greedy for cheapness, voyeurism, playing cunning tricks, cheating, cheating, lazy and tricky, shirking responsibility, jealousy and framing, no information to recover, unearned gains, relying on others, controlling others, accepting bribes, violating contracts, collecting money and so on, we will adopt methods such as self-redefinition, making excuses, justifying ourselves, and making up stories to deceive ourselves and try to avoid the dilemma of cognitive dissonance. As long as one's bad intentions are transformed into the realm of rationalised political correctness or moral permissibility, without a sense of self-contradiction, the process of self-transformation is completed. When it is impossible to turn around, there is another way, an isolation gate automatically appears in the heart, sealing the scrutiny of conscience, turning a blind eye, and only the module of action decision-making is operating.
Considering self-deception from a teleological standpoint, it is easy to see that motivational belief reasoning manipulates system 1 irrationality and inhibits rationality. The function of the lie is usually singular to make things simpler.
The view that people cannot consciously deceive themselves ignores the fact that 'self-deception is a mental process'. In an event situation, when external information, new knowledge, and other people's ideas contradict our own fixed beliefs and knowledge, we begin the confrontation of the battle of spirit, and the personal will and emotional system gather a force to persistently defend our beliefs, and begin to confirm the cognitive action of bias, eliminate the confrontational information and thoughts, and consciously adjust the cognitive dissonance. We do not adjust the original memory, but determine that new knowledge or perception is false and wrong, tamper with and modify external information, and resist content that we don't like. Self-deception is the process of conscious cognitive bias, selective blindness.
For the sake of the triumph of spirit, man accepts all deception in his heart.
Even in the face of a series of unforgivable sins, we do not say to ourselves, 'I am wrong', but deceive ourselves, and it is external factors that make the mistakes happen.
Self-deception is to seal certain existing consciences and ideas of the self in order to achieve the goal, in order to satisfy the will, will, desires and emotions...
When the complexity of the problem is far beyond one's ability to bear, a simple and rude will to purpose can lead oneself down the path of self-deception.
The simple will is to 'not think about whether it is true or false, right or wrong', to be able to achieve the goal, it is enough to do it by any means. Most decent people engage in self-deception, high-level formal affairs as if nothing had happened, and do not hold accountable whether it is a hoax or a dangerous mistake. This is the state of 'thoughtlessness' that Arendt points out. The people who are in it do not dare to formally question that it is a naked hoax, but they enjoy a full sense of ritual and the grandeur of the system. Fear and thoughtlessness numb and inertia.
As long as huge power and resources are obtained in the great undertakings of the group, the vanity and sense of responsibility of the cause make people immersed in the situation of success and fame and the division of interests. People will turn a blind eye to the unscrupulous means of the collective, and they will be very dedicated to doing their duty. The content of the work affects people's worldview and values, which in turn affects people's judgement. The 'illusion of concentration', group thinking, and the 'reality of subjectivity' make us lose our ability to seek truth from facts. Grand vanity, mindset, and self-preservation instincts override our rationality. In order to maintain stability and gain the appreciation of superiors, internal circulation is overwhelming. This is the 'evil of mediocrity'.
3. Overconfidence and willfulness
Why can't people discover the fallacy of self-deception?
Part of the overconfidence effect of the knowledge scale stems from our attachment to the idea that first came out of our mind, believing that it was 'something I thought about on my own.' We also use this first answer as a focus hypothesis (our position bias), focusing on this focus hypothesis and ignoring other alternative hypotheses. (Super, P106)
Failure to find reasons for one's mistakes can lead to overconfidence.
When we are in complex situations and difficult decisions, in line with the principle of saving cognitive resources, under the strong pressure of the main purpose, and with a strong motivation for success, we will fall into the trap of the irrational mind of intelligent people.
Overconfidence does not allow the idea of doubting the existence of self-error, which is a mental program determined by attachment and attention focus, the mental action of 'exclusion and sealing' is always running, and the subject of the will has no room to reflect on self-deception.
There is also the halo effect, self-serving attribution bias (attributing oneself when you succeed, outward-looking attribution when you fail, and avoiding responsibility).
Self-deception is often just that:
Focus assumptions: Attention hallucinations + cognitive biases + overconfidence + failure to discover the reasons for their mistakes
If someone has two brains, he is doubly stupid.
It is appropriate to explain self-deception in terms of 'knowledge projection tendencies'. Using existing ideas as filters to process new data can lead to a belief bias effect in deductive reasoning. Using a tendency to project knowledge in the wrong situation, it can be a trap. Constantly invoking the collection of false beliefs to evaluate the evidence will quickly accumulate more false beliefs and prepare false knowledge reserves for further knowledge projection in the future. Cognitive misers tend to accept conclusions that seem plausible without any logical reasoning. (Super, P162)
In a situation where it does not think that it is wrong, it is ignorant of its own mistakes, and it also seals the value of universal conscience, and obsesses with its own beliefs, knowledge, and judgments that are correct. Under this premise, there is no thought of self-deception.
Self-deception is a form of self-construction, self-confirmation, and self-consolidation.
We must always have a clear understanding of the complex relationship between the truth of the facts and the 'facts' displayed in our minds.
Perceptions, memories, and ideas are inherently self-constructed and not so reliable. They come from people's expectations of things, they are also influenced by culture, and they are also the product of psychological effects. (How to Think Independently, p17)
All deception and sin accumulate by subtle and subtle step-by-step development.
3. Self-deception-deception is an adaptive response psychological mechanism
1. There are as many egos as there are brain modules
When analysing self-deception, it is first necessary to carefully define the 'self'. Evolutionary psychologist Robert Wright points out that we are in two hallucinations about the self: one about the nature of the conscious self, thinking that we have more control over ourselves than we actually do; One is about what kind of people we are, thinking that our abilities and moral character are superior. (Insight, p90)
Cognitive neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga's research concluded that the human brain does not have a unified self. The brain is 'decentralised' because 'we have thousands, if not millions, of preset preferences for different behaviours and choices built into us.' 'These preset preferences come in the form of modules, each with its own thing to do, a specialised division of labour, and automation. ('Who's in Charge?') 》)
There is no hierarchy between modules, it is a laissez-faire, self-organising system that collaborates, competes, or conflicts with each other. At a given moment, which state emerges to take the initiative, you are aware of which state. (Hole, P94)
There are various local consciousness systems in the brain, and they combine to contribute to consciousness. Although you seem to have a unified sense of consciousness, they come from very different systems. No matter what concept you have at a given moment, it is a concept that suddenly emerges and becomes dominant. It's a dog-eat-dog world in your brain, where different systems compete with each other, all trying to come out on top and win the jackpot of conscious approval. (Who, p59)
Thus the various 'temporary selves', i.e., the host modules, often contradict each other, exhibiting multiple personalities, but people are good at subtly justifying themselves.
It is this division of labour that makes human nature successful in self-deception/ social deception and loses its vigilance to detect contradiction. The 'I see' at this moment and the 'I see' at that time are a different module of 'me', and what mountain to sing and what song is just a different aspect of someone. The ego in Freud's theory is only a balancing role between the id and the superego, which is tolerantly released if it tends to the id and has a cognitively flexible interpretation of the superego.
People don't understand that they have a multi-center of gravity, but everyone is firm and united. It is normal for us to conflict with each other, but it is fatal that we have a consistent central will of vanity, power, temperament and interests, which integrates inconsistencies, inconsistencies in words and deeds, and conflicts everywhere into a disguised and unified self. This is the greatest self-deception of self-creation.
2. The psychological mechanism of self-justification: the interpreter
Self-deception is an indispensable and quite necessary psychological adjustment mechanism for human beings: they are both self-contradictory and good at making up reasons. They are utilitarian, pragmatic, even greedy, and obsessed with high moral beliefs. People are spirited animals who can't afford to lose, who value winning and losing above all else, and are extremely vain; If you win, sing great hymns to offset and forget the mountains of corpses and the sea of blood; If you lose, you should use the 'Spiritual Victory Method' to comfort yourself. People rack their brains to devise cruel and cunning plans, and carefully embellish beautiful images; He is cowardly and steals pleasure, but also tries his best to shirk responsibility.... In the long course of history, these social intelligences have enabled human beings to evolve a mature psychological mechanism of adaptive response to 'self-deception'.
Experiments have shown that when people engage in 'moral reasoning' (the process of inferring about whether they are allowed, obligated, or forbidden to do something), they spontaneously search for examples of rule violations; When 'declarative reasoning' (the process of making inferences about the truth or falsity of a statement), there is a spontaneous search for examples that conform to the rules. (Evolutionary Psychology)
Does this imply that human nature naturally strives to find a breakthrough in the face of moral pressure? As long as there are more precedents of violations, the more comfortable people will be at compliance with herd violations, and they will not have to bear the psychological pressure of 'self-deception'?
As an adaptive responder, the mechanism of self-deception is that as long as it is believed to be true and reasonable, it will break free from public moral standards and intellectual scrutiny and follow intuition and emotional guidance. In one experiment, as long as someone feels that others are discriminating against him, he does not need to verify whether it is true or not, and he will retaliate and discriminate in response. And when the other party feels that they are being discriminated against, they will respond even more, and everyone will rely on self-justifying suspicions instead of rational scrutiny. In the process of 'self-rounding', he does not realise that he is confirming biases, eliminating discordant sounds, and putting selective deviations into a complete closed loop. This is 'the extremism of not knowing the extreme, the self-deception of unconsciously deception'.
When someone thinks that he is doing something noble and right, he will unconsciously change the absolute law with the value of the goal, that is, the unspoken rule that 'as long as the end is right, you can do whatever it takes'. If you see your competitors as evil, you can steal any of their intelligence and falsify it. At this time, the values of 'theft is not guilty' and 'deception is justice' are exempted, which is another self-justification. Self-deception is wrapped in an insulating layer that is grandiose and circumvents the scrutiny of conscience. Self-justification is a deceptive strategy to address cognitive dissonance.
This kind of behaviour develops a smooth psychological adaptation as the rules of thumb are built: as long as the 'psychological benefit' (i.e. the acquisition of practical benefits and psychological fulfilment) is established at the level of pragmatism, the normal law is broken and the uneasiness of self-deception is not given.
Humans are a 'reason animal'. Another characteristic is that as long as someone is responsible, I carry out orders or engage in non-direct criminal acts, distancing myself from cruelty and obscuring the clarity of consciousness.
The world and life are too complex, morality is abstract, the rules are clear, and the principles and laws cannot solve the dilemmas and complexities, so people must use reasonable excuses to release themselves from the shackles of the laws. Self-deception is mostly confronted with the uncertainty of the truth, the inconclusiveness of the moral law, the overall plurality of responsibility and consequences, and, of course, the absoluteness of egocentrism.
Cognitive neuroscience has thus developed the 'interpreter' theory. Gazzaniga argues that our left brain has an interpreter that has a strong incentive to make assumptions about the structure of the world, and that it processes the process of finding explanations or causes for each event, trying to infer cause and effect, and constantly interpreting the world using input from the current cognitive state and clues from the surrounding environment. The left hemisphere uses whatever cues it finds (Citation: Availability Associative Inspiration, Availability Memory, including intrinsic rules of thumb and extrinsic triggers and anchors). The general situation is as follows: first System 1 subconsciously processes the current situation, makes a judgement response, then automatically makes a behavioural response, and then observes and explains afterwards. That is, do it first, and then find a reason for rationalisation. The power of the interpreter is to be able to find order in the chaos, and to weave all the bits and pieces into a story and put it into the background. (Who, P78-81)
Some of our human qualities are defined as 'bad' by public society, but our desires are strong and irrepressible by nature, and we cannot help but satisfy these desires, so the ego does a lot of work to reconcile the opposition between the id and the superego, or to disguise our actions, or to define ourselves for certain concepts, or to hide them from the outside world. We need to have a rational explanation of ourselves or identify with it. If it is not possible for the ego to rewrite the powerful superego, it must deceive itself, seal the superego on hold, or use the function of isolation to make the superego blind to the ego's actions. Externally, avoid facing the mirror, such as masturbation, peeping at other people's nakedness, petty theft, etc., at this time, we have several egos, and the main self and the guest self must be separated.
When a person or group commits a crime, the only purpose at this time is to preserve the dignity of the self, and his left-brain interpreter is trying his best to defend himself, and the 'self' at this time is committed to preserving face, interests and power, condensed on the 'moral self', which deceives the 'moral self' and suppresses it with its strong will.
People don't even have a sense of morality and discipline for their own actions, and they tacitly assume that everything that is self-fulfilling is what should be done, and that the self only has the will to act for the sake of self-realisation ideas and goals. Because there is no default setting for evaluating one's own motivations, one of the great characteristics of human nature is exempt from censorship. Moral criticism is extroverted, so people lack a clear sense of the legitimacy of their own motives.
3. Fantasy illusion mechanism
Psychological research has shown that 'liars' are different from liars in that they lie not to deceive people, but to make themselves believe what they say. Because they suffer from 'pathological narcissism', they can't bear who they are, they can't distinguish what they are and what they are, and they are anxious about it. Liaroids include vanity lying, malignant lying, and paradoxical lying. A liar is a mental disorder about self-esteem characterised by the creation of delusional illusions, as a way of constantly escaping reality and portraying oneself in another image in the hallucination. (The Logic of Lies)
Atrongly narcissistic modern people fail in many cases to reach the state of mental disorder of liarism, it is the norm to constantly produce delusional illusions and self-deception. There is too much pressure on society.
Extreme narcissism is a common in contemporary society. People are narcissistic about the superiority of the self in some way, appearance, intelligence, sexual characteristics, and wealth, and are unable to accept the alienated state of reality from the non-self; the psychology sets up defence mechanisms, with the obsession with the self-denial of reality leading the individual to have delusions, rejecting reality through the delusion or self-deception of contempt, ignorance, or blindness: everything other than the self is low, ugly, or disgusting.
Self-esteem anxiety leads to lying to oneself, which can lead to distortion and depersonalisation.
Ever more people are developing poly-addictions. Indulging in alcohol, food, shopping, online role-playing games, gambling, drugs and boasting become unstoppable compulsive behaviours. Like an infant, one relies on something to be happy, entering a virtual illusion, a fantasy world (state).
It's a matter of finding a foothold. Lying to oneself in a relationship with reality, escaping from the stressful, stressful, meaningless, and unbearable realities of life, seeking self-comfort, both self-denial and self-protection.
The Internet became a major base of illusion in recent times: in that virtual environment where prejudices and fragmented information are played, the crowd is enveloped in omitted and out-of-context narratives, abstract grand ideas, impulsive emotions and simple deterministic thinking, immersed in virtual mass movements. People in the mass movement think they are taking part in the cause of upholding justice, and the collective indignation produces illusions of nobility.
The brain produces various delusional illusions and automatically completes the self-deception effect.
This mental process goes something like this:
All self-deception is carried out comfortably by a psychological mechanism under unilateral derivation, lacking 'opposition forces' to disprove the dominant party, no other force to break the illusion and deny the control of solipsism. Science itself is in fact a democratic republic: it entails various forces coexisting on an equal footing, to interact as opposition, competing one with another. Self-deception is self-gullibility in the absence of an internal error correction mechanism.
Our brains place abstract ideas in the fantasy illusion module, split from the behavioural decision-making module. Abstract ideas are nihilistic and uncertain, while it is difficult to mentally categorise concrete actions. Determining specific behaviour takes place in another decision-making module of the brain, engaged in tacitly unexamined underlying meanings rather than attitudinal definitions. Once you want to take a stand in the dilemma, you will challenge its belief module. Statements cannot confirm someone's true attitude towards things.
It’s hard for people to effectively connect abstract ideas with concrete actions. Decisions on specific actions are always determined by realistic situations and vital interests, not abstract ideas.
When immigrants are submissive to their actual interests, they express their loyalty to their country of citizenship
In modern society, in the event of war, people will not hesitate to participate in the patriotic defence war only when their homeland is invaded and the safety of themselves and their families is directly threatened.
There are those who lack rational thinking, and supporting any war of their country.
When they expressed their position, they enter an extreme state, sealing their practical feasibility and ability consciousness, and even more so universal values,
the focus of their attention is only the mainstream ideology, and with no ability to practise rationality.
Once in a specific situation, most people will act according to instinct and nature. At every critical moment, the result of self-deception will be known.
4. The brain has a strong ability to balance itself
'Self-deception' is content with the psychological balance of the self every time:
Mothballing: Putting the system of conscience in a corner where it is not used;
Exclusion: blocking, excluding, bypassing and obscuring the judgement of conscience with the principle of reality, excluding the value of conscience with utilitarian value, and rejecting universal logic with learned beliefs;
Turning a blind eye: ignoring the existence of uncertainty due to ignorance and confirmation bias;
Control: Replace System 2 with System 1, reject rational and quiet thinking, and act with emotional reasoning and impulsiveness;
Blinding: Justifying oneself with excuses and scapegoating.
Man is a 'creature being' and we are born and acquired as a result of creation and then exist in every situation with our own nature. Nature is a personal resource, and we will develop a 'ownership attachment' complex, that is, an obsession with possession, and solipsism-centrism from narcissism. Nature, which makes us successful, also binds us and becomes a box of self-deception, including instinctive intuition, cultural memes, national character, community rights and identity, mindsets, inertia, experience, emotion, thought, accumulation, etc.
'Self-deception' is a process of tacit cooperation between the psychological mechanisms of two sides.
The development of the brain actually consists of a series of 'commitments' made by nerve cells – locking one way to one option and giving up the other, and these 'commitments' shape the individual animal (or human). (The Other Side of Normal, p104)
The 'root self' of nature has a strong authoritarian stubbornness, it has real ownership, it is an adaptive response mechanism (System 1) that automatically makes quick judgments and decisions anytime and anywhere, and has the influence to control the self. It is also a master of self-deception, decisively stopping everything that does not suit it, and deceiving itself by suggesting that the new friend is dangerous. This is a manifestation of narcissism for the sake of stubbornness.
Epilogue
Our consciousness when we are usually awake is just a special type of consciousness: very thin layers of barriers isolate it and everything associated with it, and behind these barriers there may be many forms quite unlike our consciousness when we are awake. (William James)
Each module of the brain becomes the protagonist one after the other depending on our situation, and we are not aware of the complex memory of our inner world. The psychological mechanism of equilibrium habitually performs the functional actions of rationalisation, self-justification, self-construction, improvement, fit, remodelling, complementing, adjusting, sealing, isolating, shielding, and even fooling around at all times. We don't know or care how they determine our judgments and decisions, nor have we a clear sense of reflection or the ability to control them. So we don't think of these as self-deception. We are servants only of purpose and motive. Our perceptions, cognitions, and memories are all designed to construct a 'subjective fact' for the sake of self that fits our instincts and cultural memes, realistic situations, and expectations in order to reassure our minds and solidify our own transcendental values.
Given the ambiguity and interconnectedness of behavioural thoughts, it becomes even more important to be vigilant against self-deception.
Key References:
Grotesque Behaviour 4: The Honest Truth, trans. Dan Arieli and Hu Xiaojiao, CITIC Publishing Group, December 2017.
The Logic of Lies, trans. Pascal Nevo, Chen Kexin and Zhao Lu, China Water Resources and Hydropower Press, May 2022.
Evolutionary Psychology, trans. David Bass and Daniel Zhang Jiang Ke, The Commercial Press, September 2015.
Who Rules: A Psychological Interpretation of Free Will, trans. Michael Gazzaniga, translated by Lu Jia, Zhejiang People's Publishing House, July 2013.
Beyond IQ, Keith Stanovich, trans. Zhang Bin, China Machine Press, September 2015.
How to Think Independently, Steven Novella et al., trans. Wen Hui, CITIC Publishing Group, December 2020.
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