"Narrative Self-Deception: The Ultimate Elephant in the Brain?"
An attempt to critique and build upon @robinhanson and @KevinSimler's The Elephant in the Brain. Trying to expose a great optimism elephant that conveniently ignores bad things.https://magnusvinding.com/2018/09/27/narrative-self-deception-the-ultimate-elephant-in-the-brain/ …
I *really* appreciated this post. Like Robin said, the "life is good" claim isn't really something we argue for. In fact, I'll be honest, it was a little bit flippant. I thought of it as a "spoonful of sugar" to make the rest of our book more palatable to some people.
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Right. But sugar can be dangerous even in small amounts. Especially this kind.
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More importantly, though, I think you're entirely correct to flag it as an area where the forces of self-deception are especially strong. "Life is bad" is one of the least popular opinions a person can hold! So we should all be very wary of our judgment here.
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Indeed, and maybe we should listen to those naturally skeptical (I'm not, really), such as the speaker in the following videos, who opened my eyes (he makes many of the same points you do in The Elephant, except he ties it into a decidedly negative story):https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1mJnEmjlLE&list=PLcmZ9oxph4sxzDfr2oH6tpNij-YUH5dy3 …
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I guess it's possible to believe that life on net is bad, but that it would be worse if we all realized that, therefore... yeah. Acknowledging that is something we can build on, I think?
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Possible to think, yes, but I would argue that it would be much better if we had a deeper appreciation of the horror of suffering, cf. https://reducing-suffering.org/the-horror-of-suffering/ …, and if we worked more directly on reducing it.
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