Most people are crazy. But I think I may have discovered the secret to not being crazy. Here it is:
When you’re trying to make sense of the world, you can’t care what other people will think.
Specifically, if you are worried that people will think less of you for believing something, you have to decide that you’ll lie to others before you’ll lie to yourself. But it’s not just negative reactions that you’re not allowed to care about, you also can’t adopt a philosophy because you think it’ll make you cool.
Background: Stephen Pinker, in his book How the Mind Works, writes:
Trivers, pursuing his theory of the emotions to its logical conclusion, notes that in a world of walking lie detectors the best strategy is to believe your own lies. You can’t leak your hidden intentions if you don’t think that they are your intentions. According to his theory of self-deception, the conscious mind sometimes hides the truth from itself the better to hide it from others…[snip]
Cognitive dissonance is always triggered by blatant evidence that you are not as beneficent and effective as you would like people to think. The urge to reduce it is the urge to get your self-serving story straight.
I first read these words several years ago, but was reminded of them when writing this post. While writing it, I went back through my blog archives and noticed that the bad thinking I was owning up to mostly didn’t occur until after I had decided to go to grad school. And what scares me about it is that this isn’t a case where I’m looking back and asking, “what was I thinking?”
Rather, I remember pretty well how my thought process went: once I decided I was going to be a professional philosopher, I started thinking about what justifications I’d give people for what I was doing, why they should listen to the future-professional-philosopher me. And as I thought about what I’d say, I started believing it.
And… I don’t think that’s the only time I’ve done something like that. Started believing nonsense because I wanted to be able to present myself to the world a certain way. And in some of those other cases, the beliefs adopted for bad reasons led, unsurprisingly, to bad decisions. It’s embarrassing, and something I’d very much like to avoid repeating.
Having had such experiences, being on the lookout for such thinking seem worthwhile. But it may be more than worthwhile. If Pinker is right, concerns (however unconscious) about what other people will think of our beliefs are the key driving force in human irrationality. Learning to shove such concerns aside, resist letting them influence us, may just be the secret to being rational.
You may have put your finger on one important way thinking gets corrupted, but I’m not sure I’d advertise it as a way to avoid craziness.
The real crazies that I can think of typically don’t care what others think:
“I don’t care what everyone else says, I *know* the CIA has implanted transmitters in my brain.”
“Of course most people deny that we’re being ruled by shape-shifting Reptilians; that’s exactly what they *want* us to think!”
“So what if all climate scientists say the world is warming? That just proves they’re looking for money, and not the *truth*.”
I agree with Physicalist: The problem here wasn’t that you cared about what other people think.
And to go further: Perhaps the problem was that you didn’t care enough about what other people think actually to go and see what anyone thought of your justifications for going to grad school. (That sounds a bit too blunt or hostile now that I get it on the screen, but I can’t think of a better wording. I’m just trying to float one possibility, not accuse you of anything.) That, at least, seems closer to the problem Pinker is talking about.
@Physicalist: there’s a huge difference between your first example and your last example. The first is the kind of belief you expect to find in people who are genuinely mentally ill, and who can believe crazy things without any social support.
But if you believe global warming is a hoax, you’ll find a lot of people willing to encourage you in that belief. And it’s a belief that can help you present yourself as an iconoclast, a loyal Republican, or as someone who’s opposition to greenhouse gas regulation isn’t at all selfish.
@Dan: that’s false for a certain value of “other people” and “anyone,” since I mostly used the standard defenses of philosophy used in academic philosophy: philosophers are experts in evaluating arguments, studying philosophy makes you more rational, etc. So at least some people would have endorsed my justifications. But perhaps it would have been a good exercise to run said justifications past non-philosophers.
@ Chris: “…you’ll find a lot of people willing to encourage you in that belief. And it’s a belief that can help you present yourself as an iconoclast, a loyal Republican, or as someone who’s opposition to greenhouse gas regulation isn’t at all selfish.”
Good lord, is that the story of my life! I study classical guitar, and listening to yourself play isn’t at all the same as listening to another person play. People who are listening to you don’t hear you the same way you do. You want to think you are good, and there are plenty of people to encourage you in that belief, but that doesn’t mean you are (or at least, good in the way you want to be). The opposite is also true, a lot of people want to tell you how much you suck. Knowing you’re “good” is the same as knowing you’re “right.” In other words, you can’t!
This is why the most important thing atheists can do to promote atheism is to stand up and be counted. You can’t dismiss atheism as a fringe belief once you learn that your friends, your boss, your postal deliverer, your swimming coach are all atheists. And most rational people will gradually change their perspective to deal with that. It’s not just about conversions: it’s also about weakening irrational convictions.