What are the causes and attributes of the deluded mind?

[rousseau]

It'd be easy to focus on religion here, but I'd like to generalize the problem a little further:

Why do people commonly hold tightly onto, and fail to question their own false beliefs

As I age I recognize more and more just how pervasive this is. Averaged out, a lot of people seem to be unable and/or unwilling to question themselves, even entertain the thought that they may not know what it is that they claim to know. I'm thinking about people like hard conservatives or liberals on Facebook who continually make claim after claim that is absolutely ridiculous, and yet they can't conceive of why.

Specifically, I'm curious about a few things:

• what's going on in the mind of someone who is unable to question themselves
• how that type of cognition should arise through evolution
• why it persists

 

[untermensche]

Rational thought is not natural.

It must be taught.

If it is not taught the human will revert to some other kind of thinking. Usually directed by the emotions and drives.

 

[ronburgundy]

Rational thought is not natural.

It must be taught.

If it is not taught the human will revert to some other kind of thinking. Usually directed by the emotions and drives.

This is not entirely true. While training helps to avoid reasoning errors, even other primates show an ability to reason and make inferences to solve problems they have never encountered.
Very young kids will show cause-effect reasoning that is superior to the kind of highly irrational thinking the OP is referring to.
That kind of irrationality is not primarily due to lack of reasoning skill but rather a willful desire to reach and protect a particular conclusion that cannot be supported with even basic reasoning. When people actually want to form accurate beliefs, they are generally pretty good at it. The problem is that people often do not want to be accurate, but rather hold and promote claims that serve some other psychological/social/political goal, even if they are objectively incorrect.

how that type of cognition should arise through evolution
why it persists

Deception and misleading others is of obvious functional utility. Delusion is just those tools turned on oneself to achieve a utilitarian goal that is better served by holding a particular belief than by holding an objectively accurate belief. Also, conning others into believing something is more effective if the con-man appears to sincerely believe it, and the appearance of sincerity is aided if the person is able to con themselves into actually believing it.

I think such self delusions are usually not fully complete, meaning that the person is insecure and doubtful about their own belief, which is why they typically are so defensive and attacking of people who simply call the claim into question or ask for evidence. The more obviously absurd the claim, the greater that insecurity, and thus the more aggressive and even violent its proponents get when it is challenged. This is why theistic religions and social violence have gone hand-in-hand for centuries.

 

[rousseau]

Rational thought is not natural.

It must be taught.

If it is not taught the human will revert to some other kind of thinking. Usually directed by the emotions and drives.

This is not entirely true. While training helps to avoid reasoning errors, even other primates show an ability to reason and make inferences to solve problems they have never encountered.
Very young kids will show cause-effect reasoning that is superior to the kind of highly irrational thinking the OP is referring to.
That kind of irrationality is not primarily due to lack of reasoning skill but rather a willful desire to reach and protect a particular conclusion that cannot be supported with even basic reasoning. When people actually want to form accurate beliefs, they are generally pretty good at it. The problem is that people often do not want to be accurate, but rather hold and promote claims that serve some other psychological/social/political goal, even if they are objectively incorrect.

how that type of cognition should arise through evolution
why it persists

Deception and misleading others is of obvious functional utility. Delusion is just those tools turned on oneself to achieve a utilitarian goal that is better served by holding a particular belief than by holding an objectively accurate belief. Also, conning others into believing something is more effective if the con-man appears to sincerely believe it, and the appearance of sincerity is aided if the person is able to con themselves into actually believing it.

I think such self delusions are usually not fully complete, meaning that the person is insecure and doubtful about their own belief, which is why they typically are so defensive and attacking of people who simply call the claim into question or ask for evidence. The more obviously absurd the claim, the greater that insecurity, and thus the more aggressive and even violent its proponents get when it is challenged. This is why theistic religions and social violence have gone hand-in-hand for centuries.

Thanks for the post.

I guess the question is why should this be the case? Why should self-deception have evolutionary value?

All that comes to mind is that it's really about social cohesion. Free-thinkers who break from their clan conceptually are more likely to be outcast from their group.

 

[PyramidHead]

It depends entirely on the nature of the delusion. Some are more pervasive and deep-rooted than others, some only affect a segment of people who were raised a certain way, and some are shared by nearly everyone. There are likely also delusions that are shared by literally everyone. I would wager that the more widespread a delusion, the more it has something to do with evolutionary psychology, but there may be exceptions.

Why should self-deception have evolutionary value?

The same reason anything has evolutionary value: it lets the bearers of that trait better compete for resources and procreative success than those who lack it. A self-deceptive strategy that does this will always lead to more genetic offspring than an "honest" strategy that doesn't. One way this might happen is if the consequences of doing something based on false confidence are worse (in terms of reproductive success) than the consequences of not doing something based on an accurate self-image. Placing undue certainty on one's own beliefs about the world, even if those beliefs are not all true, at least facilitates some kind of action. In our ancestral environment, perhaps the ones who had totally rational self-skepticism were too averse to risks, too cautious about the unknown, compared to those who had inflated egos or unfounded ideas about what lay beyond the horizon.

In particular, the least successful strategy would have been anything that fell short of the astonishing optimism of our species. Almost no change in our circumstances is devastating enough to prevent humans from returning to the baseline of "things are okay and may get better in the future" after enough time has passed. It's not hard to speculate about the incredible success people with this trait would have had compared to those with a more sober view. Whether or not you think general optimism is a delusion depends on a lot of things, but either way it seems like just the kind of tendency that would be strongly reinforced by evolution, no less than tribalism or a fear of heights.

 

[rousseau]

It depends entirely on the nature of the delusion. Some are more pervasive and deep-rooted than others, some only affect a segment of people who were raised a certain way, and some are shared by nearly everyone. There are likely also delusions that are shared by literally everyone. I would wager that the more widespread a delusion, the more it has something to do with evolutionary psychology, but there may be exceptions.

Why should self-deception have evolutionary value?

The same reason anything has evolutionary value: it lets the bearers of that trait better compete for resources and procreative success than those who lack it. A self-deceptive strategy that does this will always lead to more genetic offspring than an "honest" strategy that doesn't. One way this might happen is if the consequences of doing something based on false confidence are worse (in terms of reproductive success) than the consequences of not doing something based on an accurate self-image. Placing undue certainty on one's own beliefs about the world, even if those beliefs are not all true, at least facilitates some kind of action. In our ancestral environment, perhaps the ones who had totally rational self-skepticism were too averse to risks, too cautious about the unknown, compared to those who had inflated egos or unfounded ideas about what lay beyond the horizon.

In particular, the least successful strategy would have been anything that fell short of the astonishing optimism of our species. Almost no change in our circumstances is devastating enough to prevent humans from returning to the baseline of "things are okay and may get better in the future" after enough time has passed. It's not hard to speculate about the incredible success people with this trait would have had compared to those with a more sober view. Whether or not you think general optimism is a delusion depends on a lot of things, but either way it seems like just the kind of tendency that would be strongly reinforced by evolution, no less than tribalism or a fear of heights.

That sounds like a plausible explanation, and it would definitely fit into the puzzle of why some people who are of lower socio-economic status have lots of kids. The nutrition, education, future of their children be damned, the parents are optimistic enough to bring more people into the world without a care.

Not to get you onto the topic of kids, but I could see how an inability to accurately gauge one's ability to raise children as well as take care of themselves long-term could result in more offspring. Where a person capable of making a more sober analysis realizes 'hey, if I only have one kid I can spend my summers in Spain when I retire'.

 

[braces_for_impact]

Originally posted by rousseay:

I guess the question is why should this be the case? Why should self-deception have evolutionary value?

This is an interesting question. I'm about to read a book all about it, you may be interested in it, The Elephant In The Brain.

Here's a short TED talk on the topic:

[YOUTUBE]https://youtu.be/V84_F1QWdeU[/YOUTUBE]