The girl’s quick mind, unrefined by study, sought to have the advantage of being considered pure and airless; it was conscious of this, and it made use of this consciousness to further its ends; but such a mind had given me too strong an impression of its cleverness.
That is from History of My Life. Is that why human self-deception has evolved? If we don’t know our own artifices, we can more successfully conceal them from others.
Hell yeah, all that Greek ‘know thyself’ stuff was bull. Usually it’s best not to know yourself, you may not like what you find.
So, is it Robin Hanson who gives too strong an impression of such a self-consciousness,
or is he the person who is constantly going around pointing out people who have such a
manipulative, if “airy,” self-consciousness?
That is the theory that Trivers has argued for – that self-deception evolved in part to help us deceive others:
informal article
published paper (PDF)
Here’s my blog post about belief and self-deception.
http://hereticatthegates.blogspot.com/2007/04/superstition-economy-or-how-self.html
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