Self-deception conference

Tomorrow I am attending a conference on self-deception, directed by Robin Hanson and me. We will have numerous luminaries, including Robert Trivers and Thomas Schelling, in attendance. By the way, blogging will continue.

Here are a few self-deception pointers for the day:

However much I examine my vanity, I can’t see in it the same disagreeable tone of the vanity of other people, all of which is just a further stage of vanity.

by the poet Carlos Drummond de Andrade.

Or, did you know that Stalin, when revising his official biography for publication, ordered that this sentence be inserted:

Stalin never let his work be affected by the least shadow of vanity, presumption or idolatry.

Thomas More once wrote:

Most men like their own writing best of all.

All of these bits are from Lies We Live By: The Art of Self-Deception, by a very underrated Brazilian economist named Eduardo Giannetti. Few economists are so well-read in the humanities, so ironic at the right moment, and so on the mark in their understanding of human psychology. If anyone out there knows Eduardo’s email address, please forward it to me, I would like to write him.