[extropy-chat] Enhancing Our Truth Orientation

[Brett Paatsch]

Robin Hanson wrote:

>A draft of this new paper is available.  Comments welcome.
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
> http://hanson.gmu.edu/moretrue.pdf

Towards the end of your introduction you state:

"...over-estimating our ability not only helps us to attract social allies,
it also raises our self-esteem and happiness (Taylor, 1989), and can
motivate us to excel (Kitcher, 1990)".

And then:

"Depressed and mentally-ill people tend to be less self-deceived than
others."


Although I've heard similar things before; I studied social psych at uni
(1987), I'm still sceptical/curious as to how such a conclusion might be
drawn from experiment.

Are you just paraphrasing or summing up Kitcher and/or Taylor in the
second sentence above or is there other data?

If research is showing that two principles of extropy, Practical Optimism
and Rational Thinking are in tension, other extropy chat listers may be
interested too.

Brett Paatsch

Btw: Congrats on the tenure.