## Metadata - Author: [[Robert Trivers]] - Full Title: The Folly of Fools - Category: #books ## Highlights - At the heart of our mental lives, there seemed to be a striking contradiction—we seek out information and then act to destroy it. On the one hand, our sense organs have evolved to give us a marvelously detailed and accurate view of the outside world—we see the world in color and 3-D, in motion, texture, nonrandomness, embedded patterns, and a great variety of other features. Likewise for hearing and smell. Together our sensory systems are organized to give us a detailed and accurate view of reality, exactly as we would expect if truth about the outside world helps us to navigate it more effectively. But once this information arrives in our brains, it is often distorted and biased to our conscious minds. We deny the truth to ourselves. We project onto others traits that are in fact true of ourselves—and then attack them! We repress painful memories, create completely false ones, rationalize immoral behavior, act repeatedly to boost positive self-opinion, and show a suite of ego-defense mechanisms. ([Location 220](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=220)) - During a brainstorm on parent-offspring conflict in 1972, it occurred to me that deception of others might provide exactly the force to drive deception of self. The key moment occurred when I realized that parent-offspring conflict extended beyond how much parental investment is delivered to the behavior of the offspring itself. Once I saw conflict over the offspring’s personality, it was easy to imagine parental deceit and self-deception molding offspring identity for parental benefit. Likewise, one could imagine parents not just practicing self-deception but also imposing it—that is, inducing it in the offspring—to the offspring’s detriment but to parental advantage. After all, the parent is in the position of advantage—larger, stronger, in control of the resources at issue, and more practiced in the arts of self-deception. ([Location 230](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=230)) - the general argument is that we deceive ourselves the better to deceive others. To fool others, we may be tempted to reorganize information internally in all sorts of improbable ways and to do so largely unconsciously. From the simple premise that the primary function of self-deception is offensive—measured as the ability to fool others—we can build up a theory and science of self-deception. ([Location 236](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=236)) - In our own species, deceit and self-deception are two sides of the same coin. If by deception we mean only consciously propagated deception—outright lies—then we miss the much larger category of unconscious deception, including active self-deception. On the other hand, if we look at self-deception and fail to see its roots in deceiving others, we miss its major function. We may be tempted to rationalize self-deception as being defensive in purpose when actually it is usually offensive. Here we will treat deceit and self-deception as a unitary subject, each feeding into the other. ([Location 239](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=239)) - The central claim of this book is that self-deception evolves in the service of deception—the better to fool others. Sometimes it also benefits deception by saving on cognitive load during the act, and at times it also provides an easy defense against accusations of deception (namely, I was unconscious of my actions). In the first case, the self-deceived fails to give off the cues that go with consciously mediated deception, thus escaping detection. In the second, the actual process of deception is rendered cognitively less expensive by keeping part of the truth in the unconscious. That is, the brain can act more efficiently when it is unaware of the ongoing contradiction. And in the third case, the deception, when detected, is more easily defended against—that is, rationalized—to others as being unconsciously propagated. ([Location 258](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=258)) - The evidence is clear and overwhelming that both the detection of deception and often its propagation have been major forces favoring the evolution of intelligence. It is perhaps ironic that dishonesty has often been the file against which intellectual tools for truth have been sharpened. ([Location 272](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=272)) - Deception is a very deep feature of life. It occurs at all levels—from gene to cell to individual to group—and it seems, by any and all means, necessary. Deception tends to hide from view and is difficult to study, with self-deception being even worse, hiding itself more deeply in our own unconscious minds. Sometimes the subject must be ferreted out before it can be inspected, and we often lack key pieces of evidence, given the complexity of the subterfuges and our ignorance of the internal physiological mechanisms of self-deception. ([Location 299](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=299)) - When I say that deception occurs at all levels of life, I mean that viruses practice it, as do bacteria, plants, insects, and a wide range of other animals. It is everywhere. Even within our genomes, deception flourishes as selfish genetic elements use deceptive molecular techniques to over-reproduce at the expense of other genes. Deception infects all the fundamental relationships in life: parasite and host, predator and prey, plant and animal, male and female, neighbor and neighbor, parent and offspring, and even the relationship of an organism to itself. ([Location 303](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=303)) - As for the notion that deception is naturally constrained to be of modest general cost, consider the case of stick insects (or Phasmatodea), a group that has given itself over to imitating either sticks (three thousand species) or leaves (thirty species). These forms have existed for at least fifty million years and achieve a remarkably precise resemblance to their models. In those forms resembling sticks, there is apparently strong evolutionary pressure to produce a long, thin (sticklike) body, even if doing so forces the individual to forgo the benefits of bilateral symmetry. Thus, to fit the internal organs into a diminishing space, one of two organs has often been sacrificed, leaving only one kidney, one ovary, one testis, and so on. This shows that selection for successful deception has been powerful enough not only to remold the creature’s external shape but to remold its internal organs as well—even when this is otherwise disadvantageous to the larger creature, as loss of symmetry must often be. ([Location 323](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=323)) - So the key to defining self-deception is that true information is preferentially excluded from consciousness and, if held at all, is held in varying degrees of unconsciousness. If the mind acts quickly enough, no version of the truth need be stored. The counterintuitive fact that needs to be explained is that the false information is put into the conscious mind. What is the point of this? One would think that if we had to store true and false versions of the same event simultaneously, we would store the true version in the conscious mind, the better to enjoy the benefits of consciousness (whatever they may be), while the false information would be kept safely out of sight somewhere in the basement. The hypothesis of this book is that this entire counterintuitive arrangement exists for the benefit of manipulating others. We hide reality from our conscious minds the better to hide it from onlookers. ([Location 340](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=340)) - Cognitive load: Lying can be cognitively demanding. You must suppress the truth and construct a falsehood that is plausible on its face and does not contradict anything known by the listener, nor likely to be known. You must tell it in a convincing way and you must remember the story. This usually takes time and concentration, both of which may give off secondary cues and reduce performance on simultaneous tasks. ([Location 356](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=356)) - On the other hand, language certainly greatly expanded the opportunities for deceit and self-deception in our own lineage. If one great virtue of language is its ability to make true statements about events distant in space and time, then surely one of its social drawbacks is its ability to make false statements about events distant in space and time. These are so much less easily contradicted than statements about the immediate world. Once you have language, you have an explicit theory of self and of social relationships ready to communicate to others. Numbers of new true assertions are matched by an even greater number of false ones. ([Location 425](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=425)) - It has been said that power tends to corrupt and absolute power, absolutely. This usually refers to the fact that power permits the execution of ever more selfish strategies toward which one is then “corrupted.” But psychologists have shown that power corrupts our mental processes almost at once. When a feeling of power is induced in people, they are less likely to take others’ viewpoint and more likely to center their thinking on themselves. The result is a reduced ability to comprehend how others see, think, and feel. Power, among other things, induces blindness toward others. ([Location 526](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=526)) - Few variables are as important in our lives as our perceived moral status. Even more than attractiveness and competence, degree of morality is a variable of considerable importance in determining our value to others—thus it is easily subject to deceit and self-deception. ([Location 548](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=548)) - It is interesting to note that lacking control increases something called illusory pattern recognition. That is, when individuals are induced to feel a lack of control, they tend to see meaningful patterns in random data, as if responding to their unfortunate lack of control by generating (false) coherence in data that would then give them greater control. ([Location 579](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=579)) - Victims often provide a long-term narrative, especially one emphasizing continuing harm and grievance, while perpetrators describe an arbitrary, isolated event with no lasting implications. One effect of this asymmetry between victim and perpetrator is that when the victim suppresses anger at a provocation, only to respond after an accumulation of slights, the perpetrator sees only the final, precipitating event and easily views the victim’s angry response as an unwarranted overreaction. ([Location 610](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=610)) - The most important general principle is that deceiver and deceived are locked into a coevolutionary struggle. Since the interests of the two are almost always contrary—what one gains by perpetrating a falsehood, the other loses by believing it—a struggle (over evolutionary time) takes place in which genetic improvements on one side favor improvements on the other. One key is that these effects are “frequency dependent”—deception fares well when rare and poorly when frequent. ([Location 673](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=673)) - One implication of frequency dependency is a perpetual premium on novelty. ([Location 693](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=693)) - Birds repeatedly fail to evolve the ability to see that the cuckoo or cowbird chick bears no resemblance to their own chicks beyond mouth color and begging call. In size, a cuckoo chick is often six times or more larger than its host, so that a foster parent may perch on the shoulder of the chick it is about to feed. Since it would seem beneficial to note this absurd size discrepancy and act accordingly, why are birds, in species after species, unable to do so? The answer to the mystery is by no means certain, but there are some interesting possibilities. ([Location 734](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=734)) - Deception spawns the mental ability to detect it. In the above case, this includes the ability to discriminate very similar objects, the ability to count, the ability to adjust discriminatory powers to contextual factors, and the ability to act as if making multiple inferences: eggshells on ground, egg destroyed, nest parasitized, investment best curtailed, and so on. ([Location 780](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=780)) - We shall see later that the brighter children are, for a given age, the more often they lie. The importance of this can’t be overemphasized. We often think that greater intelligence will be associated with less self-deception—or at least intellectuals imagine this to be true. What if the reverse is true, as I believe it is—smarter people on average lie and self-deceive more often than do the less gifted? ([Location 799](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=799)) - Perhaps one of the most spectacular cases of sexual mimicry is performed by a tiny blister beetle, itself a parasite on a solitary bee. To achieve dispersal, one hundred to two thousand individuals aggregate in groups that mimic in size, color, and perching location a single female of the host bee species, even moving as a unit up and down a tree. So here a kaleidoscopic falsehood is produced, its individual parts one-hundredth or less the size of the picture they are creating. In turn, a male bee copulating with the picture will serve to disperse the beetles to future bee nests since the beetles attach to him. ([Location 828](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=828)) - The importance of aggression following knowledge of deception is that it may greatly increase the costs of deceptive behavior and the benefits of remaining undetected. Fear of aggression can itself become a secondary signal suggesting deception, and its suppression an advantage for self-deception. Of course, aggression is not the only social cost of detected deception. A woman may terminate a relationship upon learning of a lie, usually a crueler punishment than her giving you a good beating, assuming she is capable. Detected deception may lead to social shame—bad reputation, loss of credibility and status, so that there will always be pressure on the deceiver to hide the deception, not only to make it successful but to avoid the larger consequences of detection. ([Location 927](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=927)) - Contrary to our imagination, the conscious mind seems to lag behind the unconscious in both action and perception—it is much more observer of action than initiator. ([Location 1023](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=1023)) - Because we live inside our conscious minds, it is often easy to imagine that decisions arise in consciousness and are carried out by orders emanating from that system. We decide, “Hell, let’s throw this ball,” and we then initiate the signals to throw the ball, shortly after which the ball is thrown. But detailed study of the neurophysiology of action shows otherwise. More than twenty years ago, it was first shown that an impulse to act begins in the brain region involved in motor preparation about six-tenths of a second before consciousness of the intention, after which there is a further delay of as much as half a second before the action is taken. In other words, when we form the conscious intention to throw the ball, areas of the brain involved in throwing have already been activated more than half a second earlier. ([Location 1040](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=1040)) - It is well known that making people feel bad about themselves leads to less self-involvement (e.g., looking in the mirror). In the above experiment, people made to feel bad by a poor score on a pseudo-exam just taken (in fact, with grades randomly assigned) started to deny their voices. Made to feel good by a good score, they started to hear themselves talking when they were not. It was as if self-presentation was expanding under success and contracting in response to failure. ([Location 1139](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=1139)) - processes of denial—and subsequent rationalization—appear to reside preferentially in the left brain and are inhibited by the right brain. ([Location 1171](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=1171)) - the right brain is more emotionally honest and the left actively engaged in self-promotion. ([Location 1176](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=1176)) - An abused wife may be deeply frightened and may rationalize acquiescence as the path least likely to provoke additional severe assaults—this is most effective if actually believed. ([Location 1186](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=1186)) - Sex, for example, is an attributional nightmare—who is causing what effect on whom?—so sexual dysfunction on either or both sides can easily be seen as caused by the other person. Whether manipulated by guilt or fear of losing the relationship, you may now be practicing self-deception on behalf of someone else, not yourself—a most unenviable position. ([Location 1196](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=1196)) - priming black students for their ethnicity strongly impairs their performance on mental tests. This was indeed one of the first demonstrations of what are now hundreds of “priming” effects. Black and white undergraduates at Stanford arrived in a lab to take a relatively difficult aptitude test. In one situation, the students were simply given the exams; in the other, each was asked to give a few personal facts, one of which was their own ethnicity. Black and white students scored equally well with no prime. With a prime, white scores were slightly (but not significantly) better, while black scores plummeted by nearly half. You can even manipulate one person’s performance in opposite directions by giving opposing primes. Asian women perform better on math tests when primed with “Asian” and worse when primed with “woman.” No one knows how long the effect of such primes endures, nor does anyone know how often a prime appears: how often is an African American reminded that he or she is such? Once a month? Once a day? Every half-hour? ([Location 1215](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=1215)) - an ability to self-deceive for positive effect is vulnerable to parasitism by others, allowing them to manipulate your suggestibility to their own benefit. ([Location 1319](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=1319)) - The following effects are very pronounced and demonstrate a clear connection between cost and perceived benefit. The placebo effect is stronger • the larger the pill, • the more expensive it is, • when given in capsule form instead of a pill, • the more invasive the procedure (injection better than pill, sham surgery is good), • the more the patient is active (rubbing in the medicine), • the more it has side effects, and • the more the “doctor” looks like one (white lab coat with stethoscope). The color of pills affects their effectiveness in different situations: white for pain (through association with aspirin?); red, orange, and yellow for stimulation; and blue and green for tranquilizers. Indeed, blue placebos can increase sleep via the blueness alone with probable immediate immune benefits (Chapter 6). ([Location 1321](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=1321)) - The general rules of the placebo effect are consistent with cognitive dissonance theory (Chapter 7)—the more a person commits to a position, the more he or she needs to rationalize the commitment, and greater rationalization apparently produces greater positive effects. Surgery offers repeated examples of the placebo effect. ([Location 1331](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=1331)) - For effects on pain, the placebo has been studied in some detail, and there is no question that in some individuals, the mere belief that a pain reliever has been received is sufficient to induce the production of endorphins that, in turn, reduce the sensation of pain. That is, what the brain expects to happen in the near future affects its physiological state. It anticipates, and you can gain the benefit of that anticipation. The tendency of Alzheimer’s patients not to experience placebo effects may be related to their inability to anticipate the future. ([Location 1346](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=1346)) - Placebos work as well as antidepressants for mild depression, but for severe depression, there is a sharp bifurcation: real medicine shows strong benefits and placebos almost none. This, as we have noted, is a characteristic feature of self-deception directed toward others: a modest amount works, but a great deal fails to impress. ([Location 1360](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=1360)) - until very recently (up to about five thousand years), medicine and religion were one and the same. You can easily imagine that regular religious attendance (especially if the music is good!) would intensify placebo and other immune benefits, just as regular visits to a caring and sensible doctor or adviser might. ([Location 1375](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=1375)) - When people are divided into those who are easily hypnotized versus those who are not, then hypnotizing the susceptible to concentrate only on the color in which words are printed in the Stroop test (recognizing words denoting color that are written in different colors), causes them to show no interference from the words themselves. But people who are not susceptible show no improvement on the Stroop test. This, then, is a benefit from ease of being hypnotized: greater ability to concentrate or tolerate cognitive load. ([Location 1384](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=1384)) - Formerly, we used to believe that an organism had a single self-interest. It had a unitary aim—to maximize its genetic reproduction. Kinship theory says this can’t be true. Different genes within us have differing rules of inheritance, and this will give them contradictory interests. For example, the Y chromosome is always passed father to son. It is not selected to have any interest in daughters. Does that mean we expect fathers to be at least slightly biased toward their sons? Not at all. The male’s X chromosome is passed only to his daughters and it is more than ten times as gene-rich as his Y, so if anything, men should show a slight genetic bias toward their daughters. No one knows whether this is true, but there is some evidence that paternal grandmothers favor their granddaughters over their grandsons according to the differing chances that their X chromosome will be found in them (½ versus 0). ([Location 1429](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=1429)) - The parent is selected to maximize the number of surviving offspring it produces, but the child is twice as related to itself as to its full siblings, so it is selected to try to gain more than its fair share of resources—though not so much more that it inflicts twice the cost on its siblings as the gain it enjoys itself. ([Location 1448](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=1448)) - Regarding the offspring’s general behavior, it is selected to act altruistically toward a relative only when the benefit times degree of relatedness is greater than the cost to itself (B>2C for full siblings), but the parent would prefer to see altruism whenever there is a net benefit to the parent’s offspring—in this example, B>C. Thus, parents are selected to mold their offspring into being better people (more altruistic, less selfish) than they are inclined to act on their own. This may take the form of punishing behavior as being generally immoral (instead of merely counter to the parent’s self-interest). ([Location 1455](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=1455)) - as people age, their important categories of relatives change from those with important genetic asymmetries (parents, half-siblings, and cousins) to those without asymmetries (children and grandchildren)—in short, from relatives over whom genomic conflict is expected to occur to those in whom it is not. So perhaps we become less internally conflicted as we age because our relatedness structure to the outside world becomes more symmetrical. ([Location 1548](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=1548)) - women’s deceptive behavior is unaffected by dominance (as is their ability to spot it). ([Location 1630](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=1630)) - when people are given a “power prime,” they see the emotional expressions of others less accurately, so if anything, we expect them to be more vulnerable to deception. ([Location 1631](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=1631)) - The advantages of sex must come from the benefits of producing genetically variable offspring. Two human parents can—through the magic of everyday recombination—produce billions of genetically different offspring, while an asexual female is stuck with her own genome and the few mutations she can give each offspring. And why is it important to produce genetic variability? Logic and evidence strongly suggest that there are two important forces. By continually breaking up gene combinations, recombination permits genes to be evaluated in many different genetic combinations, instead of always being tethered to the same set of genes. This increases the rate at which beneficial genes can evolve. The major pressure for this, in turn, often comes from one’s parasites, which are numerous and costly, and rapidly evolve new means of attacking you. Parasites favor in their hosts both the production of genetically variable offspring and offspring with high internal genetic diversity (heterozygosity). ([Location 1695](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=1695)) - How can you know for sure that the child a woman carries is genetically your own? Of course, you can’t. Some men torture themselves over the possibilities, the hours when she was not around, phone calls with old friends, whatever. But I always believed the issue was overrated, because I did not believe it was possible for me to look at a child for long and not be able (without DNA tests) to know whether it was my own. There are enough dominant genetic markers in my lineage that the truth must be there in front of my eyes. If that is really true, then we are talking at worst about nine months or so of wasted investment, a trivial cost, put to a good social purpose. Let us put the matter behind us and go on with the rest of our lives. In other words, we need not spiral off into the fatal land of jealousy, but that is alas all too common, ([Location 1773](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=1773)) - In many species of more or less monogamous animals, the sight of one’s own female having sex is sexually arousing to the male. Even ducks being raped by groups of males are often re-raped by their mate immediately afterward, presumably to introduce sperm in competition with that just introduced. So it is a feature of male psychology that evidence or fantasies of mate involvement with others may be sexually arousing. ([Location 1800](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=1800)) - If employed as a lap dancer and not on the pill, a woman earns 30 percent more per hour when ovulating than when not (excluding during menstruation, when she earns even less). If she is on the pill, then there are no differences in her earnings across the monthly cycle. ([Location 1819](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=1819)) - Women are better at reading facial expressions, but men are better at picking out hostile images in a crowd. ([Location 1839](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=1839)) - it is a remarkable fact that in a variety of mental tasks, women’s brains tend to act more symmetrically than men’s—that is, the two hemispheres are used more equally in solving a given task. Since symmetry is so often an advantage in life and mental life in particular—for example, depth perception and location in vision and hearing both result from the use of bilateral information simultaneously—one’s initial assumption must be that women thereby gain an advantage over men. The corpus callosum connecting the brain’s two hemispheres in women is relatively larger than in men, meaning information is more easily shared and symmetrical functioning more likely. ([Location 1840](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=1840)) - Couples last longer if they tend to overrate each other compared to the other’s self-evaluation. This has an appealingly romantic ring—“I love you, darling, more than you love yourself, and thereby uplift you.” Effects work on both sides. The more you overrate the other, the longer you stay together, and vice versa. Assuming long life together is a benefit, over-valuation is beneficial. ([Location 1886](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=1886)) - Why is sex so often associated with shame? One reason is that sexual activity often acts against self-interest directly—the damaged self. This includes, in principle, masturbation, bestiality, homosexuality—all sexual behavior that fails to benefit self. Unrelated individuals will have no direct self-interest but relatives will—their self-interest is directly harmed by your sexual misbehavior, as may be their reputation. So they may feel special pressure to shame you. In principle, your inappropriate sexual behavior can upset many individuals. ([Location 1942](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=1942)) - The inner world is populated by a series of antagonistic actors, mostly parasites—that is, species specialized to attack and devour us from the inside but also including cancer cells, mutated forms of one’s own cells now replicating out of control. Parasites come in such major categories as viruses, bacteria, fungi, protozoa, and worms. They cause an enormous array of diseases: malaria, AIDS, rheumatic fever, tuberculosis, pneumonia, dysentery, smallpox, mumps, whooping cough, and elephantiasis, to name only some of the deadlier forms. Indeed, it is a sobering thought that more than half of all species on earth are parasitic on the other half—and this is a gross underestimate of the relative frequency of the two, since species of parasites are usually much smaller and harder to detect than are their host species. Most parasites have relatively mild effects, but in aggregate effects on RS, the inner world of parasites is almost as important as the outer, causing perhaps as much as 30 percent of total mortality every generation. This huge selective force has generated a very large, complex, and highly diverse system to counter the internal enemies—our immune system. ([Location 1989](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=1989)) - One piece of evidence for how expensive (and important) the immune system is comes from “sickness behavior”—the cost the immune system imposes on the rest of the body when it needs to repair itself. Right after the immune system has fought off a parasitic invader—let us say a virus or bacteria—it is physiologically exhausted. It has drawn down heavily on its own resources to deal with the invader, and it now needs to rebuild itself to be ready for the next one. To do this, it induces a state of torpor, apathy, and lack of interest in life in the larger organism—the “blahs.” This is achieved by releasing a hormone (a particular cytokine) that acts on the brain to make the person anhedonic, that is, not taking pleasure in anything. In rats, this can be shown experimentally by releasing into healthy individuals the immune cytokine that targets the brain—the rat simply will not work as hard (on a treadmill) for sugar or other rewards. ([Location 2042](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=2042)) - I had always thought you felt bad after the initial attack of parasites (disease) because you were still fighting them, perhaps just mopping up operations but still enough to keep the immune system busy. Now I see that the immune system—fresh from heroic work on the barricades—merely wants to rebuild itself, and can we kindly help out by becoming inactive? To redirect energy to itself, the immune system makes other activities unrewarding so they will no longer be sought out. Internally you experience this as akin to depression. Would we suffer it better if we understood its purpose and went along with the program? Stay in bed; do not try to eat or have sex or pursue other activities that are usually fun but that make demands on the immune system and its regeneration—be satisfied with a “vacation from pleasure.” Preserve your energy and be humble. Things will soon get better. ([Location 2049](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=2049)) - It has also been known for some time that the brain is the most genetically active tissue in the human body. In other words, a higher percentage of genes are active in the brain than in all other tissues, almost twice as high as in the liver and in muscle, the nearest competitors. A good one-third of all genes are so-called housekeeping genes, useful in running most kinds of cells, so they are widely shared, but the brain is unique both in the total number of genes expressed and in the number expressed there and nowhere else. By some estimates, more than half of all genes express themselves in the brain: that is, more than ten thousand genes. This means that genetic variation for mental and behavioral traits should be especially extensive and fine-grained in our species—contra decades of social science dogma. This includes, of course, such traits as degree of honesty and degree and structure of deceit and self-deception. ([Location 2109](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=2109)) - Beginning in 1982, it was shown that female birds choose brightly colored males as a way of getting parasite-resistant genes for their offspring. This result has been documented many times since then—both that females like brightly colored males and that such males are relatively low in parasite number. It seems to be difficult to be brightly colored and sick at the same time, but why? Only in the 1990s was it shown that carotenoids—which give us orange, yellow, and red and which are not manufactured by any vertebrate but must come from their diet—play a vital role in immune function. This means that a more active immune system—for example, in response to infection—must draw carotenoids from surrounding tissues to help fight the invaders, as indeed it does. Those that are strong and healthy have color to spare, which they move to the body’s exterior as an advertisement. ([Location 2118](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=2118)) - Young people would be wise to pay attention to reality—both positive and negative—the better to make the appropriate responses later. Avoiding negative information seems risky on its face—negative events may have as big an effect on one’s interests (inclusive fitness) as positive ones. By contrast, in old age it hardly matters what you learn, but greater positive affect is associated with stronger immune response, so you may be selected to trade a grasp of reality for a boost in dealing with your main problem, that of internal enemies, including cancer. A positivity bias sacrifices attention to and learning from negative stimuli the better to enjoy strong immune function now. If you haven’t learned to spot an external enemy by now, chances may be low that you will learn to, and in the meantime you can enjoy a positive mood and immune response. ([Location 2281](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=2281)) - rule—the earlier during information processing that self-deception occurs, the less its negative downstream immunological effects. At the same time, there may be greater risk of disconnect from reality, since the truth may be minimally stored or not at all. ([Location 2294](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=2294)) - The psychological and immune systems are deeply intertwined, cause and effect go in either direction, and it is hardly possible for one system to react without affecting the other. For reasons that are not always obvious, self-deception appears to have strong immune effects, usually according to the rule more self-deception, lower immune strength, but occasionally, more self-deception, better immune function. This field is still in its infancy. Some interesting things are known, but much more remains to be found out. Which levels of information suppression are associated with what immune effects? And what chemicals are common to the brain and the immune system, leading to important trade-offs between the two? And what questions do we not even know enough to ask? ([Location 2331](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=2331)) - Misrepresentation of self to others is believed to be the primary force behind misrepresentation of self to self. This is way beyond simple computational error, the problems of subsampling from larger samples, or valid systems of logic that occasionally go awry. This is self-deception, a series of biasing procedures that affect every aspect of information acquisition and analysis. It is systematic deformation of the truth at each stage of the psychological process. This is why psychology is both the study of information acquisition and analysis and also the study of its continual degradation and destruction. ([Location 2344](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=2344)) - Biases show up in unexpected places, even when there are no clear benefits or costs at issue. The classic experiment in this domain was beautifully designed to put people in an awkward situation with one of two escapes. People were offered the chance to sit next to a crippled person or one who was not. Each was watching a television set in front of him or her. Sometimes the two TVs had the same show, sometimes different ones. When it was the same show, people preferentially chose to sit next to the handicapped person, as if demonstrating their lack of bias, but if the two TVs had different shows, people chose to sit away from the crippled person, as if now having a justification (more interesting show) for an otherwise arbitrary choice. Similarly, a meta-analysis of many studies shows that white Americans choose to help black Americans more or less equally (compared to helping whites) but not when they can rationalize less helping on grounds such as distance or risk. Here people are not denying or misremembering their behavior—rather, they are denying the underlying intention and rationalizing it as the product of external forces. This has the advantage of reducing their responsibility for behavior performed. ([Location 2447](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=2447)) - A belief in determinism can provide a ready excuse for misbehavior, just as can unconsciousness: the “I had no choice” defense. Relatively deterministic views of human behavior may provide some cover for socially malevolent behavior. Experimentally inducing a deterministic view (reading an essay on how genes and environment together determine human behavior) increases cheating on a computer-based task that permits cryptic cheating. What this work shows is that by manipulating a variable that reduces personal responsibility, we easily induce immoral behavior in ourselves (at least as viewed by others). ([Location 2455](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=2455)) - A novel implication of cognitive dissonance concerns the best way to turn a possible foe into a friend. One might think that giving a gift to another would be the best way to start a relationship of mutual giving and cooperation. But it is the other way around—getting the other person to give you a gift is often the better way of inducing positive feelings toward you, if for no other reason than to justify the initial gift. This has been shown experimentally where subjects cajoled into giving a person a gift later rate that person more highly than those not so cajoled. The following folk expression from more than two hundred years ago captures the counterintuitive form of the argument (given reciprocal altruism): He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another than he whom you yourself have obliged. ([Location 2595](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=2595)) - In short, though there are only a few studies of cognitive dissonance in other animals and in children, they tend to give similar results: each party acts as if it is rationalizing its prior choice as having been based on sound logic and hence worth repeating when given the same opportunity. Given the theory advanced in this book, it is tempting to argue that the children and the monkeys may be projecting a general illusion of consistency to impress others. ([Location 2614](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=2614)) - One striking discovery is that humor and laughter appear to be positively associated with immune benefits. Humor in turn can be seen as anti-self-deception. Humor is often directed at drawing attention to the contradictions that deceit and self-deception may be hiding. ([Location 2877](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=2877)) - drug use is often, to varying degrees at least, harmful and addiction almost invariably so. I am speaking of a wide range of both legal and illegal chemicals with effects from mild to severe: marijuana, alcohol, tobacco, uppers, downers, cocaine, heroin, and so on. Hence, this cost must be rationalized to the mind and, through the mind, to others. Thus, self-deception is a virtual requirement of drug use. ([Location 2894](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=2894)) - A second effect of drug use is often to separate our daily life into an up phase while using the drug and a down phase while recovering from it. This tends to split our personalities into two parts that then may be in conflict. ([Location 2901](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=2901)) - This must be a very general and important cost of self-deception. You are trying to deceive others socially by being unconscious of a critical part of social reality. What if others are conscious of that very part while you are not? Your entire environment may be oriented against you, all with superior knowledge, while you peer out, ignorant and hobbled by self-deception. ([Location 2938](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=2938)) - As the old joke goes, why doesn’t Israel become the fifty-first state? Because then it would have only two senators. ([Location 3554](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=3554)) - as Harry Truman put it: “The only thing new under the sun is the history you do not know.” ([Location 3568](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=3568)) - Psychologists long ago showed that when we are deliberating a decision—such as whom to marry or what job to take—we are willing to consider contrary evidence and to evaluate alternatives rationally, that is, with reference to benefits and costs. But once we have decided—to marry Susie, or take that job in Beirut—we no longer wish to hear about the choices not made or the possible downside to the decision we have made. We are now in the instrumental phase; we are carrying out our decision. ([Location 4240](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=4240)) - These are the two great drivers of self-deception: overconfidence and active avoidance of any knowledge of the potential downside to one’s decisions. ([Location 4287](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=4287)) - Injustice always requires justification and special pleading, justice less so. ([Location 4292](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=4292)) - In Cambodia alone, an entirely innocent bystander in the US assault on Vietnam, the United States dropped more than 2.75 million tons of bombs between 1966 and 1973, during 250,000 missions on more than 100,000 sites. That is to say, more tonnage was dropped there than by all the Allies on Germany and Japan in all of World War II, including the two atomic bombs. Put differently, an average of almost 1,000 tons of bombs were dropped every day on Cambodia for about 2,900 straight days, during 100 separate attacks each day. This was on a small rural country that had not attacked or threatened a soul. ([Location 4355](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=4355)) - Although those Christians who frequently pray and attend religious services reliably report more altruistic behavior—such as charity donations and volunteer work—it is uncertain how much this applies only within the religious group or even whether it applies at all. This is because various measures of religiosity repeatedly have been shown to correlate with higher false opinions of self, suggesting an obvious self-deceptive effect of religion: you think better of yourself than you otherwise would. ([Location 4551](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=4551)) - the more costly the requirements imposed on group members in a commune (regarding food, tobacco, clothing, hairstyle, sex, communication with outsiders, fasts, and mutual criticism), the longer the survival of a religious commune, though there is no association between cost and survival in the nonreligious. This raises two questions: Why should cost be positively associated with commune survival, and why should this hold only for religious ones? According to cognitive dissonance theory, greater cost needs to be rationalized, leading to greater self-deception, in this case in the direction of group identity and solidarity. Why do religions provide more fertile ground for this process than secular communes? Perhaps because religions provide a much more comprehensive logic for justifying beliefs and actions. ([Location 4562](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=4562)) - It is also ironic that the more you deify the prophet, the less attention you pay to his actual teachings, since the key distinction then becomes whether you believe in his divinity, not whether you believe in any of his teachings. “I believe, Jesus, I believe in you as the Lord, my personal savior.” Yes, but do you believe that the meek shall inherit the earth, that blessed are the peacemakers, that you should treat all others as you wish to be treated yourself, and so on? I doubt it. ([Location 4595](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=4595)) - One benefit of religion is that it does provide a framework for understanding and acting within our world, a framework we might expect to provide some psychological and mental benefits. Recent work in neurophysiology suggests one such benefit. Scientists concentrated on the anterior cingulated cortex (ACC), a region involved in many processes, including self-regulation and the experience of anxiety. EEG neural activity in the ACC was recorded while people were taking the Stroop test (name the color in which words are written, though the words denote a different color). The stronger people’s religious zeal (as measured by a scale) or the more they professed a belief in God, the less their ACC fired in response to errors and the fewer errors they made. It was as if religion was providing them a buffer against error. ([Location 4662](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=4662)) - As we have seen, power corrupts: the powerful are less attentive to others, see the world less from their standpoint, and feel less empathy for them. The converse is that the powerless are more apt to see things from the other person’s standpoint, to be committed to the principle of fairness, and to identify with people like themselves. The religious effects are that humility, fairness, forgiveness, and neighborly love are more apt to be virtues preached among the powerless. It is no accident that in both Christianity and Islam, this dynamic has been played out. The Christian gospels were all written while the church was a small, underground, persecuted sect. Islam’s more peaceful injunctions came when it was an oppressed minority, its more assertive when it reemerged with military power. ([Location 4739](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=4739)) - In my opinion, a key to the development of the very solid and sophisticated science of physics is the complete absence from its subject matter of social interactions or social content of any sort. More generally, I imagine that the greater the social content of a discipline, the more slowly it will develop, because it faces, in part, greater forces of deceit and self-deception that impede progress. Thus, psychology, sociology, anthropology, and economics have direct implications for our view of ourselves and of others, so one might expect their very structure to be easily deformed by self-deception. The same can be said for some branches of biology, especially social theory and (separately) human genetics. ([Location 4960](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=4960)) - when you asked a psychiatrist what his (as he almost always was) basis was for believing that a key part of the female psyche was “penis envy” or that the route to understanding males lay in something called castration anxiety, you were told that the basis was shared experiences, assumptions, and assertions among psychoanalysts about what went on during psychotherapy—something inaccessible to you, unverifiable, and, as a system, providing no hope for improvement. Indeed, the failure to state or develop methodologies capable of producing useful information is almost the definition of nonscience, and in this regard, psychoanalysis has been spectacularly successful. ([Location 5114](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=5114)) - an ancient Chinese expression: “When planning revenge, build two graves, not one.” ([Location 5177](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=5177)) - Self-deception, by serving deception, only encourages it, and more deception is not something I favor. I do not believe in building one’s life, one’s relationships, or one’s society on lies. The moral status of deceit with self-deception seems even lower than that of simple deception alone, since simple deception fools only one organism—but when combined with self-deception, two are being deceived. In addition, by deceiving yourself, you are spoiling your own temple or structure. You are agreeing to base your own behavior on falsehoods, with negative downstream effects that may be very hard to guess yet intensify with time. It is worth noting that we have also been selected to rape on occasion, to wage aggressive war when it suits us, and to abuse our own children if this brings us some compensating return benefit, yet I embrace none of these actions, regardless of whether they have been favored in the past. As one evolutionist told me, his genes could not care less about him, and he feels the same way toward them. ([Location 5196](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=5196)) - There are two great axes in human mental life: intelligence and consciousness. You can be very bright but unconscious, or slow but conscious, or any of the combinations in between. Of course, consciousness comes in many forms and degrees. We can deny reality and then deny the denial. We can be aware that someone in a group means us harm but not know who. We can know who, but not why, why but not when, and so on. Regarding deceit and self-deception, lack of consciousness of such tendencies in others may victimize us. We may be too likely to believe them, especially when they are in positions of authority. We may believe what is printed in newspapers. We may believe con artists. And we may easily embrace false historical narratives. To be conscious is to be aware of possibilities, including those arising in a world saturated with deceit and self-deception. Consciousness and ability to change are two different variables. I am prone to be moralistic, overconfident, and dismissive of alternative views, more or less as expected for an organism of my type, but I am also conscious that I am biased in this way. I can cite chapter and verse. Do I wish it were otherwise? Yes. Can I change it? No. This to me is the real paradox or tragedy of self-deception—we wish we could do better but we can’t. On the other hand, consciousness of deceit and self-deception allows us to enjoy it more, to understand it more deeply, to guard against it better (as it is directed against us), and, finally, to fight such tendencies in ourselves should we wish to. Mostly it gives us much greater insight into the social world surrounding us, everything from the lies of the government and the media to the deeper self-deceptions we tell ourselves and our loved ones. ([Location 5291](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=5291)) - If we really want to learn from experience in the sense of transforming the possibility that we will make the same mistake again, just looking at the phenomenon and saying “there goes good old self-deception again” does not do the trick. One has an anecdote for future amusement, but no change in the underlying dynamics. For this we need much deeper confrontations with ourselves and our inadequacies, ones often drenched in tears and humility. Even then it must usually be combined with a daily meditation contra the old behavior for it to have any chance of working. Seeing your self-deception in retrospect is one thing, decreasing its frequency in the future a much deeper matter. ([Location 5340](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005GPSMYA&location=5340))