We can't be our own exterior observers. — Bitter Crank
"O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!" — Robert Burns
Have to disagree. It is exactly by being our own exterior observers that self deception becomes possible. — unenlightened
In a word, 'paranoia'. Literally, a mind beside itself. In order to 'succeed', a lie requires a liar who knows the truth, and a patsy who is deceived; so a divided mind is prerequisite. — unenlightened
Is it enough to say that having two mutually exclusive beliefs at once is enough to count as a divided mind? — Moliere
That we can "observe ourselves exteriorly" isn't a lie, but it is a self-deception. — Bitter Crank
If, for instance, we desire to be somehow virtuous (intelligent, moral, successful, likeable etc...) then we may ask ourselves whether or not it is already the case that we have such virtue. If the desire is strong enough (and the feeling failure entails too harsh) then perhaps we bias ourselves in the course of consciously discriminating between groups of predictive models/understandings and arbitrarily ignore models which do not reinforce our higher level preconceptions. In other words, when we assume that something is true we may fundamentally alter our predictive models to conform to that assumption. We may invent excuses that amount to predictive models which do not conform to reality, or we may ignore and negate predictive models which DO conform to reality. — VagabondSpectre
Most of the time we are darkly ignorant of our real intentions. All we mostly want is pleasure.
None us all really want the other guy to win. Not if he isn't on our side !
But we will string a narrative to convince that we are the good guys and those are the bad guys.
Isn't that a lie — Bayaz
We may also be engaged in deceiving other people. Effective deception requires the appearance of conviction, and in projecting conviction we may, as the saying goes, come to believe our own bullshit. (5) Successful con artists know they are deceiving others and manage their act. Most of us aren't that good at it. We believe it ourselves. — Bitter Crank
Other people do not always wish us well and say unkind things about us--some of which may be true, or may be false. True or false, we defend ourselves by denying what they say. (Believing all the negative things one hears about one's self might be quite self-destructive.) Rejecting negative feedback becomes a protective habit. (6) — Bitter Crank
Do you think that we can deceive ourselves, as opposed to lying?
Let's say that we are not one. If we are divided then it would seem that we could lie to our self -- from one self to another self. Not in some pathological or diagnostic sense, but rather this is something that the mind can and does often do -- it is "normal". Would it be possible, at that point, to lie to yourself?
I am interested in the possibility that this is impossible -- that "lying to yourself" is a turn of phrase. But I'm interested in what would be required, at a conceptual level, for it to mean just more than a turn of phrase -- whether or not we do so in fact. Mostly because it would provide a means for determining whether or not we can or do lie to ourselves. — Moliere
Since lying is deliberately misrepresenting one's own thought and belief, and it is always done in situations when the speaker believes that they ought not allow others to know what they think and believe, it seems to me that one cannot lie to oneself — creativesoul
That is, when one holds that lies are always false. — creativesoul
We often choose to believe things despite an absence of rational support. Is that only a lie if for virtuous purposes? Is it never a lie?
What is a lie? I tend to consider it the deliberate telling of a known falsehood. — Relativist
This is really complicated. :D — Moliere
Do you feel like an amalgamation of computations? I don't really. If it is true it's all "under the hood", so to speak. — Moliere
But how would you computationally model a lie to another neural network? — Moliere
Sure we don't feel like an amalgam of streaming information exchanges among and between learning neural networks, but there's too much evidence to ignore that it is so. — VagabondSpectre
What evidence persuades you that you are a neural network? — Moliere
I sort of feel like the computational approach has to abandon "belief" -- there is no belief formation, there are algorithms which optimize. There is nothing that a belief is about, there are models of math problems through logical switches. And the stream of electrons move in accord with physical facts. — Moliere
Similarly, a few levels up, we have algorithms optimizing and modifying themselves in light of some goal set for them. But do the algorithms lie to one another? Do they avoid dissonance? Or are they simply following instructions and giving us a good model for understanding (some of our) learning? It seems the latter to me. — Moliere
What is it about Jesus and the Buddha that makes them have undivided minds? — Moliere
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