It's a deeper question than it appears to be, and I don't think there is one single factor.

A highly inconvenient truth likely lurks around the corner which, if we were honest with ourselves, we would have to acknowledge. (1) But we don't acknowledge it because our reputation would suffer. (2) We regularly install false premises to protect ourselves from 'full disclosure' -- perish the thought! (3) We either can't escape our own self-delusions, or it is extraordinarily difficult for us to do so. We can't be our own exterior observers. (4)

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.

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)

And more!

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.

We can't be our own exterior observers. — Bitter Crank

Have to disagree. It is exactly by being our own exterior observers that self deception becomes possible.

That we can "observe ourselves exteriorly" isn't a lie, but it is a self-deception. We may be quite happy with the way we see ourselves interiorly (or not) but we can not get into the minds of others for confirmation.

"O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!" — Robert Burns

It hasn't happened yet. We are doomed to deceive ourselves, at least to some extent.

Have to disagree. It is exactly by being our own exterior observers that self deception becomes possible. — unenlightened

How does one attain this state of mind, oh wise one? :cool:

To SUCCESSFULLY lie to oneself ?

We could interpret that in such a way, that the lie brings us good fortune and wealth and esteem. That would mean that the lie was indeed successful.

But was it a lie ?

Let's say you say, "I am the greatest of all athletes " But your doubt says to you, "oh, come now, you are a little bit lazy now and again, you aren't the greatest ! The man down the street is greater than you!"

But, because we have told ourselves this "lie" over a period of days and weeks and months, one day we wake up and we ARE the greatest of athletes.

So now we have to say, that the lie has vanished like vapor. The words now stand true.

That could be an example of the successful lie.

Well, by "successful" I only mean that we lie to ourselves, and we also believe it even though it is false. So the goal of lying is successful -- what comes from that is set aside.

And also -- to lie usually requires some kind of intent to deceive. So I mean this, rather than just mere confusion or delusion or something like that.

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

Definitely. I'm curious about this, first at a conceptual level and also as a phenomena. I think that if we could demonstrate somehow that we were successful at doing this it shows something about the mind that's important.

Is it enough to say that having two mutually exclusive beliefs at once is enough to count as a divided mind?

Is it enough to say that having two mutually exclusive beliefs at once is enough to count as a divided mind? — Moliere

Well yes and no. :wink:

There's always the question, 'who is saying it?' So I am saying that the mind is more or less always divided, (except Jesus and Buddha), so it is the divided mind that is saying the mind is divided, but saying it as if it were undivided.

That we can "observe ourselves exteriorly" isn't a lie, but it is a self-deception. — Bitter Crank

So this, by its own thesis is a self-deception too, because what is it but an exterior view? As soon as one talks about interior and exterior, or deceiver and deceived, or as soon as one talks about the divided mind in any other way, one has recourse to the speaker, the observer, the analyst, call it what you will - there is always a three way split.

That's one aspect of my yes and no, but the other aspect is that the division(s) themselves are fabrications.

So even before there are mutually exclusive beliefs, to say 'I have a belief' is already to have divided the mind into the believer and the belief. So having contradictory beliefs isy more like having non-matching socks than something that creates a division.

I think we deceive ourselves all the time.

Lately I've been conceiving "consciousness" as a kind of conglomerate or patch-work that is made up of many subsystems (mainly abstract predictive models learned and encoded in neural networks). By combining the right predictive models in response to stimulus (another layer of predictive modeling which learning neuronal networks can encode and optimize), accurate belief and "awareness" emerges as a result (not self-awareness, though that may be yet another layer of learned predictive modeling, but awareness in and of itself).

The end product that that the conscious mind labels belief (the understanding it is aware of) is initially the result of bottom up selection in and between neurons and neural networks which optimize them into predictive units (between which further bottom up selection and optimization into compound predictive units occurs). The overall conscious experience is then a cascade of predictions, where we are more "aware" of those predictions/beliefs which are formed from selection between greater numbers and levels of predictive sub-networks, and we are less "aware" of those optimizations and selections which occur in and between lower level and fewer quantities of abstract predictive models.

Relating this to self deception:

Natural selection between predictive models involves trial and error; error, if when one predictive model is apt and accurate but is neglected in favor of a less apt and accurate model, then self-deception has conceivably occurred.

Self-deception doesn't exactly carry the same connotations as "lying to one's self" though. To lie to one's self implies intentional self-deception. But what is intent?

Intent, I reckon, is one of those executive components of mind and brain of which we are by definition more "aware". It is when we have a full formed notion of something we desire and we employ the sub-networks of predictive models (of which we're less aware) to actually arrive at the thing we desire.

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.

In summary, we lie to ourselves when our high level consciousness (the thing with the most "awareness"), which ideally is the more reliable product of complex selection (more accurate), operates fast and loosely on the sub-components of mind of which we're less aware. It is an error that is reinforced via top-down selection in the hodgepodge that is the human mind and brain.

I think what Judge Judy states of teenagers...

"Don't try to tell me anything about teenagers, I have two of them. Let me tell you something about teenagers, when they open their mouths in the morning... the lies form!"

is effectively true for the majority.

M

What must be the case in order to successfully lie to yourself?

Quite simply: motivation.

I want something, so I manufacture reasons why I should have it or why I should believe it.

Cannot be done my friend...

When one lies, they are intentionally misrepresenting their own thought and belief. One cannot do that to oneself.

au contraire.

I'm listening Bitter. I suspect that our criteria for what counts as being a lie differs. Does sincerity matter to you, or does truth? That makes all the difference in the world.

I've given my argument. What's yours?

. Interesting, and good stuff.

What is it about Jesus and the Buddha that makes them have undivided minds? Do they simply believe, rather than say they have a belief? How does that work, in the sage-like mind? (ideally speaking -- the facts are gone to history)

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 ?

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.

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

I think desire plays a role, for sure. But it has to be a certain kind of desire. To use the virtue example above, if we really wanted to be virtuous then that desire would be more powerful than momentary shame at seeing who we are right now -- and we could begin working on ourselves, performing a kind of technological operation on our soul to begin changing to a certain degree.

But what is the structure of desire that makes one lie to oneself, as opposed to really desiring to be such and such?

This is really complicated. :D

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.

A lie would be really hard to model just using computational models, I think -- even moreso to lie to oneself. Or maybe not, maybe it's much the same thing -- just a mind divided.

But how would you computationally model a lie to another neural network?

Seems complicated and difficult.

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

I guess that depends on whether or not we really are the good guys or the bad guys. :D Though that sort of evaluation isn't exactly amenable to basic fact checking, since goodness and badness are not facts but judgments of value that we make or hold. So naturally we'd think we are the good guys, since these are relative to what we already hold to be good. But it is a bit circular.

You bring up real intentions, though. So there are real intentions and there are unreal ones (false ones?). And there is a kind of veil between what we believe our intentions to be and what the real ones are.

Though if that's the case then it seems we can still know that our intentions aren't what we'd like to believe they are. We know we mostly want pleasure. But somehow we believe we are good (or I am good?) -- but the knowledge goes to the wayside, like an abstract proposition.

What is this division between belief and actual intent? How do we know we mostly want pleasure, yet still believe we are good, and intend to do good? Or is this a sort of unveiling of a way of lying?

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

We want the lie to be so successful that we begin to believe it ourselves? :D Sounds like a good premise for a play.

I'm noticing that your examples seem to be of delusions of one sort or another. There is something inconvenient so we ignore it and come up with alternate beliefs to shield our awareness -- give it something else to fixate on -- and in a way are thus deluded. But is that lying, exactly?

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

I'd say this is just a way of coming to a false belief about ourselves through habits. What's going on is we hear something negative from a source we don't trust, so we just sort of tune it out on the basis that we've had negative things said about ourselves many times before and they weren't exactly true as much as expressions of how the other person felt.

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.

Hold false belief. Sure. It is humanly impossible to knowingly do that. Seems to me that lying to oneself only makes sense in light of an ill-conceived notion of lying. That is, when one holds that lies are always false.

"I think desire plays a role, for sure. But it has to be a certain kind of desire. "
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. Did Trump lie when he proclaimed the inauguration crowd biggest of all time, or did he actually believe it? Did Obama lie when he said you could keep your doctor under the ACA?

"Lie" may be too black and white a term.

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

What if we are of two thoughts?

I believe something good about myself. I know that it is false. These are in conflict with one another. So let's say we become aware of different beliefs at different times. I tell myself the good thing and I want to believe it, so I do. There's the part of me who lies, and the part of me who listens. And I stop being aware of the part of me who lies right after telling myself the lie. I know that I have to deceive to achieve the desired belief.

If we are of one mind then I don't think we could lie to ourselves. I agree with that -- that's why I thought @unenlightened made a good point in saying we'd have to have a divided mind in order for us to lie successfully, and not just be delusional or some such.

That is, when one holds that lies are always false. — creativesoul

At least in a general sense I'd say that's what lying is -- to tell someone a falsehood while knowing it is true in order to deceive them. So I'd say that in the case of telling someone about my own thoughts then I'd be lying if I told them something I do not really think -- that this is a particular case of lying, but that lying doesn't have to be about my own thoughts. It could also be about whether I have the money for the bill.

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

I think we're in agreement here. We tell someone a falsehood we know to be true. Maybe there's a motivational component to this but that seems to be the bare minimum of what a lie is.

I don't think I'd say that believing such and such without rational justification counts as a lie. It may be irrational, but without justification we do not know, and if we do not know then we couldn't be telling ourselves a known falsehood.

Part of the difficulty in determining a lie is in being able to tell if someone really knew something or if they were just mistaken, delusional, or something along those lines. Usually we mean that the person lying both knows the truth and tells the opposite. With two people this is easy enough to understand -- one person knows, the other does not, and the person who knows believes that the falsehood is better to say than the truth (for whatever reason -- could be white lies, or nefarious. Could be to preserve feelings, or manipulative to get what one wants)

But with one person it seems strange to say. But it is a common turn of phrase to claim someone is lying to themselves. Hence the line of questioning -- perhaps it is just a turn of phrase, but what would it take for someone to lie to themself, to where it was more than just a turn of phrase?

This is really complicated. :D — Moliere

Not just complicated; complex!

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

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.

But how would you computationally model a lie to another neural network? — Moliere

General self-deception I would describe as existing in the fact that an erroneous or inapplicable sub-model is used in the formulation of a given belief. There's no difference between this description and simply being incorrect or mistaken about something, and the feedback we get from such mistakes is how we develop and optimize existing and new models; it's how we learn.

"Lying to one's self", if such a thing exists, must be more than just self-deception. As a guess at what it could be (or something like it) from a learning network perspective, I would say that it occurs when a consciously held belief (the higher level result of complex network interactions) happens to be erroneous, and causes related lower level models/networks to move toward an erroneous or de-optimized state.

When another person lies to us and we believe them, we may alter our fundamental understanding and cognitive models of the thing we're being deceived about. When we ourselves formulate erroneous beliefs and cling to them with conviction, our fundamental understandings which underpin them must be bent or negated to fit properly, to avoid dissonance.

The trouble with modeling such phenomenon computationally is that we're unable to follow the rhymes and reasons of learning neural networks as they learn; we can create a learning machine that can become excellent at a specific task through experience, but the way it discovers and encodes patterns creates messy extended algorithms that are utterly illegible (too long, too raw, too abstract; imagine a human mind expressed in algebra).

As potentially recursive in various ways, these extended algorithms can alter themselves (for better or for worse, though the thing that makes them "learning" is that they tend to alter themselves for the better), so, when an error in one part of the algorithm is carried into its product, which then recursively alters sub-components of the algorithm toward greater error (and sustained error), we might say the algorithm has successfully lied to itself.

Put in the most uncomplicated terms I can think of, "lying to one's self" is like the opposite of learning truth; it's when we learn untruth not because of externally deceptive stimulus, but because of our own faulty minds. Bias of all kinds therefore fits the bill of lying to ourselves along with succumbing to any self-generated fallacious appeal!

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?


****

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.

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.

Some more things about lying:

In order for a lie to be successful, and not just count as a lie, it seems to me we have to rely upon some guesses as to how the person we are lying to will take the information. We have to imagine what it would be like to be them. So we have to have some sort of beliefs (model? Possibly if we make an art of lying) about the other person's mind, how they react to different sorts of information, presentation, and their general mood. That way we can craft something that sounds believable to the person we're talking to, even though we know it to be false.

Lying, as simple as it seems and as young as we learn how to do it, is actually a really complicated behavior.

What evidence persuades you that you are a neural network? — Moliere

Brain damage in various places can have corresponding effects on conscious experience and mental faculties. The taking of drugs for instance interacts with individual neurons and neuro-receptors in the brain and can cause drastic effects on what we think and feel. Artificial neural networks which have proven capable of a certain aspect of learning were inspired by biological neural networks, which in and of itself is enough to convince me that I am in large part a neural network (or at least the part of me that learns, which happens to be the best part :wink: ).

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

Granted I cannot solve the hard problem of consciousness and explain how the outcome of an algorithim can seem like a "belief". As it sits physically in a network, a belief is abstract, and like raw data in a file it can only usefully be expressed when executed within the larger set of executive functions that cause "beliefs" to spill into our thoughts and out of our mouths. That this network can learn and alter itself on the most fundamental level is why it differs from an ordinary algorithm. When exposed to a world of varied and complex stimulus, there's no way of precisely predicting how such a network or algorithm will respond; it learns and evolves chaotically.

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

To an algorithm, dissonance comes in the form of a weighted error value. The bigger the error, the greater the dissonance (and the more drastic the self-correction). End results such as intent and feeling are of the ineffable whole rather than a specific part, or so it seems; my brain doesn't feel, it reacts mechanically, but its abstract product - the mind with awareness - seems to.

What is it about Jesus and the Buddha that makes them have undivided minds? — Moliere

Bearing in mind that you're asking me, unenlightened (surely a foolish move?), I think it is a matter of identification.

So, for example, there are facts about where I was born and what kind of passport I have, and then there is the identity of 'Englishman'. Or there are facts about what I have read and studied and thought over, and then there is the identity of 'philosopher'.

Identity is somehow more than the facts; it is a commitment to the facts; an investment in the significance of the facts. And this creates a separation, of a central self in the mind - I am an English philosopher. Something to protect against, well everything, including whatever else might be the facts of what I am.