Self Deception: Why You Can't Think Your Way Out

​A person finds a strange mole on her leg. She Googles it. 95% of moles are benign. But she keeps checking, sharing zoomed-in pictures with ChatGPT. Her doctor says it's fine, but doctors of course miss things. She doesn't want to have cancer. So why can't she stop worrying?

​The standard explanation for self-deception that "we believe what we want or like to be true" can't account for this. Something subtler is going on.

​In this workshop, we'll see that the mind doesn't just protect comforting beliefs that are potentially harmful. It also sometimes clings to frightening ones. The scarier the possibility, the harder it is to accept evidence against it. You'll apply a framework to your own beliefs and see where this might be happening to you right now.

​Then we'll look at why seeing the problem isn't the same as fixing it. Robert Trivers' work on self-deception suggests this is a feature, not a bug that evolved to make you a more convincing communicator.

In the second half, you'll identify beliefs that are load-bearing for your identity or community. Following this, Aditya Prasad will lead a live one-on-one session with a volunteer to explore a load-bearing belief in real time, while the rest of the group watches the process unfold.

​We'll close with a question: if you can't catch self-deception from the inside, what would you need to build around yourself that could?

​This is the online version of the workshop that was held in Bangalore on May 31st https://luma.com/4mgrntf2