Self Delusion is a Winning Survival Strategy

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- Sprout
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Self Delusion is a Winning Survival Strategy
OP - May 01, 2012, 08:59 AM

Not sure if it's been posted before-old article but I stumbled across it today

Quote

Self-Delusion Is a Winning Survival Strategy, Study Suggests

ScienceDaily (Sep. 14, 2011) — Harboring a mistakenly inflated belief that we can easily meet challenges or win conflicts is actually good for us, a new study suggests. Researchers have shown for the first time that overconfidence actually beats accurate assessments in a wide variety of situations, be it sport, business or even war.

However, this bold approach also risks wreaking ever-greater havoc. The authors cite the 2008 financial crash and the 2003 Iraq war as just two examples of when extreme overconfidence backfired.

A team from the University of Edinburgh and the University of California, San Diego used a mathematical model to simulate the effects of overconfidence over generations. It pitted overconfident, accurate, and under-confident strategies against each other.

A paper published in Nature September 14 shows that overconfidence frequently brings rewards, as long as spoils of conflict are sufficiently large compared with the costs of competing for them. In contrast, people with unbiased, accurate perceptions usually fare worse.

The implications are that, over a long period of time the evolutionary principal of natural selection is likely to have favored a bias towards overconfidence. Therefore people with the mentality of someone like boxer Mohammad Ali would have left more descendents than those with the mindset of film maker Woody Allen.

From http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/09/110914131352.htm

Original study http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v477/n7364/full/nature10384.html

What do you think? Is this another explanatory factor for religious growth? How would we negate the risks of an important survival strategy like this?

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- nj7
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Re: Self Delusion is a Winning Survival Strategy
Reply #1 - May 01, 2012, 02:06 PM

War is an interesting scenario they mention. Even when faith-inspired overconfidence of survival or even divine reward for martyrdom backfires on an individual level and increases likelihood of death and lack of direct descendants, it could be good for the propogation of genes that contribute to that overconfidence if this act is advantageous to your kin.

Even if that's not the case and such genes will become less frequent, delusion in war (and in peacetime) certainly seems to have been good for religious growth in a more direct way, the propogation of another, non-dna confined kind of replicator, namely the religious meme. Perhaps that's because unlike dna, there's no cost to the frequency of the replicator for being wrong (so long as its unfalsifiable). Also, this replicator doesn't depend for its frequency so directly on the survival and reproduction of the vehicles, human bodies (to use Dawkins' terminology of replicators and vehicles), so it's interests aren't so dependant on how good or bad it is for them.

I also think overconfidence of survival in war would have to have a different role in these guys' mathematical model to overconfidence in reward for martyrdom (since being wrong that you will be rewarded after death has no effect on your survival, it is merely having the belief, overconfident or not, that matters).

A read something else on a delusion related note in the Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins recently. He suggests somewhere near the beginning that since being able to decieve others will lead to the evolution of the ability to spot signs that someone is lying, we might also expect to have evolved the ability to hide from our own concious mind that we are lying, so as not to give away such clues.

So maybe we can blame evolution for religious founders and apologists believing their own lies

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Re: Self Delusion is a Winning Survival Strategy
Reply #2 - May 01, 2012, 02:16 PM

I think there is definately an evolutionary bonus for people that do not stick their heads up and question authority, and not questioning authority is definately heavily related to religious conviction.
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Re: Self Delusion is a Winning Survival Strategy
Reply #3 - May 01, 2012, 02:42 PM

Quote from: Sprout on May 01, 2012, 08:59 AM
How would we negate the risks of an important survival strategy like this?

I guess to do such a thing would require changing the environment in such a way that faith-delusion is less advantageous. In a war context it would require less wars or change in warfare tactics and army values in places where individual fighters are readily sacrificed, freedom of inquiry which leads to superior weapons.

In other contexts freedom of inquiry leads to better medicine etc. The spread of values like freedom of speech reduces the cost to questioning religious authority which Tony mentioned. Probably such changes have already weakened a lot of the old advantages and reduced risk that comes from having a religious-delusion in many parts of the world.

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Re: Self Delusion is a Winning Survival Strategy
Reply #4 - May 07, 2012, 08:41 PM

I tried this and it works! I'm a horrible soccer player, but today I pretended that I was Ronaldo fully and wholeheartedly (even thought Irina Shayk was my girlfriend for a while), even though in my heart of hearts I know I'm not Ronaldo. Net 7 goals, theory proven. QED.

Quote from: yeezevee on February 11, 2016, 02:05 PM
how fuck works without shit??

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Re: Self Delusion is a Winning Survival Strategy
Reply #5 - May 07, 2012, 09:19 PM

Awesome, now try scoring in the opponent's goal.
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Re: Self Delusion is a Winning Survival Strategy
Reply #6 - May 07, 2012, 10:02 PM

Well played sir.

Quote from: yeezevee on February 11, 2016, 02:05 PM
how fuck works without shit??

Let's Play Chess!

harakaat, friend, RIP
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