Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts in LessWrong

Oct 25, 2015 Vlad Sitalo rated it really liked it

Shelves: toreread, biology, rationality, neuroscience, science, non-fiction, psychology, critical-thinking, reason, memory

You think about yourself as a reasonably nice person, with not perfect but good enough memory. Maybe you've done some things in your life, that you don't particularly like, but you think that in most cases, given the situation you were in, most of the people would've done the same.
So you ain't perfect but better than the most, right?

Well, this book would get you to at least question, how accurate is the description above. And it will also tell you how come you (and most of the people, even most ...more

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Sep 01, 2019 Tobias Johnson rated it really liked it

>everyone thinks they're a good person. Even if they have a poor self-image because they've done bad things in the past, they still view their guilt as evidence they are a good person at heart.

>the belief that you are a good person creates dissonance when you act in ways that aren't in accordance with your idea of 'good'

>rather than changing the former belief (that you are a good person), you change the perceived morality of the action by justifying it. For example, a hurtful action gets reframe ...more

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