In his book The Folly of Fools, Trivers refers to self-deception as the “striking contradiction” at the heart of our mental lives. Our brains “seek out information,” he says, “and then act to destroy it”: On the one hand, our sense organs have evolved to give us a marvelously detailed and accurate view of the outside world . . . exactly as we would expect if truth about the outside world helps us to navigate it more effectively. But once this information arrives in our brains, it is often distorted and biased to our conscious minds. We deny the truth to ourselves. We project onto others traits
...more
