{"id":6186,"date":"2015-09-29T12:12:58","date_gmt":"2015-09-29T19:12:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/?p=6186"},"modified":"2019-03-08T03:16:49","modified_gmt":"2019-03-08T11:16:49","slug":"hypocrisy-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/2015\/09\/29\/hypocrisy-2\/","title":{"rendered":"When is it Good To Be a Hypocrite?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In my recent article<\/a> where I shared beliefs I\u2019ve changed (or started to doubt) since starting writing this blog, I included one hypothesis about why we so often fail to do the things we should:<\/p>\n

Are a lot of \u201cgood\u201d habits just signalling attempts?<\/strong> Maybe I\u2019ve just been reading too much Robin Hanson<\/a>, but he does provide a convincing explanation of why we often don\u2019t things we think we should. The reason being, that we don\u2019t actually want to do those things, but want to seem like we do, so we make striving to do those things part of our conscious self-presentation but subconsciously sabotage ourselves in actually doing them. Some possible examples: reading more books, not watching television, giving to charity.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The deep, dark idea here is that human beings evolved not only with desires to do things which were helpful in our survival, but also desires to express desires to other people which helped our survival. So a person might have a built-in desire for food to keep from being hungry, but also a built-in desire to appear generous, to attract friends and allies.<\/p>\n

The dark part of the idea is that sometimes the desire to project a certain self-image runs counter to our more direct desires. For example, appearing generous is beneficial because it wins you friends, but being generous is costly because you have to actually put up money.<\/p>\n

Charity is a rather obvious example of something we all want to create the impression of (that we\u2019re charitable people) but that we may not necessarily feel like doing (actually giving away our time and money).<\/p>\n

One, even darker, idea is that since lying is hard to do, our natures may have evolved to protect us from the dangers inherent in this self-contradiction. Instead of self-consciously feeling like we want to appear charitable but actually be stingy, we sincerely believe in the values of charity but subconsciously sabotage ourselves in actually donating anything. Instead, we claim failures of discipline, busyness of literally anything possible when confronted with the contradiction that we believe we should give to charity but don\u2019t actually give very much.<\/p>\n

As a solution to the evolutionary problems (wanting to appear generous, be stingy, but lying is hard), this one actually works rather well. Nobody can truly call you a liar, because you sincerely believe in the values you want to project, but such sincerity doesn\u2019t cost you anything because you\u2019ll invent excuses to prevent you from actually following through with it.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not convinced that this model of human behavior explains every gap in our idealized self-image and actual behavior, but it does seem to explain a lot of the seeming irrationality in people\u2019s actions.<\/p>\n

Hypocrites, By Design<\/h2>\n

\u201cLearning Spanish and learning to play guitar are the two things on the perpetual back-burner of every American.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vat, who I did my year-long language learning project with (and also a guitar player), joked this to me while we were preparing our TEDx Talk<\/a>. I laughed and said I completely agreed. Tons of people we\u2019ve met claim a deep desire to learn Spanish, but haven\u2019t even put in the most modest of efforts to move closer to that goal.<\/p>\n

Language learning is a high-status activity. Being able to speak more than one language shows you\u2019re cultured, intelligent and interesting (at least, in theory). Therefore, many people want to self-consciously express a desire to learn a language.<\/p>\n

However language learning is hard work. Not to mention that the economic returns to learning a language other than English in the United States are considerably lower than the benefit of learning English in most other countries. Therefore, for a lot of people, learning a language is a goal they want to appear to have, but they don\u2019t actually have sufficient interest for actually pursuing it.<\/p>\n

I used language learning as an example of such an activity, but I think there are many potential other candidates of hypocrisy-by-design:<\/p>\n