Sometimes, we have to lie to ourselves to protect ourselves from others seeing our true intentions.
To successfully lie to yourself, you have to hide the truth from your own awareness somehow (possibly via dissociation). This works great… at least, until you have to return to the truth again.
The self you’ve constructed to tell that lie has no idea that a lie is being told in the first place. How do you recognize a lie when you’re cut off from awareness that it’s a lie in the first place? How do you spot your own blind spots?
How do you know how your “self” was shaped to protect you from what you couldn’t safely know about yourself?
You learn to trust that your past self hid that information for a reason, and you respect them. You don’t push before you get the sense that something is ready to move for you. You work with the hidden parts of you, not against them.
In doing so, you’re not fighting yourself anymore. It becomes safe for that information to show itself to you.
Don’t force those walls down even when you know they exist. Let them come down once it’s safe enough for them to do so on their own. Your mind will let you know the truth when it’s safe to do so.
This pairs well with parts work- letting your parts set the pace of revealing hidden information to you can go a long way in earning their trust.
The Hostile Telepath Problem
A powerful alien named Omega has presented you with the following dilemma:
- Before you are two boxes, Box A and Box B.
- You can either take both boxes (“two-box”), or take only Box B (“one-box”).
- Box A is transparent and contains $1,000. Box B is opaque.
- If Omega predicted that you will take only Box B, Omega has put $1,000,000 in Box B. Otherwise Omega left Box B empty.
- Omega is an excellent predictor of human behavior (e.g. we can assume Omega has played this game many times before, and never been wrong).
- At the time of your choice, Omega has already made its prediction and left. Box B is already empty or already full.
Suppose that instead of Omega, you’re dealing with Omega-V. Omega-V is an extremely good but imperfect predictor of someone’s box choice.
Through some clever sleuthing, you deduce why. Omega-V is scanning only folks’ visual thinking for a little while prior to their box choice. It’s extremely good at tracking the difference between the mental visualizations of one-boxers vs. two-boxers… provided they don’t know Omega-V is scanning specifically their visual thinking.
So now you have an edge. Maybe you can trick Omega-V. Maybe you can visually think like a one-boxer and use other modes of reasoning (like inner talk) to plan on actually two-boxing. You just have to be very careful to have any “leaks” of reasoning into visualization look totally normal for a one-boxer.
If you decide it’s worth the risk to try for this deception, the visual reasoning part of your mind has to be kind of siloed from the rest. It’s like you have a subagent that truly honestly believes you’re a one-boxer. It’s the non-visual reasoning parts of you that are aware of the real plan.
Another way of saying this is: in normal Newcomb’s Problem, you can’t tell whether you’re in the real world being faced with Omega’s offer or if you’re instead Omega’s simulation of real-you and you’re revealing what real-you will do. The situation is similar with Omega-V, but in this case it’s specifically your visual reasoner (viewed as kind of a subagent) that has to be built in such a way that it can’t tell whether it’s a simulation. Many other parts of you can tell perfectly well what’s going on. But for the deception to work, the way in which you plan on two-boxing cannot be something your inner visual reasoner can even deduce.
Now, let’s take this one step further.
Let’s suppose we’re instead dealing with Omega-C. Also an imperfect predictor. But this time you learn that Omega-C scans specifically all of — and only — your conscious thinking.
At this point, the right strategy is to consciously decide you’re going to one-box.
But some people still find themselves two-boxing and winning. Even while consciously intending to one-box. Sometimes they get confused and say the wrong thing or push the wrong button. Some of them trip and accidentally grab both boxes. Some laugh and grab both boxes and find them both full.
Assuming that at least some of those outcomes are strategic… how?
Hint: now you (by which I mean conscious parts of you) are maybe the siloed part. Basically an illusion meant to trick Omega-C.
The thing is, you cannot tell. Because if you could, then the deception — if it were there — wouldn’t work.
Which is to say: on the inside, you cannot tell the difference between running this Omega-C deception strategy and honestly truly just being a one-boxer.
And furthermore, it’s actually to your advantage not to check. Even if you were to find some way of being able to tell the difference!
But because of that, if you’re aware of this deception strategy, it might work best if you honestly (from your perspective) look for some way to tell if you’re running it. Actively trying to “come clean”. That’s a pretty powerful signal to Omega-C that you really are a one-boxer.
So if you can make it so that it seems to you like you really are looking, including accounting for awareness of possible non-conscious “shadow” reasoning, and you find none, but you still two-box in the end…
…well, you win!
…while the conscious parts of you are confused and surprised. And possibly quite dismayed.
I’d like to name one way I think this type of self-deception can actually happen in a person. It might be the main way it happens, or it might be rare. I honestly don’t know. But it’s one I’ve in fact seen in myself and I think I’ve observed in some others.
By some mysterious method, it’s possible to contract your awareness — by which I mean, the space of things you’re actually aware of can be smaller than the space of sensory inputs (including mental experiences like thoughts and memories). Lots of people experience this when watching TV (losing awareness of the room), or when deep in flow work (not noticing hunger for hours while programming).
If you construct a sort of fake self in your mind, and then contract your awareness around that fake self, it can seem to you on the inside like you really are the way depicted in the fake self. Like it’s not fake, it really is who you are.
If you also build up explanations to your fictitious self about why things outside that fiction either are consistent with it or don’t matter, then you both (a) can honestly display to hostile telepaths that you (here meaning fake you) are being fully sincere in not hiding anything and (b) possibly give the telepaths ways of discounting the unavoidable signals that you (here meaning you holistically) are hiding something.
For instance, as a child whose mother says to you “Say you’re sorry and mean it”, you might be able to strategically misinterpret your fear of Mom’s Wrath as “being really sorry”. As long as you’re not aware that that’s what you’re doing, it might work very well! She might read your distress as you really meaning it. (“I’m sorry I’m sorry I won’t do it again please Mom I’m sorry…!“) And you can keep yourself from being aware of this whole strategy by keeping your awareness contracted on the fictitious version of yourself that’s “bad” and “very sorry”, and keeping your understanding of the real problem outside of your awareness.
I think a lot of “trauma processing” amounts to this self-empowerment strategy. But it’s more like, noticing you already have power. I bet a lot of foundational self-deception habits come from being a child faced with telepaths (adults) who have a lot of power over them. A kid who deals with Mother’s “Say sorry and mean it” demand with self-deception might then grow up to become really apologetic and “have low self-esteem”. But it’s just an old strategy for dealing with Mother that hasn’t made contact with the fact that Mother isn’t that powerful over them anymore. It’s now actually just fine for her to know they’re not “really sorry”. If this raw physical truth comes into contact with the impulse to “be sorry”, the mental firewall might simply collapse, and the mislabeling will stop.
So in many cases, “trauma processing” can basically mean noticing you’re not a child anymore. You have power. So you don’t have to appease the hostile telepaths just because they’re adults. They can just know your internal state, and you (trust that you) can handle the consequences of them knowing.
Building emotional resilience is like this, I think. If you (trust that you) can handle the emotional and somatic sensations of others being upset with you, then you don’t have to hide the parts of you that might make them upset. They can just be upset. While you might not like it, you know you’ll be fine.
By this model, to end (Newcomblike) self-deception, we have to remove the need for it. This means solving each instance of the hostile telepath problem some other way.
This is kind of tricky in practice. When you use self-deception to deal with a hostile telepath, you can’t know that that’s what you’re doing. You[5] can’t even know which hostile telepath problem you’re solving! So how do you come up with another solution?
I don’t have a provably general answer, but I have a pretty general approach that makes sense to me and has clearly worked several times. I’ll share that approach here.
First is welcoming that I’ll self-deceive.
If I self-deceive, it’s because it’s the best solution I have to some hostile telepath problem. If I don’t have a better solution, then I want to keep deceiving myself. I don’t just tolerate it. I actively want it there. I’ll fight to keep it there!
This is somewhat akin to dealing with Omega-C by saying:
“Look, I know it’s possible I’m running a deception strategy. I could spend a bunch of energy trying to suss it out as a costly signal that it’s not there. But at a policy level I’m just not going to do that. Not because I have evidence that I’m not following up on, but because I don’t want to add stress to myself in the world where I really am self-deceiving. Since I’m doing this regardless of whether the deception strategy is running, it’s not information about whether I’m secretly trying to two-box.”
This relieves pressure. If I have some sense that I’m self-deceiving, and my attitude is to back the deception instead of trying to penetrate it, then the hidden part of me running the deception doesn’t have to engage in an internal arms race with me. We become same-sided.
Once I really back my own self-deception, it becomes easier to notice signs I’m doing it.
This works way better if I trust my occlumency skills here. If I don’t feel like I have to reveal the self-deceptions I notice to others, and I trust that I can and will hide it from others if need be, then I’m still safe from hostile telepaths.
Seeing where I self-deceive doesn’t mean I see what the deception is. In practice it’s more indirect than that. What I mean are things like:
- Revealed preferences. (Akin to noticing I two-boxed “by accident”.)
- My mind suddenly going foggy.
- Forgetting what I was thinking about.
- Mental chatter getting loud.
- Suddenly being very disinterested in what I’m focused on.
- Getting abruptly absorbed in something unrelated.
- […]
(Reader’s note: similarities with common signs of dissociation.)
I don’t mean this as an exhaustive list. Nor do I mean it as things to look out for. Nor do I mean that these always imply that self-deception is going on.
What I mean is, there are things a person does to maintain self-deception. If you basically promise the strategic not-conscious-to-you part that you really will respect the strategy, then it doesn’t have to keep you so firmly out of the loop. Then you can potentially start picking up on some signposts like these ones.
Part of the deal is, when you notice such a possible signpost, you look away. You notice it and you drop the inquiry. Because until you have a non-self-deceptive strategy for whatever the real problem is, you don’t want to break the one strategy you have.
In my experience, this alone can often eliminate most of the stress involved in self-deception. It becomes fine. Annoying, glitchy, but no longer fraught with anxiety and self-doubt.
After a while I kind of get a “negative space” sense of what the self-deception is about. I continue not to look, out of something like respect. But I still have a hint.
What hostile telepath problem might someone in my shoes be trying to solve such that this behavior arises?
For instance, let’s suppose the person is asking for me to run an event this weekend. I might hypothesize like this, intentionally referring to myself in third person:
Importantly, I am not introspectively checking. I’m not asking if I think the above really is what’s going on with me. I’m just noticing that, viewing myself in third person, this model does seem to fit the evidence.
I’m also not trying to construct a plan to verify what’s going on! Here Nature wants her secrets kept. I do not try to peek under her skirt.
Instead, I notice what Valentine (i.e., me in third person) in this hypothetical could maybe do instead of Newcomblike self-deception. What would be a viable alternative strategy for him?
At this point I could just implement this possible solution. I don’t have to check if it’s relevant to my situation: there’s not much cost in leaving myself a line of retreat this way.
If it turns out there’s been Newcomblike self-deception going on, and if this hypothetical solution really did resolve the core problem that the self-deception was solving, then the self-deception should basically just lift.
And if I still have an ugh field around the email, then I haven’t addressed the real problem yet. Which is fine. Not ideal, but I’m still going to back any self-deception that might be there while I don’t have a better option!
I can repeat this process. Hypothesize without checking, implement solutions that would work in the hypothetical, and find out what happens.
…at least unless and until I start getting frozen about this process. That might mean I’m getting too close to understanding the strategy before it’s safe to do so.
Then I back off.
Michael Smith / Valentine, 2024, The Hostile Telepaths Problem