To some extent, I feel as if one must be homeless to have the perspective to properly understand this (and still, there’ll be some survivorship bias). To stand out in the darkness and look in at the light and know it is a lie; that there is merely a spectrum between Hollywood movies in which everyone finds true love, and restaurants you might visit which are disproportionately full of healthy, happy people rather than those with serious problems. To know that the people standing in the light cannot see the lie. To be constantly told that you could just put in a little effort and get a job, support yourself, find happiness. (Not to say that this is necessarily wrong; just systematically overestimated.) To see that society only optimizes that which has effective feedback loops (with incentives), and so it can’t even see the dark, not properly.
It isn’t even a person deceiving you about the way the world works; even without the social incentives for the just-world hypothesis which you discuss, the inspection paradox will produce the illusion.
To some extent, I feel as if one must be homeless to have the perspective to properly understand this (and still, there’ll be some survivorship bias). To stand out in the darkness and look in at the light and know it is a lie; that there is merely a spectrum between Hollywood movies in which everyone finds true love, and restaurants you might visit which are disproportionately full of healthy, happy people rather than those with serious problems. To know that the people standing in the light cannot see the lie. To be constantly told that you could just put in a little effort and get a job, support yourself, find happiness. (Not to say that this is necessarily wrong; just systematically overestimated.) To see that society only optimizes that which has effective feedback loops (with incentives), and so it can’t even see the dark, not properly.
It isn’t even a person deceiving you about the way the world works; even without the social incentives for the just-world hypothesis which you discuss, the inspection paradox will produce the illusion.