Yeah, I agree that this is a coherent cluster, is pretty bad, and probably needs to be a named concept (unless making it into a named concept makes everything terrible for reasons related to the concerns you mention).
I would be surprised to hear someone say this is the central meaning of “hypocrite”, but here I am, surprised.
So, it seems like there are four aspects here which you’re clustering together:
Selectively remembering when you were right and not when you were wrong, or the degree to which you were right or wrong, and (perhaps implicitly) asking other people to remember this next time they doubt you.
Getting credibility by predicting which way the group will swing, in a way which doesn’t actually add information to the system.
Cryptomnesia, remembering others’ ideas as your own.
Self-deception / lack of introspection.
(If the last item is not present, a person could be consciously implementing all of these strategies (ie, they don’t actually have selective memory or cryptomnesia, but act like they do anyway).)
I might add to the cluster:
Being obsessed with who gets credit for ideas.
Not building a global model, to a degree far beyond separate-magisteria style mental compartmentalization: like the students Feynman discusses in Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!, they’re operating like a chatbot: putting their effort into playing the social game of saying the right words, without seeming to consider that the words have meaning. Easily detected by asking questions which would not come up in the context of the social game they’re accustomed to.
(Again, with the understanding that everyone does these things to some degree.)
Yeah, I agree that this is a coherent cluster, is pretty bad, and probably needs to be a named concept (unless making it into a named concept makes everything terrible for reasons related to the concerns you mention).
I would be surprised to hear someone say this is the central meaning of “hypocrite”, but here I am, surprised.
So, it seems like there are four aspects here which you’re clustering together:
Selectively remembering when you were right and not when you were wrong, or the degree to which you were right or wrong, and (perhaps implicitly) asking other people to remember this next time they doubt you.
Getting credibility by predicting which way the group will swing, in a way which doesn’t actually add information to the system.
Cryptomnesia, remembering others’ ideas as your own.
Self-deception / lack of introspection.
(If the last item is not present, a person could be consciously implementing all of these strategies (ie, they don’t actually have selective memory or cryptomnesia, but act like they do anyway).)
I might add to the cluster:
Being obsessed with who gets credit for ideas.
Not building a global model, to a degree far beyond separate-magisteria style mental compartmentalization: like the students Feynman discusses in Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!, they’re operating like a chatbot: putting their effort into playing the social game of saying the right words, without seeming to consider that the words have meaning. Easily detected by asking questions which would not come up in the context of the social game they’re accustomed to.
(Again, with the understanding that everyone does these things to some degree.)