Phil: It’s more pleasant to believe that the dying friend will get well, so people are conditioned to believe it and to try to believe it with parts of their minds that are monitored by the other parts that do global situational evaluations and assign happiness or sadness. Their efforts are incompletely successful partly because they lead to disappointment and greater long-term unhappiness, but short term considerations are what normal operant conditioning runs on.
Phil: It’s more pleasant to believe that the dying friend will get well, so people are conditioned to believe it and to try to believe it with parts of their minds that are monitored by the other parts that do global situational evaluations and assign happiness or sadness. Their efforts are incompletely successful partly because they lead to disappointment and greater long-term unhappiness, but short term considerations are what normal operant conditioning runs on.