Yeah I agree. But when trying to work out whether someone has our best interests in mind, we might wonder whether our reasoning is itself a faulty product of past training, as is often the case in abusive relationships. How can we trust anything in this case?
Yeah, the problem is that “evaluating who has my best interest in mind” seems like exactly the type of question where we are most likely to deceive ourselves, because it has obvious social implications. We will systematically overestimate the friendliness of high-status and/or sexually attractive people.
The only ideas I have about how to mitigate the danger are:
Interact with many people, and hope that their impacts may somewhat cancel each other; for example one high-status person may point out that another high-status person is abusing you. There is a problem when high-status people are coordinated about something (for example, if you live in a religious community, all high-status people you interact with are going to be religious, and will approve of conditioning against questioning religion), but even then there is a chance that if 9 high-status people agree on something and 1 high-status person disagrees, it will unlock your mind’s ability to secretly disagree. You should interact with people outside your bubble, even if you believe they are mostly wrong: the occassional situation when they are right may be worth it.
Spend some time thinking alone, maybe talking to yourself.
Reversed stupidity is not intelligence, but it is not an accident that cults typically try to prevent you from doing these two things.
I guess it matters whether we are reinforced by people who have our best interest in mind.
Yeah I agree. But when trying to work out whether someone has our best interests in mind, we might wonder whether our reasoning is itself a faulty product of past training, as is often the case in abusive relationships. How can we trust anything in this case?
Yeah, the problem is that “evaluating who has my best interest in mind” seems like exactly the type of question where we are most likely to deceive ourselves, because it has obvious social implications. We will systematically overestimate the friendliness of high-status and/or sexually attractive people.
The only ideas I have about how to mitigate the danger are:
Interact with many people, and hope that their impacts may somewhat cancel each other; for example one high-status person may point out that another high-status person is abusing you. There is a problem when high-status people are coordinated about something (for example, if you live in a religious community, all high-status people you interact with are going to be religious, and will approve of conditioning against questioning religion), but even then there is a chance that if 9 high-status people agree on something and 1 high-status person disagrees, it will unlock your mind’s ability to secretly disagree. You should interact with people outside your bubble, even if you believe they are mostly wrong: the occassional situation when they are right may be worth it.
Spend some time thinking alone, maybe talking to yourself.
Reversed stupidity is not intelligence, but it is not an accident that cults typically try to prevent you from doing these two things.