However, even if there are modules that try to form accurate beliefs about some things or even most things (and there probably are), it’s still true that taken in aggregate, your various brain modules push you to have beliefs that would be locally optimal in the evolutionary ancestral environment, not necessarily true. Many modules in our brain push us toward believing things that would be praised, avoiding things that would be condemned or ridiculed, etc.
It’s too costly to be a perfect deceiver, so evolution hacked together a system where if it’s consistently beneficial to your fitness for others to believe you believe X, most of the time you just go ahead and believe X.
In large realms of thought, especially far mode beliefs, political beliefs, and beliefs about the self, the net result of all your modules working together is that you’re pushed toward status and social advantage, not truth. Maybe there aren’t even any truth-seeking modules with respect to these classes of belief. Maybe we call it delusion when your near-mode, concrete anticipations start behaving like your far-mode, political beliefs.
However, even if there are modules that try to form accurate beliefs about some things or even most things (and there probably are), it’s still true that taken in aggregate, your various brain modules push you to have beliefs that would be locally optimal in the evolutionary ancestral environment, not necessarily true. Many modules in our brain push us toward believing things that would be praised, avoiding things that would be condemned or ridiculed, etc.
It’s too costly to be a perfect deceiver, so evolution hacked together a system where if it’s consistently beneficial to your fitness for others to believe you believe X, most of the time you just go ahead and believe X.
In large realms of thought, especially far mode beliefs, political beliefs, and beliefs about the self, the net result of all your modules working together is that you’re pushed toward status and social advantage, not truth. Maybe there aren’t even any truth-seeking modules with respect to these classes of belief. Maybe we call it delusion when your near-mode, concrete anticipations start behaving like your far-mode, political beliefs.