I am curious about how you see Bruce.
It seems to me that avoiding fear is one of the major motivators of humans and animals. Winning is scary because it creates the expectation that you will continue to win—and therefore the fear you won’t. And that fear is justified.
In this highly-connected and competitive world, it’s virtually impossible to be the best in any endeavor. Therefore, winning just delays and worsens your ultimate failure. Since you are ultimately going to lose anyway, you would often be better off learning how to be content with losing rather than striving to win at all. In this sense, Bruce is your true friend.
Of course, this only applies when you are playing competitive games. When your definition of winning is something like growing a beautiful garden or stopping children dying of diarrhoea, Bruce is your enemy.
Personally, I feel I get along better with the inconsistent parts of myself when I acknowledge that they have reasons for existing. So I don’t hang up on Bruce… I ask him why he wants to lose in each case, and sometimes I decide that he is right. But this may just be a feature of my own psychology.
Although of course there are scenarios where it applies, the assumption that information increases people’s perceived utility is unjustified in most normal social interactions.
I have several times had access to information that could dramatically change someone’s perception of a situation, and been told by others—including, in some cases, the person themselves—that it would be morally wrong to reveal the information to them.
I think their viewpoint is that although they might realize that their ultimate utility would be greater if they accepted disturbing information, they like to control when and how they confront that information. In most situations, people can obtain all the information they want without much effort, and if they don’t have information, it is usually by choice. Therefore, they feel violated when somebody imposes information on them that they have not sought out.
So, if somebody actively and clearly seeks specific information, I would feel just as bad for concealing as lying. However, if I don’t know that somebody wants information, I feel I must consider carefully whether I will—in their view—harm them by revealing it. It seems likely, to me, that our moral reflexes evolved in this sort of social information context rather than one where truth often had direct adaptive value.