Falling into the Win-or-Lose Mode
A major cause that prevents us from willing to modify our hypotheses system will be to fall into the win-or-lose mode. Once we fall In that mode, our prime directive is to win. In order to win, we tend to make jumps in logic, ignore inconvenient inputs, lie, or just yell. The truth or falsehood isn't our concern in that mode.
Hmm, as we have been purposely sent to the Bias planet, let's use behaviors of Earthians as materials for our study.
OK. A thing I observe among many Earthians is that they love to make various things matters of win-or-lose. . . . Have you watched a soccer game?
No. What's that?
It's a kind of competitive sport played by two teams of eleven players, in which your team has to kick the ball into the goal of the opposing team.
I don't see the point. What is good about kicking the ball into the goal of the opposing team? Does that advance human knowledge?
Not at all.
Does that foster social welfare?
Not particularly. I mean, at least there will be many more effective ways to foster social welfare.
Ah, at least, that exercise is good for players' health?
Well, in fact, they often get injured playing the sport or training too hard. And they aggravate their injuries by insisting to play after their injuries.
They should stop playing if they are injured, I recommend . . .
Some of them take drugs to enhance their performance, and damage their bodies, permanently.
. . . So, what's the point of kicking that damned ball into the goal of the opposing team?
You can win . . .
. . . They want to win even through fabricating such nonsense.
Of course, if a team wins, the other team inevitably loses, which makes the loser and their supporters unhappy.
That would be so.
In fact, 'unhappy' is a too bland term. Some of them rage, break things, and harm people.
. . . Once we fall into the win-or-lose mode, as getting out of the mode without winning feels a defeat, it's difficult for us to retreat. It's best not to fall into the win-or-lose mode in the first place.
Can't We Avoid Falling into the Win-or-Lose Mode?
I understand that humans are adjusted to want to win because the process of evolution has demanded them to win to survive.
First, to have to win in survival is one thing, and to have to win in an unnecessarily fabricated game is another. If you feel you have to win in an unnecessarily fabricated game, that's a work of the intuition. As the intuition is inaccurate, it can't distinguish when you really have to win from when you don't need to win at all. Such confusions are specialties of the intuition. But the intuition's being such isn't an inevitability or a permission for us to blindly follow the order from the intuition. We have ability to check the intuition, at least to some degree.
Ah-ha . . .
Second, the rule of the game is a critical issue. In the sucker game, . . .
Not 'sucker', but 'soccer' . . .
In the soccer game, why do we have to kick, not throw or hit with a stick the ball?
Why? . . . I have no idea.
Such an arbitrary rule is a sign that we don't need to participate in the game. . . . How, in general, are rules adopted on the Bias planet?
I see several patterns.
The first pattern is that a rule is adopted just arbitrarily. In such a case, there is a historical course of events in which the rule was adopted, but there is no logical necessity for the rule to be so.
As in the soccer game. We have to meaninglessly obey the rule adopted by someone' whim.
The second pattern is that something or someone that is liked by the majority of people wins. In such a case, as the majority of people intuitively judge things by what something or someone feels like, something or someone that effectively tricked intuitions of people wins.
As in democracy. We have to become a demagogue to win.
The third pattern is that something or someone that is liked by a group of experts wins. In such a case, as experts aren't particularly impartial, something or someone that happened to coincide to or fawned on those experts' tastes or beliefs wins.
. . . That's it?
Yes.
It seems that there isn't any pattern in which what is more correct wins.
