- Ignoring one's own conflicts of interest: Conflict of interest is a major self-deception mechanism. Conflicts of interest are especially prevalent in one's career, where livelihood and survival are at stake. This leads professionals, even those in the spiritual realm, to manipulate evidence or viewpoints to fit their own business or career needs.
- Double standards in Politics and Personal Lives: Observing double standards in politics helps to illustrate how one manipulates evidence to suit one's agenda. This is not confined to politics but extends to all areas of life. Often our underlying goal is the victory of our own ideology or agenda.
- Double standards among scientists: Scientists, while claimed to be objective, often have double standards with religious or spiritual topics, demanding objective proof for these concepts yet failing to apply the same criteria to their own scientific beliefs.
- Double standards in spiritual traditions: Different spiritual traditions each claim the superiority of their techniques over others, highlighting a double-standard. These traditions often focus on their successes and ignore failures, thereby maintaining their belief system.
- Rationalization and Excuse making: When the mind justifies and clings to false things, it is indulging in rationalization. This is similar to how a lawyer can argue for any case by cherry-picking evidence. This is a common self-deception mechanism.
- Resistance to personal investigation or research: The lack of willingness to pursue personal investigation or research is another self-deception. Authentic research involves having an open mind, exploring multiple paths, and being open to changing perspectives, even in the light of no available proof.
- Confabulation: Confabulation is a self-deception mechanism in which the brain creates justifiable narratives to support a desired outcome. It often occurs when the mind willfully ignores failures and focuses on successes to defend its own beliefs.
- Wanting or needing a thing to be true: When one wants or needs something to be true, it sets the stage for self-deception. This is linked with conflict of interest and can influence one's acceptance or rejection of evidence and facts.
- Assumption of Superiority in Spiritual Traditions: Spiritual traditions like Buddhism or Neo-Advaita often view their techniques as superior and dismiss others, ignoring their own failures in achieving the desired spiritual transformation while emphasizing successes. This is a double-standard, proving their loyalty to the tradition over the truth. Techniques across all traditions generally have a high failure rate, and success stories are cherry-picked to defend the tradition's reputation. People within a tradition rarely experiment with different techniques or objectively evaluate their effectiveness, instead engaging in backwards rationalization (confabulation) to support their chosen tradition.
- Unwillingness to Personally Investigate: Many people are unwilling to devote time and energy to investigate or research different techniques or philosophies. The expectation of immediate results or certainty of success deters them from personal experimentation, which is critical for personal development and discovery of effective techniques. A successful investigative approach requires open-mindedness, acceptance of failure, and long-term commitment. People falsely claim to be open-minded while refusing to actively pursue different methods, leading to a lack of evidence in their personal development journey.
- Assuming Rigid Dualistic Categories: People tend to fall into the self-deception of assuming rigid dualistic categories or distinctions. This involves placing concepts into opposing binary groups without considering their interconnectivity or the possibility that they could exist on a spectrum. This type of black-and-white thinking often simplifies and distorts the complex nature of reality, leading to narrow perspectives and limited understanding.
- Dualistic Categories and their Collapse: Leo Gura emphasizes that the mind tends to categorize reality into dualistic concepts like good and bad, scientific versus religious, natural versus artificial. These simplistic delineations can occasionally be useful, but shouldn't be considered fundamental to reality. Historically, science has relied on these definitional frameworks, but with deeper investigation, these seemingly solid categories end up collapsing as they can't encompass the complexity of reality wholly. For instance, the category of matter versus energy has been blurred due to discoveries by Albert Einstein and quantum physicists.
- Excessively Logical Thought as Self-deception: Conventional logic or rationality can sometimes lead to delusion, instead of delivering the truth. This is often because the thinking mind can utilize logic in its favor to maintain its dominance, leading to self-deception.
- Thinking Bias: Gura introduces the concept of 'thinking bias' where individuals assume that thinking is the sole way to understand reality. It overlooks other non-cognitive modalities of understanding such as intuition or direct consciousness.
- Analysis Bias: Analysis bias refers to the tendency of logically-minded individuals to seek understanding via thorough deconstruction or analysis of the world. While this can be beneficial in certain contexts, it neglects the interconnectedness of reality and neglects a holistic understanding.
- Fragmentation and the Quest for Holism: The mind's inherent tendency to fragment complex phenomena into simpler parts can limit understanding. For true comprehension, one must aim for wisdom, big-picture thinking, and holistic understanding, which requires more intuitive capacities, instead of getting fixated on the minutiae.
- False Perception of Impossibility: Impossibility bias refers to people assuming their intuition of what's possible or impossible is accurate. Throughout history, many such 'impossible' predictions have been proven incorrect, emphasizing the fallibility of this bias.
- Assumption of Impossibility: Intellectuals often assume certain innovations or discoveries are impossible due to the limits of their own imagination, leading to self-deception when these "impossible" things become reality. This has been illustrated throughout history, including Lord Kelvin's pronouncement that powered man flight and X-rays were impossible, shortly before both were proven possible.
- Defining Reality by Proveability: A common self-deception is to conflate the domain of truth and proveability, believing that if something is true, it must be provable. However, the domain of truth is much larger than the domain of proveability; not all truths can be proven. In fact, some profound truths are completely unprovable and don't require proof.
- False Expectation of Proof: Many people have a biased expectation that their own skepticism can be turned around with sufficient proof. However, this aspect of self-deception fails to recognize that acceptance and understanding of the truth often requires one's own willingness to surrender to it.
- Assumption of Reality's Simplicity: People often deceive themselves by simplifying the complexity of reality and using linear Aristotelian logicbelieving in clear-cut categories and black-and-white distinctionsto understand it. However, reality is often not simple, intuitive, or obvious.
- Black-and-White Thinking: The propensity for black-and-white thinking can lead to self-deception, as people underestimate the complexity and nuance of certain situations, such as the relationship between enlightenment and personal development. Engaging with the subtle complexities of life is essential in avoiding such binary self-deceptions.
- Confusion Over Truth and Proveability: Individuals tend to believe truth and proveability are the same, thus creating a self-deception whereby they reject truths that cannot be formally proven. There is a wide range of truths that are unproveable, yet they remain valid.
- Manipulation by External Forces: The influence of business and marketing can steer scientific research, affecting what truths are pursued and what aspects of reality are explored. This presence of financial bias can distort the quest for truth and lead to self-deception.
- Unwillingness to Embrace Paradox: There exists a bias among intellectuals towards avoiding paradoxes, thereby excluding strange aspects of reality that do not fit their rational frameworks. This type of narrow-mindedness is a form of self-deception. The paradoxical and strange facets of reality actually offer significant insight into the nature of existence.
- Mistaking Truth for Proveability: People often conflate truth with proveability, assuming that if something is true, it must be provable. However, this is a self-deception as the domain of things that are true is larger than the domain of things that are provable. This has even been proven by mathematician Kurt Gödel within the field of mathematics.
- Equating Success with Truth: People can fall into self-deception by equating success and technology with truth. However, success does not guarantee the validity of a claim. This encourages the pursuit of truth for its own sake, rather than for immediate benefit.
- Limited Perception of Possibility: People often limit their understanding of what's possible based on their own imagination, thus failing to recognize the vast potential realities beyond their grasp. This cognitive bias leads to self-deception when "impossible" things become reality, often sooner than imagined.
- Fear of Paradox: The video highlights how many great Western intellectuals have been afraid of paradox and have gone out of their way to eliminate traces of paradox from fields like logic, mathematics, and the hard sciences. This often leads to what is referred to as epistemic blunders.
- Taking Hard-Won Knowledge as Obvious: Leo discusses how knowledge that seems obvious today was often hard-fought and met with resistance during its inception. For example, the necessity of surgeons washing their hands before surgery was once a contentious idea, but is now viewed as critical. This kind of thinking may cause self-deception, as it overlooks how much effort and struggle goes into gaining new knowledge.
- Mindfuck Bias: This refers to the tendency of intelligent people to expect a trend to continue along the same trajectory, causing them to underestimate the possibility of unexpected reversals reality is nonlinear. This bias can lead to surprising and disconcerting realizations or 'mindfucks'.
- Pragmatic Bias: This is the tendency to focus only on things that are immediately useful and serve one's survival, excluding potentially true but not immediately useful information. This outlook equates success and technology with truth, which is a false equivalence. Leo emphasizes the importance of pursuing truth for its own sake, beyond the realm of immediate practicality.
- Underestimating the Influence of Business, Marketing, and Culture: Leo highlights the pervasive influence of business marketing and culture on shaping individuals' worldviews, beliefs, and desires. He suggests that modern culture is largely manufactured by businesses for their own benefit, leading to self-deception and a skewed perspective of reality.
- Authority and Credentials: A significant self-deception mechanism comes from blindly trusting authorities and experts. People often abstain from asking critical questions about reality, leaving it up to academics, doctors, scientists, or gurus. This uncritical acceptance of authority can lead to a distorted understanding of reality.
- Reliance on Authority and Credentials: According to Leo Gura, both religious people and scientists may heavily rely on authority and credentials, which can result in significant self-deception. A religious person might believe a spiritual leader without question, while a scientist's credibility is often determined by their position within the academic community, amount of published research, and received accolades. Both of these situations can cause individuals to accept information without thorough questioning.
- Morality Bias: This is where individuals compare new truths to their system of morality, rejecting them if they conflict with their moral convictions. Instead, truths should be evaluated on their own merit and then inform one's morality, not the other way round.
- Political Ramifications Bias: This is when individuals evaluate new truths or wisdom based on whether it fits their political ideology. If it does, they accept it; if it does not, they reject it. This approach is backward as one should firstly discover the truth or wisdom and then let it inform their political ideology.
- Historical Meta-Narratives: These self-deceptive mechanisms involve creation of overarching narratives about human history that may not accurately represent the truth. For instance, narratives suggesting that human civilization evolved from savagery to rationality due to technological advancements neglect the possibility that pre-agricultural societies might have held advanced knowledge and lived high-quality lifestyles.
- Tribalism: Tribalism, including racism and nationalism, is a significant mechanism of self-deception. This extends to spiritual communities where individuals form "us vs them" mentalities and engage in infighting.
- Groupthink: This is when individuals surrender their own thinking to the collective thoughts of a group, which may lead to self-deception due to the group's own agenda and collective ego.
- Assumptions about Brain Chemistry and Reality Perception: It's a common self-deception to falsely assume that everyone has the same brain chemistry and perceives reality alike. This overlooks the fact that people have different brain physiology and thus think and perceive the world differently. This understanding should promote more openness and tolerance towards diverse perspectives.
- Different Brain Physiology: Realizing that people have different brain physiology and, therefore, different beliefs and experiences, should lead to more openness, tolerance, and appreciation of diverse perspectives. This is essential in removing self-deception and promoting understanding.
- Variation in human brain physiology and perception: People might naturally assume that others think and understand the world similarly to themselves due to a lack of appreciation towards the diversity in brain physiology and perception. Acknowledging this difference facilitates openness, tolerance, and appreciation of varying perspectives.
- Responsibility to self over others in regard to self-deception: Rather than focus on pointing out the self-deceptions of others, individuals should be primarily concerned with confronting and addressing their own self-deceptions. This is important as each person is responsible for rectifying their own problems rather than pointing fingers at each other.
- Talking, knowing versus embodying personal development: The act of speaking or holding knowledge about wisdom and consciousness does not equate to embodying such practices. While discussing and knowing about personal development and consciousness is easier, the most crucial step is the practical implementation and embodiment of these ideas.
- Danger of assuming ultimate truth: Assuming that one has fully understood the situation or reached the end of their journey can lead to a deeper level of self-deception. It is essential to maintain an open-minded approach and consider the possibility of further layers of understanding.
- Arrogance as a self-deception mechanism: Arrogance can serve as an impediment to true understanding and enjoyment of life. Acknowledging, managing, and reducing one's arrogance is a gradual process that can contribute to the unraveling of self-deceptions.
- Complexity and prevalence of self-deception: The field of self-deception is vast, nuanced, and infects almost every area of life. This is because self-deception mechanisms are complex, diverse, and capable of corrupting every aspect of life. Despite having an understanding of these self-deception mechanisms, it doesn't guarantee an escape from them.
- Future subjects of discussion: In future discussions, Leo Gura will focus on topics like self-bias, self-justification, and self-deceptions within science. These are seen as profound and critical aspects of self-deception that will be further elaborated on in upcoming videos.