There are three different motivations for belief, and it’s important to distinguish between them.
1) Belief because you think something’s true.
For instance, you may think that the evidence supports the idea that you will eventually find love, or you may feel convinced by logical arguments you’ve heard in favor of god’s existence.
2) Belief because you think it’s useful to believe.
Regardless of whether you predict something’s true, you can predict that believing it will be more helpful than harmful to you in the long term, and so be motivated to believe for that pragmatic benefit.
For instance, you may intuit that you’ll be better off long-term believing that you will eventually find love (because that will make love more likely) or perceive that you’ll be happier believing in god (even if it turns out there is no god).
3) Belief because it feels good in the moment.
Regardless of whether it’s true or helpful to you in the long term, you may be motivated to believe something because it feels good right now (or prevents you from feeling bad).
For instance, you may feel comforted right now by thinking you’ll eventually find love or feel good in the moment, believing a god is watching over you.
Rationalists typically recommend striving to have your beliefs be of type 1: believing based on what’s most likely to be true.
Pragmatists often recommend aiming for type 2 beliefs: believing based on what’s ultimately most useful to you.
I favor striving to have type 1 beliefs rather than type 2 beliefs, in part because I intrinsically value truth, but also because I think that for beliefs in category 2 that are *not* actually true, there are typically some beliefs in category 1 that will help you just as much, but which have the advantage of also being true. So often (but not always), there is a low cost to replacing beliefs from 2 with beliefs from 1 that have the added benefit of being true.
I also think that if you allow yourself to indiscriminately hold type 2 beliefs, it makes it hard to suddenly switch to rigorous truth-oriented thinking when it’s important to figure out the truth (e.g., when you have to make a very important decision based on evidence).
On the other hand, many people have lots of type 3 beliefs, and all of us, myself included, have some type 3 beliefs. Whether you think that type 1 or type 2 beliefs are ultimately preferable, I think a valuable aspiration is to replace some of our type 3 beliefs with either 1s or 2s.
It’s very, very easy for us humans to delude ourselves based on what it feels good to believe at the moment because the reward cycle is so fast. Type 3 beliefs are immediately rewarding, incentivizing more such beliefs. But they are like the social media addiction version of believing, where you pursue what gives the greatest instantaneous reward rather than what’s actually good for you.
This piece was first written on April 20, 2024, and first appeared on my website on May 7, 2024.
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