Working Weekend

You could see by the title that I worked all weekend. However, yesterday and today a lot of it wasn't writing, it was also reading and learning.

In my previous entry, I mentioned Leonard Mldinov's book Subliminal, about the unconscious. It ends with some odd points about the self and self-confidence. That all this time, psychologists have thought that the mentally healthiest individuals were the most truthful about themselves. That turns out not to be true. About fifty percent will say they're in the top ten percent of their field. That's impossible, of course. But they have to believe it so they can function at their job. (It does present the question about pro-athletes, whose metrics are out there for everyone to see, how do they maintain confidence? However, professional athletics does have a high turnover.)

We can see how this works in real life, where so many people will never admit they made a professional mistake.

It turns out the people who have the most truthful evaluation of themselves are those who are slightly to moderately depressed.

Self-confidence is what psychologists should call a hack. It doesn't enlighten anyone of the truth, but it does enable them to function.

It's the same story with religion: not generally truthful, but it does allow people to function and unify socially.  

Life is full of discoveries. Many of them about humans and humankind.