No, it's not what you think: People don’t tell me I should go see a therapist all the time, and I refuse. It's more a conceptual problem that I have. I adhere to the “press secretary theory” of consciousness. Thinking this theory through results in an obscure idea of what constitutes therapy. First, I will first explain what the press secretary theory is. Secondly, I will give evidence for this conceptual idea. Next, I will try to explain why a visit to a therapist makes no sense in this framework. In conclusion, I propose that an economics Bsc might be a better therapy than sitting down with a psychotherapist.
I outline the press secretary theory in my blog post “Lying to Ourselves is the Optimal Strategy”. In essence, it divides a human into a president (an unconscious agent) and a press secretary (our consciousness). The president is just doing stuff. In human terms, he is our deterministic self. He is utility optimizing and competing. On the other hand, there is the press secretary. He has no executive power over the body or one’s actions. The press secretary's only job is to explain what the president did. Again, in human terms, the deterministic body works like a machine, unhinged of our thoughts, and the press secretary (our consciousness) has to justify these actions. The problem is that the press secretary rarely talks to the president. Our consciousness has no clue why we did something or how to explain our everyday life. He just comes up with catchy phrases, that might plausibly explain whats going on in the best-perceived light. In addition to that, the press secretary has to be completely convinced and convincing that he is not only aware of the president's actions but also part of the decision making process. This is obviously false. Our consciousness has very little knowledge of why we truly did something. We always come up with a post hoc reasoning but it rarely describes reality.
There is a lot of evidence supporting this theory. Split-brain patients are told to get a diet coke on one side of the brain. When one asks the other side of the brain why the person stood up, he/she will say something completely made up like, “I need to go to the bathroom”. Even in studies looking at healthy people, we can observe that our conscious self has no clue about what’s going on. Experiments were conducted where people had to rate how much they like a fictional character. The control group got cold beverages and the treatment group got hot beverages. It turns out that the treatment group with hot beverages were significantly more likely to give a higher sympathy rating than the ones with cold beverages. Apparently, sympathy has something to do with the temperature of beverages. But did you ever hear someone say that they like a person cause they have a hot drink in hand? Of course not. But this should be a major factor when explaining who you like and dislike. In essence, the president decided and the conscious press secretary has no clue.
Following on from this I don’t trust my own explanations of why I do things. Whatever I tell myself is most likely wrong. The press secretary is here to justify my actions and not to adequately explain them. Thus, I don’t trust my consciousness for a causal explanation of my behavior.
So what about therapy now? The way I understood therapy is that it is supposed to help you understand yourself better by telling a therapist why you do things. That’s a horrible idea. This is giving complete control to the press secretary. He will go on to tell the therapist nothing but lies. Even worse, the therapist will guide and advise me based on those lies. Not only do I have to deal with the spurious relationships in my mind, but they will now also be validated by someone whose profession it is to listen to one’s press secretary. This is a house of lies that is so far detached from what the actual causes of things are. I think I’d rather not.
Talking about the actual causes of things, we obviously get to economics. To find out why we do things we need to get closer to the president and as far as possible away from the press secretary. Economics does just that. It looks at incentives, selfishness, and human behavior, regardless of what people think of themselves. You will get counter intuitive results on why you spent money on charity, why you take medicine, or why you consume art. It's not selflessness, caring, and culture; it’s mostly incentives; And we have the data to back it up.
So next time you wonder why you or others do things, reconsider going to a therapist and instead get yourself a book on microeconomics.
(To read more on the press secretary and its implications get your hands on Robin Hanson’s work. In general, this blog post critiques psychology as a field. It also talks to why I’m not too fond of behavioral economics, and I’d rather stay on the safe side of classical microeconomics applied to human behavior. )
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