The second thing to understand about humans is that they are all NPCs. Well not literally but rather as a model. All-Models-Are-Wrong (but some are useful) so acting-as-if-it-is-true rather than arguing against it can bring to light some useful insights.
The main utility of thinking that humans are NPCs is that it explains why they talk so much yet rarely change each other’s opinions. Talking is downstream from their pre-programmed opinions; therefore, talking rarely affects their upstream opinions.
NPC-thinking can be modelled as humans (3) automatically reacting to (1) external input based upon their (2) pre-programmed beliefs and biases; and if they are questioned, they will (4) invent explanations since they didn’t know their actual pre-programmed beliefs and biases.
NPC-think: (1) Raw-data-of-reality -> (2) Belief-confirmation-bias -> (3) NPC-auto-react -> (4) post-hoc-rationalization
The NPC-think model leads to the useful heuristic of ignoring what NPCs say and instead considering “what particular beliefs and/or biases are causing the NPC to act this way?” We are looking for the actual reasons they are acting this way rather than what they say their reasons are (Ignore-rationalizations-consider-intentions). Psychology, sociology, game theory, and evolutionary thinking are useful resources for human biases.
Post-hoc-rationalizations are not just invented by the NPC who does not know the real reason he is behaving in the way he is; they are also often logically incorrect. The fact that the rationalization is logically incorrect causes other humans to think that “if I prove that his argument is wrong then he will change his opinion.” Our model says this is incorrect since opinions are upstream from explanations rather than downstream. Yet the fact that explanations are logically incorrect shows a kind of mental-physics that is helpful in understanding the mind of the NPC. Mental-physics means that their explanations can be visualized as a house of cards, and if you disprove parts of their argument by “removing some of the cards” the entire house of cards does NOT fall down. That is, mental-physics-has-no-gravity: there is no logical gravity that will cause their house of cards to collapse, instead it is held up by their core beliefs.
Summary
- NPC-think: (1) Raw-data-of-reality -> (2) Belief-confirmation-bias -> (3) NPC-auto-react -> (4) post-hoc-rationalization
- Belief-confirmation-bias: “The first law of NPCs is that they are pre-programmed”
- NPC-auto-react: “The second law of NPCs is that they react based on their programming”
- Post-hoc-rationalization: “The third law of NPCs is that they don’t know their source code, so they just make up reasons for why they act the way they do”
- Ignore-rationalizations-consider-intentions: “What particular beliefs and/or biases are causing the NPC to act this way?”
- Mental-physics-has-no-gravity: “Your house of cards explanations are held up by your beliefs rather than by a logically sound arguments”
Further reading
- Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman (our minds work in strange ways)
- Why Everyone (Else) Is a Hypocrite: Evolution and the Modular Mind by Robert Kurzban (we are strangers to our mind)
- What Makes Us Tick: Making sense of who we are and the desires that drive us by Hugh Mackay (why we do what we do)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias
- Post hoc rationalization: The emotional dog and its rational tail: a social intuitionist approach to moral judgment by Jonathan Haidt
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