Should your beliefs aim at the truth? Or should you just believe whatever makes your life better, whether it’s true or not?

These are the questions we’re thinking about in this week’s show.

You might think that the answer is obviously that our beliefs shouldalwaysaim at the truth. But consider this—sometimes it’s actually to your advantage to have some false beliefs.

心理学家研究了一种叫做“积极幻觉”的现象，快乐的信念可以产生强大的影响，尽管它不是真的。例如，想象你正在参加一场比赛，你对自己的能力有一个错误的印象。你认为自己是跑得最快的，虽然这不是真的。研究表明，这种积极世界杯赛程2022赛程表欧洲区的幻觉实际上可以让你在比赛中做得更好，而如果你对自己的能力有一个更现实的评估，你就会做得更好。这里有一个例子，在给定一系列目标的情况下，错误的信念会比真实的信念带来更好的结果。

Does this example by itself prove anything one way or another about whether our beliefs ought to aim at the truth? No, because the reason why you perform better believing a positive illusion may have more to do with feeling confident and avoiding anxiety than holding a false belief. It’s not a stretch to see how feeling confident could have benefits for performance, even if the confidence is ultimately unwarranted. If you lack confidence, you might be anxious and distracted, and that could easily interfere with your performance. Whereas if you feel confident, you’ll be more focused and less likely to self-sabotage.

Let’s consider another example, then. Would you be happy believing that all your friends adore you? What if the reality was that most of your friends merely tolerated you, and only hung out with you from a mixture of pity, charity, and a misguided sense of loyalty? Would you really want to know that? Or would you rather keep believing the happy illusion?

On the one hand, acknowledging the truth in such a case could lead to depression. On the other hand, there's something about the truth that makes it intrinsicly appealing, even when utterly depressing.

Granted, we believe for all sorts of reasons. We believe to make our lives easier, to motivate our projects, to reinforce our values, to develop connections. Is believing the truth and nothing but the truth the best way to achieve all those goals?

Whatever the limited instrumental value of certain types of self-deception, we cannot deny the enormous value believing the truth brings. We need true beliefs to achieve our most basic goals in life. If there’s something I desire, I am better off knowing realistically how to satisfy my desires rather than having an unrealistic picture that only leads me astray.

If your beliefsdon'taim at the truth, then you're going to be frustrated a lot. Of course, there may be some lucky accidents—positive outcomes that result from false beliefs. But, in general, believing falsehoods isn’t a reliable way to get what you want in life. You need a realistic picture of what you need to do—what actions you need to take—to get what you want. Your beliefs need to track the truth. Otherwise it’s just a shot in the dark; andoccasionallyyou might get lucky.

That’s not to say that realism and truth are always a good thing. It would be hard to get out of bed in the morning sometimes if we only believed true things. It would be too depressing. Of course, we don’t have to dwell on all the unpleasant truths in life. There are plenty of happy truths to consider too.

Believing the truth, it seems, is a bit of a mixed bag. Sometimes there are benefits to believing falsehoods, which is not to say that we ought toaimfor false beliefs. That would just lead to frustrated desires. But too great a focus on some truths could lead to depression.

So, where does that leave us? What is the answer to the question with which we started—should our beliefs aim at the truth?

A better question might be whether our beliefscould everaim at anything else? Consider how ridiculous it would be to say, “I believe it, but it’s not true.” If you think something is not true, then it makes no sense to say that you believe it. You would be contradicting yourself. If you think it's not true, then you don't believe it.

真理是与信仰的本质紧密相连的——相信就是相信某件事是真的。

To a philosopher, that may seem like an obvious, inescapable truth about beliefs. Poets, on the other hand, have much greater tolerance for contradictory beliefs. Interestingly, our guest this week—Ray Briggs—is both a philosopher and a poet. It will be curious to hear what her position on these questions are.

与此同时，我将把威廉·莎士比亚的十四行诗138留给你，你可以自己决定我们的信仰是否应该总是——或者只是有时——以真理为目标。

When my love swears that she is made of truth,
I do believe her, though I know she lies,
That she might think me some untutor'd youth,
不擅长伪造世界上的赝品。
Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,
Although I know my years be past the best,
I smiling credit her false-speaking tongue,
面对爱情中的缺点，用爱的病休。
可是为什么我的爱人说她年轻呢?
And wherefore say not I that I am old?
O love's best habit is a flattering tongue,
而年龄，在爱情里，不喜欢把年龄说出来。
Therefore I'll lie with love, and love with me,
Since that our faults in love thus smother'd be.