People who spread lies and deceive others are treated with contempt by society, and rightfully so. But what happens when the people we lie to and deceive are ourselves? Using the case of Walter Mitties as a starting point, we explore the prevalence of exaggeration, fantasy and our inner selves.

In this week’s episode, we look at figments of the imagination. We discuss Herbie Popnecker, differences between US and UK attitudes to military valorisation, virtue imposters, intention vs self-delusion, cosplay, Aesop’s Fox and the Grapes fable, catfishing, authenticity and status. Finally, we reveal the biggest self-serving exaggerations we committed ourselves

A few things we mentioned in this podcast:

• The military imposters who can’t resist wearing an unearned medal
• Waltenkommando
• Alan Mcilwraith

For more information on Aleph Insights visit our website https://alephinsights.com or to get in touch about our podcast email [email protected]

Hello and welcome to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast produced by me, Fraser McGruer for Aleph. In this series of podcasts we take a look at interesting topics and discuss what we think they tell us about analysis and decision making. I'm here with Nick Hare, Jordan Fermanis and Chris Wragg of Aleph and this week we're discussing Nick Adderley. Who is Nick Adderley? He's the

I'm quite glad we're talking about this because we used to have a lot of problems with this when I was back in special forces yeah with people doing I remember that when we were in Hereford together we're in SAS together yeah we're always getting those probably not sort of talk about it too much but I mean yeah I've got a vested interest here Chris um go on yeah no I've

do so I think Michael Hesseltine got brought up on this because he wears a guard's tie um and he was on national service in the guards for about two months or something um but it's quite a Michael Hesseltine thing to do I feel um yeah um yeah so Chris I think you've already touched upon some really nice things then I think started to talk about who this guy actually who you actually feel quite sorry for him when you hear about it and also this kind of slight exaggeration of and maybe in this in the military world slight embellishments but also in in other places I feel there's avenues we can explore there yeah I think you've got something on that yeah well I think

the first thing is that spectrum that that it it can go from mild exaggeration or um failure to correct somebody when they're when they attribute some something to you um through to you know extreme levels of of um fiction you know that that are generated and um and then you know we touched a little bit on the the motivation behind it in some some individuals you know on the on the um in the case of of this um political minister you know I think what they were trying to do is gain by saying you know I understand I can empathize with you because I've got you know not dissimilar experiences and to to gain personally but in the event of the the guy Nick was talking about um reminded me of the um the fictional 60s 50s 60s comic book character Herbie popnecker um who was um basically the whole the whole cartoon series was around he you know he's a kind of overweight kid with glasses um and it's all about his individual sort of fantasies within his within his head uh to make his you know his actual life sort of to to drown it out and to move to move away from it so you know there's an element of I guess self-esteem about about the fantasies but I'm sure there's all sorts of other motivations and reasons so it might be self-interest I'll convince these people I've got something so that um I can achieve whatever it is I'm trying to achieve but there's also the element of the intrinsic reason for it which is to make yourself

feel better about yourself which is also understandable is something about this as you said stolen valor and there's lots of stuff on YouTube with people being confronted you can imagine in because there's so much um capital and credence given to this kind of valor in the US that it's not surprising that people who don't naturally don't have that would go well I want a bit of that that's nice I want a 10 discount in Walmart yeah exactly yeah um that's living the

high life yeah just just just quickly it's not dissimilar to the bias of of um uh the fact that everybody you know if you ask I did a driver's awareness course um uh yesterday if you've been but being a little bit naughty but um one of the exercises they got you to do was to rate yourself as a driver on a whole series of things and you know from one to ten lo and behold everybody came out at eight right it's like and you're the guys on the driver's awareness course so you know um so it's not dissimilar to that um yeah that sort of uh self-optimism bias yeah um yeah I came across

a term that I think kind of captures this um called virtue imposters where it's a term coined by a philosophy academic Werner Goerig where you don't necessarily adopt the identity of another person um but instead you adopt a false history for yourself to impersonate virtues and characteristics um so these the motivation being gaining social recognition or um exploiting reverence or respect um for veterans for example um for personal gain um so yeah it seems to be a uh

common disposition sorry I didn't understand what so what do people do can you give me an example

so it would be like so the a Walter Mitty would be an example of virtue imposter someone who's not you're not becoming some you're not adopting a new complete identity you're just falsifying

parts of your personal history yeah maybe intentionally or not right uh I think it

you're allowed to claim whatever you like about yourself it'd be tricky to enforce that people some bloke down the pub going yeah I was in the paras and yeah yeah right off tomorrow exactly

context in which to do that which is quite yeah so this is real and this is real real servicemen

but who have sort of exaggerated I guess perhaps like the catering core guy you know uh have pretended that they were in I mean only you've got to remember that it's only a small fraction not a small fraction but but a fraction of military personnel are combat you know troops actually most of them do other stuff um so so you know it's but so these are I guess are the 10 of people doing other stuff who who kind of don't really like being in the you know the crack tailoring core and would rather have been in like cavalry or something I don't know but there we are so

that's prevalence the point the answer is actually quite prevalent yeah so look it seems to be this is quite prevalent um it also it feels quite understandable and shades of grey here um you know we've talked about even CVs who hasn't slightly over-egged their CV a bit like that I know I know you guys haven't I know I don't but I mean it might be out there a bit um but I think one thing I want to explore is intention um versus self-delusion um would we like to talk

about that for a bit Jordan yes I think I I can understand a desire to want to invent a more exciting life for yourself um but you work at Aleph Insights yeah why would you need to do that but I think there is a there there is a line between self-reinvention and self-deception um perhaps they're similar in some ways um but I think there's an there's a there's something artistic about the idea of self-reinvention um like a musician uh who's changes genres midway through their career maybe like a Bob Dylan for example um or Miles Davis yeah big one jazz they're the real great yeah um so I guess but we wouldn't really call that self-deception uh we'd call that just reinventing yourself um but I guess it is imagining a new self or a new kind of um career identity for yourself um so yeah I I think where it gets tricky is more in that kind of it's back to motivation is that kind of Jay Gatsby thing where you're um uh from the great Gatsby where you you invent this entire life fictional life for yourself um for personal or selfish reasons I suppose um and bring other people into your kind of web of deception yeah yeah I mean to yeah I mean to what extent

is it a disorder as well right well obviously there's um you know you do have people with delusional uh disorder uh where where they actually genuinely believe themselves to be somebody they're not like a ruling monarch or uh you know um uh a famous person or uh actually you know the um the the sort of earthly appointed representative of god or whatever it might be so um there are there are individuals where you know they have a a mental illness that causes them to be delusional and I suppose the question is to to uh to what extent some some of these extreme fantasists are doing it not for uh gain or even a conscious sense of bringing up their um their own feelings about themselves but the extent to which that's actually you know a mental illness and that's why they're compelled and I think we're not talking about that we're not talking about delusional disorder we're talking about people who um who create things about their their past and we talked we talked a little bit about um yeah improving your own sense of yourself or why you might act out um a different um variation of your of your identity I think that's that's potentially part of it about making yourself feel better about yourself or feel differently and if you look at um you know if you look at social phenomena like uh um cosplay for example you know there has been a reason about a psychological study of of that and you know a couple of the things that that um that people have reported about it is um one an ability to feel part of something and that might explain the the military fantasism uh that you you know the military is a sort of a family and you know if you're not part of it you might want to be part of it um and the yeah the other reason is just that ability to act differently if you are presenting a particular identity so you know people who pretend to be superheroes or whatever in their in their spare time not actually try and pretend they're superheroes but act out in a sort of cosplay sense you know are able to um make themselves feel more heroic and and perhaps act more heroically because they're sort of role-playing that now in the case of these Walter Mitty characters it moves from being role-playing to you actually trying to convince others that that's the case but the same motivation might be there yeah it feels like intention is in here

somewhere it could be the dividing thing I don't think we can draw a sharp line I mean there are different types of self-deception here at the extreme end we've got grandiose delusions um like believing you're Napoleon I suppose um and it's odd I suppose that delusions do tend to tend to err on the grandiose side like there's a there seem to be more people who imagine themselves to be Napoleon than imagine themselves to be a foot soldier in the Grand Armée for example so um there's but so that's at one extreme end but then at the other end I mean there is self deception is such a prevalent characteristic I think you know if there's a an Aesop's fable about it then it's got to be something fairly universal and you know the story of the fox and the grapes um is a classic example or a classic illustration I can't remember well the fox is trying to get these grapes that are too high up for it to reach and it tries various things and eventually just decides it can't get them but then it declares that the grapes were sour anyway and he didn't and so that's where we get the phrase sour grape from and um and I and I think that so that very low level kind of um I'm I'm a different kind of person to the person I want to be or the situation I'm in is better than it looks and or you know not as not as bad as it looks you know is is is something or you know to convince yourself you're better looking than you are or cleverer or funnier like Chris was saying the whole eight out of ten everyone everyone gives himself an eight out of ten on virtues you know we can't all be right some people must be eight out of ten good drivers but you know on average we must be five um so so you can I mean just looking at those statistics of where do people rate them on very rate themselves on different scales uh you know it's hugely skewed towards good so so so at one end we've got thinking you're superman but at the lower end of kind of we we actually all do think of ourselves as slightly more towards

superman than we are and I go on Jordan I was just going to say on the um intentional intentionism thing that I think the the internet has kind of provided a bit of a vehicle for people to do that um because you can create an internet alias for yourself um and live out multiple kinds of fantasies at the same time um sexual fantasies something for the financial um uh and I guess something that is related to that is the is catfishing where a person takes information and images of another person um and uses them to create a new identity for themselves and then sometimes that transgresses into the real world as well so the imagination becomes reality um but I think yeah the internet is an interesting place to realize those imaginations it's quite public

facing but also quite um changeable you can obscure obfuscate it's very easy to lie in text

isn't it it's very hard to lie in only a certain only certain types of people get away with total fibs in real life I mean you know we've evolved to for it to be difficult to tell complete bold face lies um but on the internet it's much much easier well yeah and the reality is easier to

obscure if you're standing next to somebody and they're telling you they're six foot three and you know um terribly handsome uh then you can tell that's not the case if you're actually stood next to them but you can maintain that fiction on the internet more easily because um so you know particularly yes well particularly about um your own physical characteristics you know because they can't they can't be seen unless you can't be verified yeah um so look it feels

like what we're saying is hey humans right people they do this stuff um we've all got our foibles or put it another way who is 100% happy with who they are and what they've done right 100% yeah but that's

different that is different I mean nobody right let's assume the answer is nobody but I struggle with trying to think of why it would be in our interests to believe things about ourselves which aren't true it's all very well to pretend you've proved that to yourself by that so if

example of the the the fox you know Aesop's Fables right yeah but why does that benefit the fox like it's better for the fox because he can move forward in life satisfied in his mind yeah he

doesn't obsess about it so if it's right if it's good to move forward in life then he ought to do that anyway regardless of forming an incorrect belief about the sweetness of the grapes no well I mean I so all I'm saying is because it's such a common thing common phenomenon that we all experience I don't think we stop to think about how weird it is that we um you know think it's kind of normal to form false beliefs like that you know to convince yourself that you know the the person you who's rejected you was horrible anyway or that you know you weren't really enjoying the party or you know we go around convincing ourselves telling stories about things that have happened to keep to make ourselves happy but that's really weird right well no you say that no well you see it's not it you it's weird when you discuss it like this dispassionately no no it is it isn't it's it's weird it isn't weird normally because we do it all the time we don't stop to think about it right it is weird when you think about it because it implies that there's different bits of our psyche almost like one stupid bit which is going to be fobbed off with that explanation and one kind of intelligent bit which sort of knows it isn't true it's like you're trying to tell the primitive parts of your psyche um oh look don't worry you didn't want to do that anyway you know i'm surprised that you're surprised but anyway because you haven't thought about it as much as i have i'm not so you're not surprised enough

yeah i think it's i think it is surprising but it's understandable because it would safeguard you against possibly um vulnerable feeling vulnerable or having to face up to reality no no no no let him yeah yeah but i suppose in the in in the attempt to sort of move through life and not dwell on things and become depressed over small things it's kind of advantageous to be able to make a narrative for yourself that suits you and maybe it's false but it allows you to

move on in a way i i think i think there's two things here there's the emotional sense right which nick's saying but that must have some rational underpinning and we don't seem to be able to see what that is so so yes you safeguard your your morale about yourself but why why do you need to do that and i think the reason you need to do that to feel that you are better than you actually are is so that you carry on going out and trying to do things right because if you assessed yourself to be actually accurately as as good as you are at things you you you wouldn't take as much risk as you get out of bed the problem is because you're so successful

now it's such a well-rounded individual is that you don't understand the foibles of others

tackling this from a from a again from inside and i and i i think we're not appreciating how weird it is from outside okay it feels to us like we we would be really depressed if we realized how unattractive yeah so we convince ourselves otherwise you know we'd never we'd never try on with anyone and we you know but that look that doesn't make any it is still better it would still be better to have a correct belief about yourself and then act accordingly it would it just would be better to act accordingly you're the outcomes because if you're acting on correct beliefs the outcomes are more likely to accord with your desires then you'd never get laid yeah right the outcome could be you would if it was correct if there are some times when even being unattractive that you're going to talk to someone and end up getting laid if that's true sometimes then you ought to accurately believe that so so i think i think what it points to is that we essentially self-deception is actually a workaround it's a hack that our brain has worked out to avoid more fundamental physiological processes so in other words let's say depression is is based on something physiological and something a bit primitive about our sense of self-worth and status and so on and and our you know like more more um irrational parts of our brain but have worked out that it's a danger it's a danger if our if our you know depression cycle gets triggered so we we construct stories and kind of shield our primitive brain from from you know that but

but it is weird it's okay so i think we think the same thing it's just the i think you say all that and i go yeah of course and you say all that and go isn't that strange yeah but i just think that's of course of course that's because you're just stuck inside your own human being self and i'm trying to step out i think that's what it must try to get out there i think it's also because the self-deception works i think that's the other thing yeah sorry like the reason i think maybe we we we also do it is because it can work like that you you you create this false identity

you um identify some outcomes that you're seeking you seek those and then it's a bit of a self-fulfilling so this deception self-preserving

sort of getting to the the heart of it so i think if you think of something like a an entrepreneur um the idea if you correctly assessed your your likelihood of setting up a successful business um and you actually rationally looked at it i i think it's probably the case that you wouldn't start you wouldn't start a business um this is i just don't

think that could be look it's like no sorry nick before you go wait wait wait wait this is exactly

like this podcast that we did on i think military leadership styles right which is there needs to be an element of deception self-deception of yourself of course of yourself but of others which is the way you do win is going come on lads let's go we're going to go get we're going to win um which is if he sort of gave a rational assessment of look we probably can't do this and you know you wouldn't get anywhere so i think it's the same as your entrepreneurial example

he's actually talking to people he needs to deceive that makes sense i think they're just what we're saying is that this is inside someone you one person is or so just to give you an example imagine i'm designing a robot that's designed to jump over a gap and it needs to work out how big the gap is and if the gap is too big it shouldn't jump over right just because the robot said oh well the thing is i you know i i ought to jump over gaps i can't i ought to believe this gap is smaller otherwise i'm never going to jump over this gap properly you would say no i've designed you to jump over a gap if you can make it and not jump over the gap if you can't right and then you wouldn't design the robot any other way it'd be stupid so what i'm saying is the fact

that we're like that but humans are not robots okay ah but a man's reach be beyond his grasp let's let's let's stop i can see i'm not gonna convince you no of course you're not yeah okay look i asked this question before but no one nick you took us in the wrong direction um does it matter does it really matter if we're like this who does yeah chris

yeah well i think um it matters in some circumstances and it doesn't matter in other circumstances right so for example right if somebody so there's a there's a woman um zolia alemi who um posed as a medical doctor i think i think actually was a psychiatrist anyway she wasn't qualified and they're here quite um and and there have been other historic cases of people posing as having medical qualifications that they don't um and obviously under those circumstances you've got people potentially dispensing medical treatments without having the proper qualifications right so i think where there's a there's an aspect of um actually having a dangerous or tangible impact then obviously it matters but if it's somebody saying do you know what i'm uh actually the the you know the great great grandchild of uh queen victoria then under those circumstances unless they're the king quite yeah unless they make a claim to the throne and there's a civil war going on then it becomes quite important but we don't do that anymore so um but uh but yeah so i think there's a sort of um there's an element of what are the what are the consequences of the of the fantasy um i i i'm sorry jordan yeah i think it matters

i think whether the consequences are big or small uh or whether it's self-deception or deceiving others i think they're all probably things you best avoid so i um yeah i'd say it matters it

definitely matters to me and it matters to everyone i mean we we are we're designed we we've evolved to hunt this kind of thing down there's a valton commando inside all of us uh because we correctly perceive that people gain unfair social advantage from this um you know and and it's quite right that we hunt out inauthenticity and it dry i actually personally really irks me when i when i have to talk to someone i don't mind grandiose fantasists people are so obviously talking bullshit that they're almost figures of fun you know the donald trump types you know there's they're so preposterous that actually you should can't really believe the sorts of claims they make about themselves i'm talking about the people who were you know always oh they just did that really interesting thing and they led this team and they and they got this thing and they oh they uh you know they once slept with this celebrity and it's like they actually the problem is there are lots of people out there who actually will that will raise you know that person's esteem in their eyes and it's our job to hunt them down and say no you're talking bullshit it drives me mad so uh yeah personally i mean i think and i think the fact that we see a virtue in in the kind of authenticity you know the story about oliver cromwell paint me warts and all that we see a virtue in that because that is it's better to have an accurate appraisal of yourself and to succeed in spite of it you're being that it is to

succeed because you're lying okay you're being far too rational and again you've just proved it right because famously oliver cromwell was massively dislikable right so there you go he had that he was wonderfully had this integrity and yeah you know but oh but a bit of a git you know and did all

sorts of horrible things whereas i'm talking about people who are a git and they go around

acting like they're not but all three of you are saying it matters and to be fair to chris he's saying it more it matters if someone's sort of doing open heart surgery and don't really have not qualified you that but it just feels like it doesn't matter yeah but what does that what does that even mean oh it matters i mean what does that mean like oh i get offended personally

offended by it or does it mean they should be there's only a certain amount of status to go around and if someone else is going up because they're lying it's my job to pull them down right because they're taking status away from other people who actually deserve it yeah and not

yeah um i like the way we've status we've talked we are talking about status as we often are status seeking uh look we need to stop question what's the biggest what's the most self-serving exaggeration that you've ever been guilty of i'll kick us off okay um when i lived in brazil um i thought i was a really good surfer okay and there's a bit of quite a bit of surfing culture in brazil and so i had my i had two boards the first one sadly broke in quite uh gnarly conditions i have to say uh that one was called jesus um because i used to name myself called jesus yeah i did yeah and i looked after jesus jesus looked after me you know i really started getting into this life however unfortunately i was actually really bad at surfing i would quickly realize by actually surfing around on the waves that people would pretty quickly realize that i can't actually surf and so but i'd actually wanted that kudos that comes with it and so what did i do i used to intentionally walk up and down the beach just holding a surfboard right um and just so yeah yeah so the chicks would go hey look at that guy you know he's a great surfer to see you actually go and surf at some point yeah um however it's even worse than that because i was found out pretty quickly because this one day i was walking on the beach strolling to the cafe or something i walked past these three girls these beautiful brazilian girls and as i walked past them i just went like this i looked at them went oi like that which means hi and they were sort of tittering looking like obviously quite impressed by my whole surfing thing and at the very moment i said oi um the leash that that attaches you to the board i tripped over it and i just went splat straight in front of them with sand all over my face like bernie breslau or in a carry-on film yes exactly and just even had i been an amazing surfer it just straight away that sort of you know broke down any kind of facade and you know i just had to run off in in shame did you have the leash around your leg no it was just sort of trailing rather unprofessionally yeah quite yeah that's what i was gonna say so a proper surfer would know sort of would have better uh leash um discipline discipline

exactly jordan yeah mine are mostly around work and one instance i can think of i think i just he pretended he had some degrees when he applied for a job he didn't really have a degree cvs and stuff um but um i just finished school i think and and one of my friends dads was doing some work on on their house and was like oh yeah jordan do you want to come and help uh help out you know getting on the tools that sort of thing um and i was like yeah yeah sure it'd be good i had absolutely no experience operating any power tools at all but thought that if i said no it would look a bit like unmasculine of me yeah especially in australia yeah so i said yeah yeah and i remember i was operating something obviously very badly um and um it it moved or something happened and it got a massive cut down my arm that was very alarming and i think i actually had to go to hospital because it wouldn't stop bleeding um to get it treated but yeah that was kind of embarrassing because i was trying to yeah i was trying to be a bit macho and it didn't go

uh i think for me it was the um the time i ran uh a workshop with a um group of religious people from a particular religious organization uh that were focused on sort of peacekeeping and stability and at the end of the workshop um they took a moment to pray um and i didn't i didn't have and they sort of said you know you you don't you don't have to take part in this if you you know if you don't want to but i felt like i'd gone through this whole thing with them and and and i got bullied into it i i i sort of i yeah i sort of didn't disabuse them of the notion uh that um i was religious in some way well they're a bit touchy aren't they isis about that that's right yeah yeah had i declared i wasn't uh a jihadi it could have gone wrong for me yeah um so yeah there we go i uh i was a a man of god for uh about 30 seconds yeah nice good

i like that um i liked all the examples i liked all the examples all right let's stop there thank you as always for listening to the cognitive engineering podcast i'm fraser being here with nick hare chris wragg and jordan fermanis of aleph until next time goodbye