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Too Gullible

Most people are skeptical about the wrong things.
and gullible about the wrong things

— Nassim Taleb

Barry doesn't want to to see himself or be seen by others as gullible. Gullibility stresses being duped or made a fool of. But Barry is no fool. He is not the kind of guy who would fall for a salesman's attempted manipulation of him. In fact, he is proud of his skepticism. He certainly does not believe that anyone has the power to read minds or to have pre-knowledge about what will happen in the future. Yet in the domain where he is weakest, he acts as if he has these super-natural abilities.

Gullibility is a problem of trust, but the two terms are not equivalent. Rather, gullibility refers to a foolish application of trust. For example, a gullible person accepts as true the patter of an unethical salesman. But acting on a suggestion to buy Apple stock in 2001 would not be considered gullible because doing so would have led to a good outcome.  

Barry is gullible to the extent that his acceptance of suggestion causes him to act counter to his own interests. The term, "gullibility" is generally used when someone else is attempting to trick a sucker into an ill-advised course of action (for the sucker). However, in this case, Barry's loyalty to his convictions [his resistance to accepting a more self-serving suggestion] is what makes a sucker out of him.

It is generally adaptive to be skeptical of suggestions

Barry is at a used-car lot where a salesman is showing him a shabby looking vehicle, saying: "It may not be much to look at, but it is actually worth much more than you think, whereas your trade-in vehicle is a piece of crap." The unethical salesman may attempt to reify the fiction by quoting false Bluebook values.

The salesman is acting in bad faith because he is asserting a self-serving fiction intended to cause Barry to act counter to his interests. Fortunately, Barry is competent in such matters and had access to the Bluebook values of these vehicles. So, he was not taken in by the salesman's fiction. Unfortunately, there is no Bluebook value for Barry. Unlike the value of a motor vehicle of a particular make, model, and year, Barry's social worth exists only in the mind of those who appraise him. According to some appraisal criteria Barry may be highly valued, according to others not so much. But since they are all subjective judgments, one appraisal of Barry's worth is no more objectively valid than any other.

The salesman in this example has a self-serving motivation for trying to get Barry to act as if his distorted description of reality was valid. The fact that some salesmen are low-life's who screw other people is regrettable but not surprising. What is surprising is that Barry screws himself. He acts as if his distorted description of reality was valid. In both cases the outcome of acting as if the suggested fictions were true is bad for Barry. The difference is the motivation of the one promoting the suggestion:

The car salesman is attempting to influence Barry's to act as if the suggested premise was true. In contrast, the conventional hypnotist does not bother convincing the subject that the suggested premise is true. Subjects give their tacit approval to "play along" and bypass the need for proof; they use their imagination to at least pretend the suggested premise is operative.

 

 

 

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