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study critique (271) book review (224) bad science (33) coordination problems (12) American history (7) archaeology (5) fraud (4) religious history (4) costly signaling (2) translation (2) rationalization (2)

Your Book Review: The Book Of Abraham

A deep dive into the Book of Abraham, focusing on how Joseph Smith's translations of Egyptian papyri were definitively proven false by Egyptologists, yet Mormonism continues to thrive—raising questions about whether instrumental rationality trumps epistemic rationality.

acx
Jul 8, 2026 16,711 words 318 likes 807 comments Listen · 105 min Read Read Opened Opened
cognitive bias (59) consciousness (39) self-deception (14) akrasia (11) signaling (10) hyperbolic discounting (5) unconscious mind (4) self-signaling (2) rationalization (2) moral behavior (2)

Conflicts Between Mental Subagents: Expanding Wei Dai's Master-Slave Model

Scott expands on Wei Dai's master-slave model of the mind to explain akrasia and self-deception, proposing that the unconscious (U) uses the conscious mind (C) as a PR agency to signal socially admirable values while pursuing selfish goals, requiring just enough genuine support of C's principles to maintain credibility both to others and to C itself.

lw
Aug 4, 2010 3,191 words 72 likes 81 comments Read Read Opened Opened
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