Incoherence and Dissonance

We are complex thinking entities, and such entities are always incoherent.

Incoherence is Pervasive

Incoherence is the state of an entity that contradicts itself.

A complex entity, such as a person, is always incoherent. Once we start considering sufficiently many varied thoughts, ensuring they are all mutually compatible is too expensive.

Let’s consider all that would be needed to achieve coherence. Whenever we learn a new piece of information, we would need to…

Pause and not accept it at face value. This is not practical when undergoing courses or experiments. It would slow everything down to a halt.

Enumerate all of our beliefs and check whether the new piece of information contradicts them. This is not possible. As people - and as complex reasoning entities in general- we can not list all of our beliefs. And if we could, we would not have the time to check them individually.

Enumerate all the consequences of our beliefs and check them for contradiction. This is even harder than the previous point. To ensure coherence, we need to check more than whether each piece of information contradicts our beliefs. We also need to unfold and check their logical consequences.

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The above is obviously impossible. Thus, as we learn more, we can not check if each item of knowledge is compatible with what we already know, and we accumulate unresolved contradictions.

In other words, we are always incoherent. Better get used to it.

This is not only true of people. As I stated initially, this is true of every complex entity.

This is true of modern AIs. ChatGPT and Claude are naturally incoherent. When someone finds incoherency in them, it is not because they are dumb; they are complex thinking entities, and every complex thinking entity is incoherent. We have known how to build practical, coherent thinking entities for a while: they are called relational databases, inference engines and more. They are much less complex than modern AIs.

Most importantly, this is true of groups. Groups hold beliefs that are not fully captured by any member and perform actions that are impossible for any member. In other words, groups are complex thinking entities in their own right. As a result, they are incoherent.

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This is why when we notice incoherence in ourselves, someone else, a group, or an AI, our immediate reaction should not be, “OMG, how could they be so dumb”.

Embracing Dissonance

We are always incoherent. And whenever we notice it in ourselves and our actions, it feels wrong.

This feeling of wrongness, arising from internal contradictions, is called Cognitive Dissonance.

This feeling can arise in all types of situations. Losing at a sport or game at which we thought we were good. Seeing someone we thought was nice become an asshole. Going through an accident while thinking we were safe.

Fundamentally, Cognitive Dissonance happens when two firmly held beliefs contradict each other. The firm beliefs may come from many sources: our direct experience, authority figures we trust, our feelings about people close to us, our identity, and more.

There are many ways to resolve Cognitive Dissonance and make the bad feeling disappear.

Changing the beliefs involved in the contradiction. For instance, if we thought we were good at [X] and yet we lost, we can admit that we were bad. This is changing the former belief.

But we could also change the latter belief and make ourselves think that we won. “Oh, the opponent cheated. Even if the judge didn’t agree, they still should have been disqualified. In reality, it means that I actually won. It just was not acknowledged.”

Adding metaphorical epicycles. Epicycles are extraneous beliefs that help reconcile the contradiction. For instance, “Sure, I lost, but I was very tired. It was very cold, and Mercury was in retrograde.”

Deciding not to think about it. Cognitive Dissonance only lasts for as long as the contradiction is salient in our mind. This thought leads to a resolution of Cognitive Dissonance that does not involving changing or forming beliefs.

That resolution is to ignore the contradiction and live in denial. With this technique, the contradiction is not salient in our mind and thus we stop experiencing Cognitive Dissonance.

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However, all the strategies above stem from trying to resolve the feeling. As a result, they suck.

I recommend getting used to the feeling instead. To embrace it.

We are incoherent. As we introspect and study ourselves more, the more contradictions we will notice. If someone feels bad every time we encounter one, so much so that they need to quash that feeling, I can easily predict that they will just quit introspecting. Thus not embracing Cognitive Dissonance actually prevents us from introspecting.

This is also true of groups. Let’s imagine a family or a dedicated political movement. At the level of group, a major source of incoherence is disagreement between members. If they feel bad whenever they disagree about some topics and quash those disagreements, then they will surely stop expressing them. Given that noticing and thinking about internal disagreements is the first step toward resolving them, this dynamic will thus prevent their resolution and lead to even more disagreements.

Taking a step back, Cognitive Dissonance is a feeling. It is a smart assistant in our mind that knows everything about us and tells us about contradictions we might have missed. This is great! Of course, this often indicates a problem, but we should not shoot the messenger! We should be glad the messenger tells us about the problem and then separately deal with the problem accordingly.

Conclusion

I’ll leave it at that for now.

Cheers, and have a nice day!