CHAPTER 12 The Design of People
role in shaping our reality: a reality that, even if we pass the Sally–Anne
test by the time we’re five, often remains unfathomably distorted and,
more importantly, uniquely our own.
Unfortunately, Project Redo was a runaway train at this point, and
there was nobody around to help my brain make the cognitive shift it
needed to see reality for what it truly was.Saving The DaY
In The Honest Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone—Especially
Ourselves, Ariely writes about the prevailing economic model for cheating
and lying known as SMORC: simple model of rational crime. He writes,
“We all seek our own advantage as we make our way through the world.
Whether we do this by robbing banks or writing books is inconsequential
to our rational calculations of costs and benefits.” But this doesn’t quite
paint the entire picture. “How can we secure the benefits of cheating and
at the same time still view ourselves as honest, wonderful people?” he
challenges. “This is where our amazing cognitive flexibility comes into
play. Thanks to this human skill, as long as we cheat only a little bit, we
can benefit from cheating and still view ourselves as marvelous human
beings. This balancing act is the process of rationalization, and it is the
basis of what we’ll call the fudge factor theory.”^13
Along these lines, when I posted my own design to the Project Redo
Basecamp a few hours after I started working on it, I titled the message
with the auspicious and rather obnoxious, “A Fresh Direction.” In it I waxed
poetic about the strengths of this new design and why it was the right way
forward (acknowledging, of course, that I could be completely wrong with
my assessment).
By now, my brain had constructed an elaborate story about the entire
situation, and thanks to the fudge factor I had given myself the part of the13 Dan Ariely, “Testing the Simple Model of Rational Crime (SMORC)”, The Honest Truth About
Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone—Especially Ourselves, 18 June 2013, p. 17.