When I reflect on Marcus Aurelius’ meditations on what it means to live a good life, it seems to me that despite the fact that Marcus' answer is millennia-old, we haven't got much closer to a better answer than he did. We still know that living according to your nature will bring you great happiness; we've further explored our minds' capacities; now, we quantifiably know that authenticity, mindfulness, reflections and truth can increase one's satisfaction and fulfilment and we've seen cultures for whom death is indeed treated as a rite of passage and something to be celebrated. Yet, we still seem to struggle in the practice of such 'obvious' truths...

That other people lie is not surprising to anyone. What is less acknowledged is the fact that all too often we also lie to ourselves. Therefore, a better understanding of why self-deception occurs is pressing. Unfortunately, philosophical debates, such as that surrounding the dual representation paradox, have stumbled scientific advancements for too long and it’s high time to break the vicious cycle. VH&T break the shackles of endless, abstract arguments and lay out an empirically-driven approach to self-deception in an attempt to stimulate research from biologists, biological mathematicians, evolutionary psychologist and others. Although some important aspects of this new proposal are being called into question, such as the costs and evolutionary stability of self-deception, it remains a valuable theory that accounts for a wide range of findings and makes testable predictions. Call it self-deception but I believe that VH&T’s theory lays out the foundation for a complete understanding of self-deception.

But then again, what if there are universal truths to be known? Physics and mathematics, among other disciplines, are deeply concerned with finding universals and explaining everything in neat equations. Are their efforts in vain? The position you take to the above two problems will give you an answer to that one too.