So the movie’s thesis is that to be happy, we must self-deceive and embrace incorrect but inspiring far-view ideals, such love, friendship, altruism, laughter, art, and fiction. This thesis affirms a core ideal we seem desperate to believe: that common far ideals have little practical function. For example, we want to think that our loves of fiction or laughter are “true” loves, and do little to achieve base and personal purposes.
In fact of course our far ideals evolved to serve concrete, practical, and largely personal functions. A world without lies would still contain art, laughter, fiction, etc. – we’d just be more honest about the functions they serve. But that is a truth we dare not tell; we’d actually rather believe that most of our other cherished ideals are lies.
via Overcoming Bias : The Biggest Lie?.
Giancarlo Angulo's Blog