“Imagine that a husband comes home with lipstick on his collar and his wife, who sees it, becomes agitated as a consequence. But then refuses to think through what the implications of that might be. And so the self deception is not one fully thought out proposition against another. It’s a fully thought out (or partially thought out) set of propositions about marriage stability versus an emotional queue of uncertain circumstance that had to be unpacked with difficulty. And avoidance of that is tantamount at least to some form of self deception.

She’s got a fleshed out idea of marriage stability and harmony. All she’s got to contradict that is one piece of visual evidence and an emotion. She can hold onto to her pre-existing belief with no work. In order to transform that belief, she’s going to have to do a tremendous amount of exploration and investigation.”