Self-Discretion
Self-discretion is the mechanism Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson prefer in The Elephant in the Brain (2018) to explain how a person can hold a motive without admitting it. There is no active lie. Damaging information is kept available but given less psychological prominence, so it can be recalled and rarely is. It is softer than Trivers's strategic self-deception, since it asks for no false belief, only for the true one to be rehearsed less. The book cites no study for the machinery it proposes.
What it is
The passage sits at pp. 88 to 89 of Chapter 5. The authors distinguish self-discretion from two neighbours. Active self-lying means installing a false belief. Strategic ignorance means refusing the information in the first place. Self-discretion lets the information in and then demotes it.
The proposed machinery is that pride rewards the neural pathways that bring a memory back, and shame punishes them. A fact that reflects badly on a person therefore tends to surface less often, with no decision to bury it. In the book's frame this serves the person's public face. The less the mind's press secretary knows, the more convincingly it can deny what it is asked.
In effect
The book's worked case appears in the body-language chapter, at pp. 126 to 127. A worker, Peter, marginalises a rival at work, Jim, with nothing quotable: a shift of the shoulder, a glance that lands elsewhere, all deniable as misreading. The authors add that Peter may not know he is doing it. If he introspected carefully he could notice what he was doing, "but why bother", since the less he knows the more convincingly he can deny it.
The mechanism is the part of the book's machinery that most resembles ordinary experience. Most readers can recall a thing they avoided thinking about. That familiarity is part of its appeal, and it is also a reason to be careful with it.
What it does not say
It is a conjecture presented as an explanation. The proposed role of pride and shame in reinforcing or punishing memory pathways is asserted, and no study is cited for it in the passage. The Peter and Jim case cannot be tested as written: the sentence that part of Peter's mind "would love to see Jim fired" admits no answer Peter could give that would count against it. The vault records the mechanism as not a research claim, and it should not be upgraded because it sounds reasonable.
It also does not carry the weight of the experimental literature on self-deception. The 2019 and 2020 experiments on expecting to persuade, discussed on the page for strategic self-deception, did not test self-discretion. They measured confidence, not rehearsal of unwelcome facts.
Sources
- Simler, K., & Hanson, R. (2018). The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life. Oxford University Press. Chapter 5, pp. 88-89, with the worked case at pp. 126-127. Taken from the vault's audited notes on the book, 2026-09-14, and the vault's review of the mechanism, 2026-09-25.