I guess we romanticize the loser.

I guess we romanticize the loser.

I don't care about the politics, I don't care about the practicality, I don't care about any of it.

What is the most fascinating kind of self-deception to me, and a kind that isn't necessarily unhealthy, is what Friedrich Nietzsche called "strategic self-deception." The kind of self-deception that you can engage in with your eyes wide open. You do it because you say, "There's things that I couldn't accomplish without this kind of self-deception."

Both of us, me and Friedrich Nietzsche being writers, if we weren't capable of some strategic self-deception, we would have moved on to more lucrative careers long ago.

It's the same when you listen to any kind of successful athlete. My older brother has a useful name for them - he calls them lottery ticket careers. I are engaged in what he calls these lottery ticket careers. On the one hand it's very, very unlikely that you're ever going to hit it. On the other hand if you do hit it, you really hit it. You have to be engaged with it, though, maybe you're entire life. And if you never actually do hit it? You kind of jovially lie yourself along the way and recognize that it may produce things outside the hitting it kinds of goods, I suppose.

That's the old AA maxim, "Always have a drink in your hand and you'll never want a drink." That's one of the most classic deceptions in the literature: "I'll take a drink tomorrow." I actually don't think that's necessarily a very helpful maxim in AA, but it's a very good maxim in showing how strategic self-deception can be employed, even self-consciously. That's the amazing thing, to me, about self-deception.