In one sentence
Many apparent reasoning failures are not bugs in an otherwise truth-seeking mind. They are adaptive responses to social incentives: beliefs can function as status signals, loyalty badges, political tools, or protection against exclusion. Improving belief accuracy therefore requires changing the social environment that rewards bad-faith beliefs, not merely teaching individuals more critical-thinking techniques.
Overview
Simler begins with the puzzle of why other people believe obviously strange things while our own beliefs feel reasonable. He asks readers to treat believers as humans with the same cognitive architecture rather than dismissing them as stupid or irrational.
His central analogy compares beliefs to employees. A normal employee earns a place by doing useful work; likewise, a “merit belief” earns its keep by helping us predict and navigate the world. But a company may retain an unproductive employee because that person has political connections. Similarly, a “crony belief” may survive because it brings social or political benefits, even when it contributes little to accurate prediction.
Crony beliefs help people blend in, stand out, flatter authority, show loyalty, signal intelligence or virtue, cheerlead, and claim moral or cultural high ground. They need not be entirely false, and a belief can have both pragmatic and social value. The distinction is about which reward dominates.
The essay’s practical test is behavioral: merit beliefs are usually exposed to criticism, correction, betting, and action. Crony beliefs are more likely to be abstract, conspicuous, overconfident, emotionally defended, and insulated from consequences. Political, religious, ethical, identity-related, and climate beliefs are especially vulnerable when ordinary individuals have little opportunity to act on them or receive material feedback.
Simler’s proposed remedy is collective rather than purely individual. A person who abandons socially rewarded beliefs in isolation may lose status or belonging. Communities must instead establish norms that reward accurate reasoning across the group. The accompanying appendix adds evidence from motivated reasoning and cognitive bias research, and explains why a
Core ideas
Two reward systems for belief
Brains balance pragmatic rewards—better decisions and outcomes—with social rewards—approval, belonging, status, loyalty, and protection. A belief can be retained because it is useful in either sense.
The crony-employee analogy
A crony employee may be incompetent yet protected because of political connections. A crony belief similarly receives special treatment inside the mind: it is defended, excused, or preserved because it serves social interests.
Posturing through beliefs
Beliefs can be used to blend in, distinguish oneself as independent, flatter powerful people, signal intelligence or virtue, demonstrate loyalty, encourage others, or claim moral and cultural superiority.
How to spot a crony belief
Relative warning signs include abstractness, low actionability, conspicuous self-advertisement, overconfidence, reluctance to bet, anger at criticism, pride in holding the belief, and anguish at changing one’s mind.
The actionability test
When a belief guides consequential action, reality supplies feedback and accuracy matters. When no meaningful personal action depends on it, social judgment can become the dominant source of reward.
Belief versus truth
“Merit” does not guarantee truth, and “crony” does not guarantee falsity. These labels describe the incentive structure surrounding a belief, not its objective correctness.
Why critical thinking alone may fail
Individual rationality training can sharpen the mind’s ability to defend socially useful beliefs. The deeper solution is to change group norms so people gain status for accuracy, correction, and good-faith reasoning.
Crony beliefs versus lies
Internalizing a socially useful fiction can be easier than repeatedly maintaining a complex lie, especially across multiple audiences. Deliberate lying is more useful when the belief conflicts with one’s worldview or would be dangerous to act upon.
Practical takeaways
- When you feel a strong desire to believe something, ask what social reward the belief provides—not only what evidence supports it.
- Separate beliefs that guide costly action from beliefs mainly displayed to other people. Apply much stricter epistemic standards to the latter.
- Notice whether you welcome correction, would place a bet, and would change behavior if wrong. Resistance on all three fronts is diagnostic.
- Treat emotional defensiveness as evidence about the belief’s function, not as proof that the belief is false.
- Avoid diagnosing another person’s specific belief with certainty; multiple audiences and incentives can produce the same outward position.
- Build or join communities where changing one’s mind, acknowledging uncertainty, and making accurate predictions improve rather than damage status.
- Use the concept symmetrically. The essay is most valuable when applied to beliefs you find admirable or politically congenial, not just to opponents’ beliefs.
Caveats and counterpoints
- The essay is primarily a conceptual and plausibility argument, not a systematic review or demonstrated theory explaining most human error.
- Simler explicitly lowers confidence in the claim that social incentives are the root of all major thinking errors. Ordinary limitations—poor information, limited time, memory failures, and computational constraints—also matter.
- A belief’s social usefulness is difficult to infer from outside. The same belief may genuinely improve decisions while also signaling loyalty or virtue.
- Actionability is an imperfect test: people may act indirectly through voting, donations, career choices, or collective institutions, even when feedback is delayed or noisy.
- The essay risks becoming self-sealing: disagreement may itself be interpreted as evidence that the critic is protecting a crony belief. That makes humility and independent evidence essential.
- The climate-change example is intentionally provocative and broad. It does not establish that particular climate positions are false or insincere; it illustrates how beliefs can be socially rewarded when individual feedback is weak.
Questions worth revisiting
- Which of my strongly held beliefs would I be unwilling to bet on or use to make a costly decision?
- Which beliefs do I advertise most readily, and what audience am I trying to influence?
- Do I reward people around me for accuracy, or mainly for loyalty and agreement?
- When have I changed my mind because of evidence, and when because of social pressure?
- What would count as disconfirming evidence for a belief that gives me status or belonging?
- Am I using “crony belief” mainly as a tool for self-examination, or as a label for people I dislike?
Return to this when…
Return to this essay when evaluating polarized disagreements, ideological communities, public moral disputes, or your own intense reactions to criticism. Its most useful reminder is that a belief may be serving an audience before it is serving reality.