It's an open question in philosophy (what isn't?), but isn't happiness our ultimate aim, or at least a very important component of the ultimate aim? It's prett

It's an open question in philosophy (what isn't?), but isn't happiness our ultimate aim, or at least a very important component of the ultimate aim? It's pretty easy to try to bias yourself toward happiness, but still have a daemon in the background making sure you're not diverging from reality too much. If you're very concerned about being biased, then you can probably trust yourself to be reasonable when being biased in this way. For many of us, we're more inclined to be irrationally biased against ourselves than in favor of ourselves. The conscious, monitored, and controlled bias the OP describes can counteract our natural pessimistic inclinations.