I've written and thought about this a lot, and focused a bit on alignment. ( http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/03/21/gervais-macleod-14-expanding-alignme

I've written and thought about this a lot, and focused a bit on alignment. ( http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/03/21/gervais-macleod-14-expanding-alignment-plus-well-adjustedness/ http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/03/21/gervais-macle... ) My bias is chaotic, so I tend to think that people are a little better (morally speaking) than neutral, but that institutions tend to become a little bit worse. It's not a huge gap. The average person might be a moral C+ and the average organization might be C-. As you said, people tend to become biased in their views based on success or failure. People who succeed tend to overestimate how good they are, and how good the world is. People who fail tend to underestimate one or both (the "one" case being a defense mechanism). It takes a real mix of experiences to pick up the nuances, which include not only an accurate view of the average person and institution, but also the tools to assess them. So why does failure bring slightly (and, really, just slightly) more wisdom? I tend to think that people will on average improve with experience, so both the successful and failed person will become better humans if they learn the right lessons. This means that conclusions-about-self aren't as useful as conclusions-about-world because the self changes and can be improved. However, the array of institutions out there doesn't seem to change in quality. The failed person has been exposed to a more accurate sampling of human organizations and is more likely to have an accurate understanding of how they work. I almost feel like some successful people deliberately portray a naive worldview (when, in fact, many are experienced and cynical like everyone else) because they want the social status that comes with being assumed to have had only positive experiences.