The Elephant In The Brain, by K. Simler and R. Hanson (2017)

So good. I put off reading this for a while because I thought my outlook on the world was cynical enough. I was worried this might drive me into being a complete fucking recluse, but I’m glad I read it.

The core idea of the book is that our brain is unreliable in its assessment of our own motivations, and that everything that everyone does is to send some sort of signal to others about our social status. Our conscious mind is perfectly willing to invent rationalisations for our behaviour that seem true to us, but may just exist to mask our selfish behaviour. Hiding our motives from our conscious mind could be a tactic the brain uses to make us stand up well to interrogation; you can’t give away that you’re selfish if you’re not even consciously aware of it.

The book looks at different aspects of our lives and examines how our rationales and explanations for our behaviour hold up under scrutiny. The examination often takes something that we are content to say arises out of agreeable motives, such as giving to charity to help people, or sending kids to school to give them an education, and then takes a look at the selfish benefits we derive from taking part in them; increased social status, free childcare, etc. I particularly enjoyed the chapters on Laughter, Consumption, Charity, and Education.

The Education chapter was phenomenal. Through the lens of signalling, it's clear that the reason meaningful reform of institutions like schools is so difficult is that we are rarely honest about what purpose they serve in the first place. I would like to learn more about this and understand how school systems are useful even if they are not fit for purpose in providing an education. If I have children in future, I would like to be able to give them a (maybe not completely) honest answer on why school is a necessary evil.

One of the highlights of the book comes from examining the neuroscience research conducted by Roger Sperry and Michael Gazzaniga. An experiment with a split-brain patient reveals the fickle nature of the explanations our brains conjure up to explain our own behavior. Split-brain patients are missing the part of the brain that links up the left and right hemispheres. The sounds heard by the left ear are processed in the right hemisphere, and the part of our brain which forms speech is (usually) in the left hemisphere. Because of this, the researchers could whisper into the left ear of a patient and command them to leave the room, then ask them why they’ve left the room. Because the part of the patient’s brain which is tasked with explaining his behaviour is not aware of the command from the researchers, it invents a reason on the spot, in this case: ‘I wanted to go get a coke’.

This is probably the most concrete example the book provides of our inability to trust our own motives. They paint the conscious part of the brain as a ‘press secretary’ for the unconscious mind — there to spin the selfish desires we have into reasonable motives that do not alienate us from our peers. Not having all the information (the true motives) makes the press secretary’s job much easier, because they can’t reveal a lie that they aren’t aware of.

Learning that we’re all wired to be selfish deep down and that there’s not really much we can do about it except for behave in a way that endears you to the people you want on your side is surprisingly helpful.

It concludes with a less pessimistic message than I expected. A better understanding of our brain’s willingness to bend reality to its benefit can help us resolve conflicts more peacefully, and an awareness of our own signalling and the signalling of others can help us create environments that use our selfish nature to our collective advantage; a philosophy known as ‘enlightened self-interest’.

Highlights

004

Our brains are built to act in our self-interest while at the same time trying hard not to appear selfish in front of other people. And in order to throw them off the trail, our brains often keep "us", our conscious minds, in the dark. The less we know of our own ugly motives, the easier it is to hide them from others.

006

"We should often blush at our noblest deeds," wrote François de La Rochefoucauld in the 17th century, "if the world were to see all their underlying motives."

007

[Thorstein] Velben famously coined the term "conspicious consumption" to explain the demand for luxury goods. When consumers are asked why they bought an expensive watch or high-end handbag, they often cite material factors like comfort, aesthetics, and functionality. But Veblen argued that, in fact, the demand for luxury goods is driven largely by a _social_ motive: flaunting one's wealth.

008

As [Robert] Trivers puts it: "At every single stage [of processing information]—from its biased arrival, to its biased encoding, to organizing it around false logic, to misremembering and then misrepresenting it to others—the mind continually acts to distort information flow in favor of the usual goal of appearing better than one really is".

010

Under the feel-good veneer of win-win cooperation—teaching kids, healing the sick, celebrating creativity—our institutions harbor giant, silent furnaces of intra-group competitive signaling, where trillions of dollars of wealth, resources, and human effort are being shoveled in and burned to ash every year, largely for the purpose of showing off.

011

This may sound like pessimism, but it's actually great news.

012

Why can't we be honest with ourselves? The answer is that our thoughts aren't as private as we imagine. In many ways, conscious thought is a rehearsal of what we're ready to say to others. As [Robert] Trivers puts it, "We deceive ourselves the better to deceive others".

013

If we're being honest with ourselves—and true to the book's thesis—then we must admit there is a risk to confronting our hidden motives. Human beings are self-deceived because self-deception is useful. It allows us to reap the benefits of selfish behavior while posing as unselfish in front of others; it helps us look better than we really are. Confronting our delusions must therefore (at least in part) undermine their very reason for existing. There's a very real sense in which we might be better off not knowing what we're up to.

027

But many signs suggest that the keys to our intelligence lie in the harsh, unflattering light of social challenges, the arena of zero-sum games in which one person's gain is another's loss. It's not that we're completely unaware of these competitive, zero-sum instincts—we just tend to give them less prominence when explaining our behaviour.

030

In an influential 1990 article on language evolution, [Steven Pinker and Paul Bloom] write: "Interacting with an organism of approximately equal mental abilities whose motives are at times outright malevolent makes formidable and ever-escalating demands on cognition".

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