Head, Heart and Assimilation
In a previous essay, I have commented on the writings of Dan Gardner, one of many writers who have entertained us with stories of the fallibility of the human mind. We use "reason" mostly to rationalize or justify decisions and opinions we make for other reasons.
But what are these reasons?
I see a lot of variations on a theme, which seems so obvious that it slips by without alerting our bullshit detector. The story goes that our "primitive" minds didn't need to think carefully and logically. We "evolved" thought processes that, for example, promoted our survival by encouraging "false positives" -- nobody got eaten by thinking a bush was a lion and running away, but people got eaten by thinking a lion was a bush and ignoring it. So the story goes ...
You can immediately start to suspect the "head/gut" theory if you substitute "dog" for "primitive human" in Garner's elaborate tutorials on how we have "evolved" the brains we have. There is nothing specifically "human" in his arguments. Is the only difference between dogs and humans a different balance between "head and gut"? I'd say there are a few things that make humans totally different. What's more, it's exactly these things that lead to all the problems Gardner is trying to "explain" with his "head/gut" metaphor.
In fact, most of the fallacies under discussion make sense only in a human society. For example, a group of angry revolutionaries will become more radical and extreme as they interact with each other. And there is the common phenomenon of "group think". Many of Gardner's examples unravel when we look for animal experiments to demonstrate a phenomenon. Most of the rest rely exclusively on experiments with humans (usually hapless psychology students). What is it about humans that simultaneously gives us the gift of reason and the curse of ignoring it?
Lets take another look at our cave man. What is it that is genuinely new with humans? When it comes to decision-making, it is obviously culture, language or, as Noam Chomsky would say, (more fundamentally) the ability to think and communicate in symbols - abstract thinking. This is the key to reason and, of course mis-use of reason. In fact most of the big mistakes we make in our decisions are made collectively and emerge in the process of using (and abusing) language.
This modifies the "head/gut" thesis in a fundamental way. The fallacies, usually attributed to "gut" are often a triumph of culture (through language) over the welfare of the individual (if only he used his head). This is the subject of this entire blog and we call it "assimilation".
"Group think" absorbs the reasoning power of each individual into a simpler (often wrong) view of the world. The ideas of the individual no longer matter and they are suppressed.
"Radicalization" convinces the individual to be extreme enough in his views to be admitted to the group. Less extreme views tend to disqualify him from membership.
People follow leaders who show confidence even if they are obviously wrong. This is a factor behind assimilation.
Faced with a majority of people who hold an obviously wrong opinion, one person can change his opinion or even come to believe something objectively false.
Throughout Gardner's examples of spectacular error, the common thread is people believing other people's bullshit (and their own), enabled by language. It is a process of assimilation, where tricks with words are used to convince and mislead.
While we are at it, we should note one other thing that is characteristic of humans: the tendency to "clump" together, follow leaders and suppress their own self interest to the (often imaginary) welfare of the group. This is assimilation and it works mainly through language and abstract thought.
To come back to the "head/gut" metaphor of Gardner, I'd say it works if we think of "gut" as the shared cultural mind - the pool of commonly understood (mostly wrong) ideas that each of us needs to work with on a day to day basis. In some respects, this "gut" is handed to us at birth - the mental equipment we all share. But in the most important aspects, it is built up over a lifetime through the information and mis-information we accumulate from our culture. This radically changes the metaphor, especially when we start to think of ways to avoid the fallacies enumerated by Gardner. Many of them can be traced back to the mis-use or limitation of communication between individuals, not to the "primitive" minds of individuals.
But what are these reasons?
I see a lot of variations on a theme, which seems so obvious that it slips by without alerting our bullshit detector. The story goes that our "primitive" minds didn't need to think carefully and logically. We "evolved" thought processes that, for example, promoted our survival by encouraging "false positives" -- nobody got eaten by thinking a bush was a lion and running away, but people got eaten by thinking a lion was a bush and ignoring it. So the story goes ...
You can immediately start to suspect the "head/gut" theory if you substitute "dog" for "primitive human" in Garner's elaborate tutorials on how we have "evolved" the brains we have. There is nothing specifically "human" in his arguments. Is the only difference between dogs and humans a different balance between "head and gut"? I'd say there are a few things that make humans totally different. What's more, it's exactly these things that lead to all the problems Gardner is trying to "explain" with his "head/gut" metaphor.
In fact, most of the fallacies under discussion make sense only in a human society. For example, a group of angry revolutionaries will become more radical and extreme as they interact with each other. And there is the common phenomenon of "group think". Many of Gardner's examples unravel when we look for animal experiments to demonstrate a phenomenon. Most of the rest rely exclusively on experiments with humans (usually hapless psychology students). What is it about humans that simultaneously gives us the gift of reason and the curse of ignoring it?
Lets take another look at our cave man. What is it that is genuinely new with humans? When it comes to decision-making, it is obviously culture, language or, as Noam Chomsky would say, (more fundamentally) the ability to think and communicate in symbols - abstract thinking. This is the key to reason and, of course mis-use of reason. In fact most of the big mistakes we make in our decisions are made collectively and emerge in the process of using (and abusing) language.
This modifies the "head/gut" thesis in a fundamental way. The fallacies, usually attributed to "gut" are often a triumph of culture (through language) over the welfare of the individual (if only he used his head). This is the subject of this entire blog and we call it "assimilation".
"Group think" absorbs the reasoning power of each individual into a simpler (often wrong) view of the world. The ideas of the individual no longer matter and they are suppressed.
"Radicalization" convinces the individual to be extreme enough in his views to be admitted to the group. Less extreme views tend to disqualify him from membership.
People follow leaders who show confidence even if they are obviously wrong. This is a factor behind assimilation.
Faced with a majority of people who hold an obviously wrong opinion, one person can change his opinion or even come to believe something objectively false.
Throughout Gardner's examples of spectacular error, the common thread is people believing other people's bullshit (and their own), enabled by language. It is a process of assimilation, where tricks with words are used to convince and mislead.
While we are at it, we should note one other thing that is characteristic of humans: the tendency to "clump" together, follow leaders and suppress their own self interest to the (often imaginary) welfare of the group. This is assimilation and it works mainly through language and abstract thought.
To come back to the "head/gut" metaphor of Gardner, I'd say it works if we think of "gut" as the shared cultural mind - the pool of commonly understood (mostly wrong) ideas that each of us needs to work with on a day to day basis. In some respects, this "gut" is handed to us at birth - the mental equipment we all share. But in the most important aspects, it is built up over a lifetime through the information and mis-information we accumulate from our culture. This radically changes the metaphor, especially when we start to think of ways to avoid the fallacies enumerated by Gardner. Many of them can be traced back to the mis-use or limitation of communication between individuals, not to the "primitive" minds of individuals.
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