You make an excellent point here, I think. It seems clear that we actually remember far less, and in less detail, than we think we do.
but we still rationalize our own thoughts and actions, in order to perpetuate the idea that we DO control them. (When in fact, we mostly don’t even control our thoughts, let alone our actions.)
However, I’m not sure I agree with the connotations on “in order to perpetuate” here. The evidence seems to me to indicate that the rationalization systems are a subconciously automatic and necessary part of the human mind, to fill in the gaps of memory and experience.
The question is, as rationalists, what can we do to counteract the known failure modes of this system? The techniques outlined in the main post here are a good start, at least.
Not to mention that evolution is not going to design a system in order to make you feel like you are in control. That’s more psychoanalytic than evolutionary-biological, I should think.
Sorry, I should’ve been clearer: it’s in order to perpetuate this illusion to OTHER people, not to yourself. Using Robin’s terms of “near” and “far”, the function of verbal rationalization is to convince other people that you’re actually making decisions based on the socially-shared “far” values, rather than your personal “near” values.
The fact that this rationalization also deludes you is only useful to evolution insofar as it makes you more convincing.
If language initially evolved as a command system, where hearing words triggered motor actions directly (and there is some evidence for this), then it’s likely you’d end up with an arms race of people exploiting others verbally, and needing defenses against the exploits. Liars and persuaders, creating the need for disbelief, skepticism, and automatic awareness of self-interested (or ally-interested) reasoning.
But this entire “persuasion war” could (and very likely did) operate largely independent of the existing (“near”) decision-making facilities. You’d only evolve a connection between the Savant and the Gossip (as I call the two intelligences) to the extent that you need near-mode information for the Gossip to do its job.
But… get this: part of the Gossip’s arsenal is its social projection system… the ability to infer attitudes based on behavior. Simply self-applying that system, i.e., observing your own actions and experience, and then “rationalizing” them, gives you an illusion of personal consciousness and free will.
And it even gives you attribution error, simply because you have more data available about what was happening at the time the Savant actually made a decision.… even though the real reasons behind the Savant’s choice may be completely opaque to you.
So, psychoanalysis gets repression completely wrong. As you say, evolution doesn’t care what you think or feel. It’s all about being able to “spin” things to others, and to do that, your Gossip operates on a need-to-know basis: it only bothers to ask the Savant for data that will help its socially-motivated reasoning.
Most of what I teach people to do—and hell, much of what you teach people to do—is basically about training the Gossip to ask the Savant better questions… and more importantly, getting it to actually pay attention to the answers, instead of confabulating its own.
Minor terminology quibble: I’m not very fond of the terms “savant” and “gossip”, I can’t really tell “which is which” :P
Savant = near mind, “subconscious mind”, “horse brain”/”robot brain” (using your other terminology)
Gossip = far mind, “conscious mind”, “monkey brain”
… though I also see the problem with re-using more accepted terms like “subconscious mind”—people already have a lot of ideas of what those mean, so starting with new terminology can work better.
Yeah, when I officially write these up, I’ll describe them as characters… thereby reusing the Gossip’s “character recognition” technology. ;-) That is, I’ll tell a story or two illustrating their respective characters.
Or maybe I’ll just borrow the story of Rain Man, since Dustin Hoffman played an autistic savant, and Tom Cruise played a very status-oriented (i.e. “gossipy”) individual, and the story was about the Gossip learning to appreciate and pay attention to the Savant. ;-)
… though I also see the problem with re-using more accepted terms like “subconscious mind”—people already have a lot of ideas of what those mean, so starting with new terminology can work better.
Right, and the same thing goes for left/right brain, etc. What’s more, terms like Savant and Gossip can retain their conceptual and functional meaning even as we improve our anatomical understanding of where these functions are located. Really, for purposes of using the brain, it doesn’t ordinarily matter where each function is located, only that you be able to tell which ones you’re using, so you can learn to use the ones that work for the kinds of thinking you want to do.
Has anyone brought up this study by Bruner and Potter (1964) before? I think it would relate to intertemporal beliefs and how we sometimes perceive them to be more sound than they really are:
In this demonstration, you will see nine different pictures. The pictures will get clearer and clearer. Make a guess as to what is being shown for each of the pictures, and write down your guess. Note the number of the picture where you were first able to recognize what was being shown. Then go backwards—press the “BACK” button on the browser—and see at which point you can no longer identify the picture. Are your “ascending” and “decending” points the same?
========
IF YOU HAVE TRIED THE STUDY:
Pictures of common objects, coming slowly into focus, were viewed by adult observers. Recognition was delayed when subjects first viewed the pictures out of focus. The greater or more prolonged the initial blur, the slower the eventual recognition. Interference may be accounted for partly by the difficulty of rejecting incorrect hypotheses based on substandard cues.
It would be interesting to think of your intertemporal frame of mind as discontinuous and running at 24 frames per second (like a film). Maybe your consciousness gives your sense of beliefs a false sense of flowing like a movie from one time state to the next.
You make an excellent point here, I think. It seems clear that we actually remember far less, and in less detail, than we think we do.
However, I’m not sure I agree with the connotations on “in order to perpetuate” here. The evidence seems to me to indicate that the rationalization systems are a subconciously automatic and necessary part of the human mind, to fill in the gaps of memory and experience.
The question is, as rationalists, what can we do to counteract the known failure modes of this system? The techniques outlined in the main post here are a good start, at least.
Not to mention that evolution is not going to design a system in order to make you feel like you are in control. That’s more psychoanalytic than evolutionary-biological, I should think.
Sorry, I should’ve been clearer: it’s in order to perpetuate this illusion to OTHER people, not to yourself. Using Robin’s terms of “near” and “far”, the function of verbal rationalization is to convince other people that you’re actually making decisions based on the socially-shared “far” values, rather than your personal “near” values.
The fact that this rationalization also deludes you is only useful to evolution insofar as it makes you more convincing.
If language initially evolved as a command system, where hearing words triggered motor actions directly (and there is some evidence for this), then it’s likely you’d end up with an arms race of people exploiting others verbally, and needing defenses against the exploits. Liars and persuaders, creating the need for disbelief, skepticism, and automatic awareness of self-interested (or ally-interested) reasoning.
But this entire “persuasion war” could (and very likely did) operate largely independent of the existing (“near”) decision-making facilities. You’d only evolve a connection between the Savant and the Gossip (as I call the two intelligences) to the extent that you need near-mode information for the Gossip to do its job.
But… get this: part of the Gossip’s arsenal is its social projection system… the ability to infer attitudes based on behavior. Simply self-applying that system, i.e., observing your own actions and experience, and then “rationalizing” them, gives you an illusion of personal consciousness and free will.
And it even gives you attribution error, simply because you have more data available about what was happening at the time the Savant actually made a decision.… even though the real reasons behind the Savant’s choice may be completely opaque to you.
So, psychoanalysis gets repression completely wrong. As you say, evolution doesn’t care what you think or feel. It’s all about being able to “spin” things to others, and to do that, your Gossip operates on a need-to-know basis: it only bothers to ask the Savant for data that will help its socially-motivated reasoning.
Most of what I teach people to do—and hell, much of what you teach people to do—is basically about training the Gossip to ask the Savant better questions… and more importantly, getting it to actually pay attention to the answers, instead of confabulating its own.
Minor terminology quibble: I’m not very fond of the terms “savant” and “gossip”, I can’t really tell “which is which” :P
Savant = near mind, “subconscious mind”, “horse brain”/”robot brain” (using your other terminology)
Gossip = far mind, “conscious mind”, “monkey brain”
… though I also see the problem with re-using more accepted terms like “subconscious mind”—people already have a lot of ideas of what those mean, so starting with new terminology can work better.
Yeah, when I officially write these up, I’ll describe them as characters… thereby reusing the Gossip’s “character recognition” technology. ;-) That is, I’ll tell a story or two illustrating their respective characters.
Or maybe I’ll just borrow the story of Rain Man, since Dustin Hoffman played an autistic savant, and Tom Cruise played a very status-oriented (i.e. “gossipy”) individual, and the story was about the Gossip learning to appreciate and pay attention to the Savant. ;-)
Right, and the same thing goes for left/right brain, etc. What’s more, terms like Savant and Gossip can retain their conceptual and functional meaning even as we improve our anatomical understanding of where these functions are located. Really, for purposes of using the brain, it doesn’t ordinarily matter where each function is located, only that you be able to tell which ones you’re using, so you can learn to use the ones that work for the kinds of thinking you want to do.
Has anyone brought up this study by Bruner and Potter (1964) before? I think it would relate to intertemporal beliefs and how we sometimes perceive them to be more sound than they really are:
http://www.ahs.uwaterloo.ca/~kin356/bpdemo.htm
========
IF YOU HAVE TRIED THE STUDY:
It would be interesting to think of your intertemporal frame of mind as discontinuous and running at 24 frames per second (like a film). Maybe your consciousness gives your sense of beliefs a false sense of flowing like a movie from one time state to the next.