October 23, 2012

Can Cognitive Illusions Be Overcome?

By Greg Linster

I recently finished reading Daniel Kahneman’s delightful book Thinking, Fast And Slow [which is a book I can assure you I will read more than once].  If for some strange reason you’re unfamiliar with Kahneman’s work, he won the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 2002 for pioneering research done with his long-time colleague (and dear friend) Amos Tversky, who is now deceased.  Their work focused on human decision making and dismantled the idea that the human species thinks like homo economicus. [1]

Ok, so here’s a very elementary overview of what the book is about.  According to Kahneman, the brain has this duality to it when it comes to thinking.  System 1 works quickly and intuitively, in other words, it’s the “fast” in Thinking Fast And Slow.  For instance, if I were to throw a baseball into the air and ask you to catch it, you would hopefully be able to do so without having to make any complex calculations.  Most of us intuitively and instinctively know how to catch a ball, although some people are better equipped to do this than others.

While System 1 generally works efficiently, it occasionally leads us astray.  For example, answer the following question as quickly as you can: A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?  Quick: say the answer out-loud.

That was easy, right?  Now think about the correct answer to this question: the bat costs $1.05 and the ball costs $0.05 ($1.05 + $0.05 = $1.10).  So, what happened?  Your intuition (System 1) led you astray, but once you thought about this question for a minute you likely switched over to what Kahneman calls System 2 and were correctly able to answer the question.  System 2 is analytical and rational, but unfortunately also lazy.  I could conjure up many speculative evolutionary stories as to why we have these two systems, but I’ll refrain from doing so in this post.

What I really want to point out is that we all (yes, that includes yours truly) suffer from myriad biases. [2]  Accordingly, I’ve heard many rationally and philosophically minded people lament the fact that their brain can’t be trusted. Wait a second — think about the previous sentence for a moment.  The brain, the only thing we can think with, can’t be trusted to think properly, yet some part of our brain can also realize this.  Kahneman is definitely on to something — no computer I know of can do this!

So here’s an important question I’ve been thinking about ever since I read this book: can the cognitive illusions that plague us be overcome?  If you’re empirically minded, then you might be afraid to hear the answer to this question: it’s not looking good.  I don’t fret over this though.  Despite its flaws, our System 1 works wonderfully most of the time (as in the catching ball example) and has gotten us to this point in the evolutionary game.  That’s not too shabby, right?  Anyway, when tasked with answering this question, I really like how Kahneman put it in the book: “The best we can do is compromise: learn to recognize situations in which mistakes are likely and try harder to avoid significant mistakes when the stakes are high.  The premise of this book is that it is easier to recognize other people’s mistakes than our own.”

As for me, I’m trying to shed my illusions about the world and humanity to the best of my ability, but I’m not willing to do so at the cost of my humanity.

Notes:

[1] Homo Economicus defined.

[2] If you want to see a fairly comprehensive list of biases then check out this Wikipedia entry.

Comments Off | posted in Psychology

October 17, 2012

Perverse Health Incentives

By Greg Linster

I spend a fair amount of time commuting by train and by car.  Unlike many commuters, I actually look forward to this time because it’s my chance to catch up on podcasts, particularly EconTalk.  Anyway, I recently discovered a gem of an old interview (recorded in 2007) with George Mason University’s own Robin Hanson. [1]

I’m not exactly well versed in the medical literature, but I was surprised to hear Hanson mention an important study in the podcast that I had never heard of before.  The study I’m referring to is the Rand Health Insurance Experiment (HIE).  As Hanson puts it in this post, “If you remember only one medical study, it should be the RAND health insurance experiment, where from 1974 to 1982 the US government spent $50 million to randomly assign 7700 people in six US cities to three to five years each of either free or not free medicine, provided by the same set of doctors.”

Do you want to venture a guess as to what the result of this study was?  Not surprisingly, the thousands of people who were randomly given free health care consumed more of it.  However, shockingly, these people were not “healthier” by any objective measure.  Wait a minute, can that possibly be true?

Apparently people consume more of something when it’s cheaper, but that doesn’t necessarily make them healthier.  It turns out that medicine is one of these things  – go figure!  In a PBS documentary called Money and Medicine Roger Weisberg reiterates this point: “And as we look at medical evidence, comparative effectiveness, and outcomes research, we’re discovering that often places that do less have better health outcomes for their patients.” [2]

Here’s an interesting thing to think about: doctors are, in many important ways, very similar to auto mechanics.  For example, doctors and auto mechanics have a pecuniary incentive to act as salesmen.  In other words, doctors, again like auto mechanics, don’t make money unless they sell you something.  Doctors get paid for every surgery, every procedure, and every pharmaceutical they prescribe, but they don’t get paid for giving you negative advice.  That’s right, what makes for a good business opportunity doesn’t necessarily make for a good health outcome — such is the nature of a capitalist system.

When it comes to the future of public health in places like the United States I expect to see an increase in expenditure on health care and a decline in healthy individuals.  Call me cynical, but the evidence thus far supports my speculation.  At the end of the day, this podcast reminded me that most of us worry far too much about not receiving enough health care and worry far too little about receiving too much.  Although our ancestors had myriad other problems, they didn’t have this one.

As a general rule of thumb (and in my humble opinion), the things with the greatest efficacy when it comes to improving your health (like fasting) are not advertised because there is nothing to sell.  As Baltasar Gracián wrote in The Art of Worldly Wisdom: ”It takes a wise doctor to know when not to prescribe.”  Wise doctors do exist, but I think it’s going to take the elimination of perverse pecuniary incentives in the health care system to get most doctors to know when not to prescribe.  Worse yet, I’m not sure this is even possible given the economic framework we are operating in.

Notes:

[1] Listen to this podcast called “Hanson on Health”.

[2] See this transcript.

4 comments | posted in Public Health

September 29, 2012

Book Review: Confessions Of A Public Speaker

By Greg Linster

There are two things I’m pretty damn sure of:

1) Most people are afraid of public speaking.
2) I fall into the category of “most people”.

That’s right, I have a confession to make: I’m afraid of public speaking!

Confessions Of A Public Speaker, written by Scott Berkun, is laced with insights about speaking — it’s partly autobiographical and entirely useful. Near the beginning of the book Berkun reminds readers that if they’re interested in the world of ideas, and want to help traffic them, then there is no escaping writing or speaking. I’m a person who wants to traffic ideas, so this applies to me. I’m very comfortable writing and not so comfortable speaking.

Writing and speaking, however, are two completely different skill sets, so I don’t find this fact to be abnormal. Strangely, many people assume that those who write well also speak well. Why should good writers be any more likely to be good speakers than good dancers though?

Arthur Krystal wrote about this issue in his essay “When Writers Speak” (included in The Best American Essays 2010). “Like most writers,” Krystal wrote, “I seem to be smarter in print than in person.” My thoughts exactly. Writing protects me from saying something really, really stupid or illogical, well most of the time anyway.

Despite my anxieties about public speaking, I’ve actually done a fair amount of public speaking in both academic and business settings already. Perhaps I’m some sort of emotional masochist, but I always seem to find pleasure in the anxious thrill that comes when actually presenting. Strange as it may be, I’m more afraid of thinking about presenting and first getting up on stage than I am actually presenting. Once I start presenting, the butterflies usually go away.

Anyway, speaking is a life skill that I would really like to excel at, which is why I decided to read this book. As I alluded to, I actually like presenting, well at least as long as at least two conditions are met: 1) I know what I’m talking about and 2) I’m interested in what I’m talking about. If these conditions aren’t met, it’s a waste of both my time and the audience’s time — any presentation worth giving is worth preparing for.

What I particularly liked about this book was Berkun’s no bullshit approach. In the book, Berkun touches on something important that many public speaking gurus often fail to acknowledge, i.e., “No amount of training will make a man with two brain cells seem anything but dumb, as the problem is not his ability to speak, it’s his inability to think. It’s rarely said, but some people will never be good public speakers. Unless they find someone to do their thinking for them, they only have, at best, half the tools they need.” In other words, before worrying about speaking, always make sure have something interesting and intelligent to say first.

In his essay “Writing and Speaking” Paul Graham noted something very important that is tangentially related to Berkun’s point, i.e., good writing is rooted in good thinking, while good speaking needn’t necessarily be. [1] A good speaker who is motivating and passionate can often convince people of silly things despite glaring logical inconsistencies, a good writer doesn’t have this luxury. Graham makes this point as follows: “As you decrease the intelligence of the audience, being a good speaker is increasingly a matter of being a good bullshitter.” There is undoubetdly some truth to that claim, I’m just not sure how much.

Anyway, thinking about speaking and speaking about thinking are two of life’s great joys. Business people and teachers of all kinds will surely benefit greatly from the insights contained within this book.

Notes:

[1] Like Paul Graham, if given the choice, I’d rather be a good thinker and a poor speaker than a poor thinker and good speaker. See his essay “Writing And Speaking”

Comments Off | posted in Public Speaking

September 24, 2012

Lessons From Studying Japanese Workaholism

By Greg Linster

“If you are losing your leisure, look out!  You may be losing your soul.” -Logan Pearsall Smith

I recently finsished reading a book called A Geography of Time, written by a social psychologist named Robert Levine.  As one can easily discern from the title, the book is about life’s most important non-renewable resource.

It won’t come as a surprise to people who have travelled extensively (or to philosophical types), but how people perceive time heavily influences the creation of culture.  And there are certainly many different ways to perceive time.  As an American I live in a culture that is obsessed with clock time and with Ben Franklin’s assertion that “time is money”.  Some cultures live by event time and the peoples of those cultures rightfully find some aspects of our time culture to be foolish.  I can’t say that I always disagree.

***

I often lament the fact that I do not live in a country (like France) that has a more a relaxed perception of time and I’m disgusted by the sick sense of pride Americans take in the number of hours they work.  Then again, at least I don’t live in Japan.

The pace of life in Japan is one of the fastest in the world and Levine states that ”The magnitude of Japenese dedication to work can be dazzling.”  The Japanese work long hours, avoid vacations, and dread the day they have to retire.  Instead of “Blue Mondays”, the Japanese are more likely to  be afflicted with “Sunday Disease” and “The Holiday Syndrome”.  Pretty twisted, right?

The Japanese, however, also have a term called Karōshi, which means death from overwork.  It turns out that too much of a good thing kills too — the Japanese literally love their work to death.  Despite their ungodly dedication to work, the Japanese are a remarkably healthy people too, at least according to most health statistics.  Surely there are a number of reasons (e.g., diet and activity level) that may help explain why this is so; however, for the purposes of this post I’d like to avoid the quagmire that is epidemiological research — I’m not trying to make any scientific health claims here.  Rather, I’m speculating that speedy cultures aren’t necessarily more unhealthy than slower ones for reasons philosophical.

***

There was a wonderful film released in 2012 called Jiro Dreams of Sushi and it chronicles the life of one workaholic sushi chef named Jiro.  Jiro’s dedication to his craft is both fascinating and horrifying at the same time.  All those hours of work just to get sushi that tastes a tad bit better, if it even noticeably tastes better at all (Ah, the law of Diminishing Marginal Returns strikes again).  Yet Jiro seemed to be a healthy guy and he has certainly found purpose in his quest to make the world’s best sushi.

One thing that is noticeably different about Japanese culture is that they have a principle called giri, which is in essence an obligation to others.  Japanese workaholism is powered by this concept.  While the official number of hours spent at work is very high in Japan, there seems to be a greater focus on well-being and social cohesiveness.  The Japanese simply aren’t tyrannized by the clock in the same that most Americans seem to be.

***

Aspects of the Japanese work culture are certainly fascinating and I think there are many societal and personal lessons to be learned from studying it.  It turns out that speed and ambition don’t necessarily kill; however, they can make a bad situation even worse.  There is also somewhat of a contradiction at play here: what’s good for society isn’t necessarily good for the individual and what’s good for the individual isn’t necessarily good for society.

I can’t control what’s good for society, but I can change my relationship with time and work to make my own life better.  I believe that hard work won’t kill you, but hard work without passion and without purpose will, even if it’s just on the inside.  It’s important to remember that when and where we think about work won’t magically start and stop with clock time.  As one of my favorite thinkers Nassim Taleb put it :”Work destroys your soul by stealthily invading your brain during the hours not officially spent working; be selective about professions.”

Work is nothing to be afraid of, shitty work is.  Your happiness depends on how you define the word “shitty”, which is going to be different for all of us.

2 comments | posted in Essays

September 17, 2012

When Less Information Is More

By Greg Linster

Amongst those interested in rationality, there are some who believe that more information is always better.  The reason I suspect they hold this belief is because they think that it is within our epistemic powers to fully understand the universe, if only we can collect and analyze all of the information that describes it.  This belief, however, is a dangerous one.

I happen to agree with J.B.S. Haldane who wrote the following: “My suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.” [my emphasis]  As with many things in life, I believe that more information is sometimes better, but more is certainly not always better.

***

It has been in vogue for quite some time now to write books about the myriad cognitive errors that we humans are prone to making.  To readers of this blog, it’s no surprise to learn that we are indeed Predictably Irrational.  However, the very same psychological processes, intuitions, and gut feelings that lead us astray often times help us navigate the world and make good decisions despite all the complexity.

It turns out that evolution may not care about rationality as much as some philosophers do.  In other words, rationality may aid our survival, but it obviously isn’t necessary to be entirely rational in order to survive.  The economist in me can’t help but think that the evolutionary costs of hyper-rationality may simply outweigh the benefits.

Anyway, I recently read Gerd Gigerenzer’s book Gut Feelings, which was excellent and very accessible.  In my opinion Gigerenzer explains why Nassim Taleb’s aphorism — “To bankrupt a fool, give him information” – contains not only a half-truth, but one-and-a-half truths.  The secret to good to decision making, argues Gigerenzer, is not to collect as much information as possible, but to discard most of it and trust your intuitions when appropriate.  We humans have evolved to use rules of thumb (scientifically referred to as “heuristics”) that help us cope with the subjectivity that is endemic to the human experience – at least Mother Nature didn’t entirely throw us to the wolves.

It’s interesting to note that Gigerenzer’s research was at the foundation of Malcolm Gladwell’s blockbuster book called Blink, which also waxed lyrical about the beauty of human intuition.  When I start to think about thinking and intution, I can’t help but conclude that the wise person knows when to trust their gut feelings without having to justify this trust to others.  However, the wise person also knows when these subconscious processes can lead them astray.  At its best, the human mind is a fickle thing.

Comments Off | posted in Essays

September 13, 2012

In Search of Good Diet Advice

By Greg Linster

Today I noticed that both Tim Ferriss and Gary Taubes, both of whose work I largely respect, announced the debut of a new organization called the Nutrition Science Initiative (NuSI). [1]  As Tim Ferriss put it in this blog post, “No hidden agenda, no corporate interests, nothing to do with food subsidies or ulterior motives. Just good science. It’s about time, right?”

In general, I like the approach of this organization, but I still remain skeptical of its universal dietary optimism.  To make claims about certain foods being universally healthy or unhealthy seems dubious — what is healthy for one person may actually be unhealthy for another (e.g., milk).

Over the last 10,000 years some people have dietarily evolved to tolerate certain products of agriculture that others have not (e.g., lactose). [2]  Mention this on the Web in public discourse, however, and you will soon understand where Godwin’s Law came from (“As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.”  As Godwin’s Law informs us, many people will fear where this line of evolutionary reasoning heads because of the potentially politically incorrect logical implications.  In one important sense, though, it is absolutely true that those who have the allele that allows them to tolerate lactose are indeed genetically different than those who do not have it.  When it comes to the ability to tolerate lactose, not all people are created equal — as one might suspect, this is most likely true in other areas of human biology as well.

I, politically incorrect as it may be, maintain the belief that evolution is accelerating its work on the human species and will continue to do so until we humans eventually speciate.  Again, I think the last 10,000 years of human development provide plenty of evidence to support this claim.

Anyway, when it comes to diet and health, many people seem to want to ignore the elephant in the room, which is that science cannot provide us with a one-size fits all diet recommendation that works for everyone.  However, I’m not suggesting that certain modern techno-foods are not bad for all humans across the board either.  I’m also not trying to say that we should do away with an empirical approach to dietary issues all together either — in fact, I’m suggesting quite the opposite.

If we increase the sample of people being studied to include a massive amount of others who have evolved radically different food tolerations than certain others (like ourselves), then we will end up diluting the most important data point (ourselves) into obscurity.  What I’m suggesting is that when it comes to what dietary choices will make you healthy, the most important data point is you.  In other words, anecdotal evidence is not always inferior to empirical evidence, which is difficult for the scientific minded to remember when arguing about what foods are good or bad.

Notes:

 

[1]

[2] See The 10,o00 Year Explosion

Comments Off | posted in Diet

September 7, 2012

Resistance

By Greg Linster

I recently finished reading Steven Pressfield’s short book called Do The Work!  The book is about fighting against the force that prevents you from doing anything important.  Pressfield calls this force resistance.  Have you ever noticed that you tend to put off important tasks in order to complete easier trivial tasks?  That’s it right there, that’s resistance.

Since the ideas from the book are still somewhat fresh in my mind I thought I’d take the liberty of discussing some of my own thoughts as they pertain to resistance in this essay.  Alright then, it’s time to get busy talking about resistance!

It almost goes without saying, but resistance is lethal to your dreams if you don’t learn how to overcome it.  This is obviously not an earth shattering revelation, but that doesn’t make it any less important.  As a blogger and writer I know this all too well.  Frequently, I’ll catch myself using social media for “marketing”, but I know this is mere rationalization.  I know that great content often markets itself and I also know that I should be spending more time writing or working on other projects, but, alas, resistance often gets the better of me.

Right now, for instance, I feel an urge to be cleaning out my email instead of working on this essay.  After that, I’ll be probably drawn to Facebook for a dose of information sugar.  So why am I drawn to tasks like checking my email?  The answer is simple: there is a certain sense of satisfaction that comes with completing something and ticking it off our list.  The worst part is that this satisfaction comes regardless of how unimportant the task is.  The most dangerous part about these distractions is that they give us a false sense of accomplishment and delude us into thinking that were just too busy to ever do any work that matters to us.  Talk about one of life’s great tragedies.

Is being aware of resistance a solution?  Well, awareness is a step in the right direction, but it’s not going to help you in the slightest when it comes to doing the work.  You can’t outsmart resistance because it is evolutionarily hardwired into the deep recesses of your mind.  We humans are naturally hedonistic creatures who try to avoid pain and discomfort.  Positive thinking won’t necessarily help either; it’s probably better just to embrace the suck because there is no magic formula or pill  to help you overcome resistance.  It requires work that will be undoubtedly hard, brutally hard.  If you want to create, you better get used to it because speaking from personal experience, it never gets any easier.  I hate to serve up a hackneyed platitude, but, if it were easy, everyone would do it (and you likely wouldn’t value it all that much if everyone could do it anyway).

When it comes to staying motivated to do work, one of the most important things I try to remind myself of is that benefits are not always delivered linearly with the amount of work done.  You may spend year after year writing or working on a project with nothing to show for it, financially or otherwise.  That doesn’t necessarily mean that you aren’t making progress though.

If there is one thing that I think most people fail to realize it’s that happiness and fulfillment don’t come the easy way.  Money can come the easy way, but not happiness and fulfillment.  The only way to succeed in life (i.e., to be happy and fulfilled) is to overcome resistance and do the work.  The people who tell you that it’s easy are lying to you and the people who are lying to you usually have something to sell you.

Comments Off | posted in Essays

August 28, 2012

What Is Mathematics?

By Greg Linster

I recently read a wonderful book by William Byers called How Mathematicians Think and it really had an impact on my thinking.  Byers’ central thesis is that mathematics is about more than just formal logical rules and algorithmic thinking, it’s actually about much more.  He claims that mathematics is the most creative of all human endeavors and that ambiguity, contradiction and paradox are essential to creating new mathematics.

Some people find the philosophy of mathematics titillating, and for others, it causes great despair (even for some mathematicians).  At certain times, I could be classified as fitting in both categories.  The philosophy of mathematics is the kind of subject that is likely to alienate people.  Writing about it can be a great way to get people to quit reading your blog (I hope that isn’t the case though).  However, it isn’t necessary to have a deep technical background in mathematics (although it may help) in order to philosophize about it.

Let’s face it, mathematics can be intimidating for a host of reasons, namely because it’s hard to understand what it really is.  My formal mathematical education largely consisted of memorization and manual calculation, which was often boring and dry.  As a student learning mathematics, I didn’t always understand what I was doing.  Even worse (gasp!), I didn’t understand what the subject matter itself really was.

***

When you think about it, I mean deeply think about it, mathematics is beautiful, yet deeply perplexing.  What is a real number, really?  Where do mathematical ideas come from?  Does our sense of logic help us create mathematics or does our mathematics help us understand our sense of logic?  Did humans invent mathematics or discover it?

On the surface of it, there appears to be this strange relationship between the natural world and our mathematical intelligence.  As the physicist Eugene Wigner put it, what are we to make of “the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences?”  That’s certainly an interesting question.   However, it’s a bit of a stretch to assume that the very fabric of the entire natural world is coded in a mathematical language which we are capable of understanding just because some aspects of our mathematics seemingly match up with some aspects of the natural world.  To even consider this argument, we must first assume that there is some absolute objective reality out there — but is there?  There was an excellent passage in How Mathematicians Think, which elucidates this point so I am going to quote it in its entirety.

Strangely enough, in order to understand mathematics and the subtle nature of mathematical truth it may be necessary to give up our attachment to the idea of “absolute objectivity”.  The existence of such an objective domain is an assumption that we all unthinkingly make, especially in science.  But a moment of thought will reveal that it can only be an article of faith — it can never be proved.  The only contact human beings have with reality is through the impressions that are received by the senses and the mind.  The “objective” world is not, as far as human beings will ever be able to tell, completely objective.  We know it through acts of perception and cognition.  Postulating an absolutely objective realm is just that — an assumption — not something that can be empirically validated.

***

Whatever the reason, I’ve always been sympathetic to the belief that mathematics was invented.  The way I look at mathematics is that it’s a language, albeit a very special type of language, that requires human ingenuity to create.  It’s a creative process which attempts to map reality into concepts the human brain has evolved to understand.  Reality isn’t necessarily algorithmic, rather algorithmic thinking helps us to understand certain aspects of reality.  Or as the physicist David Bohm put it: “I think people get it upside down when they say the unambiguous is the reality and the ambiguous merely uncertainty about what is really unambiguous.  Let’s turn it around the other way: the ambiguous is the reality and unambiguous is merely a special case of it, where we finally manage to pin down some very special aspect.”

So what exactly is mathematics anyway?  Describing mathematics is very difficult and perhaps it would be easier to say what it is not, i.e., mathematics is not simply a body of facts arrived at by deductive reasoning from a body of definitions and axioms, although it’s tempting to think that way.  At its core essence, mathematics is a creative process that is often poorly taught as if it were some stringent logical system I just described.  Ultimately, I think it’s both difficult to teach and learn something if you don’t really understand what it is.

Notes:

[1] Here is an excellent review of How Mathematicians Think by Reuben Hersh.

Comments Off | posted in Mathematics

August 9, 2012

Book Review: The Consuming Instinct

By Greg Linster

The aphorist, Aaron Haspel, once wrote: “Once you see human interaction as a contest to signal mating fitness, you never see it as anything else.”  That’s both interesting and true, but for the purposes of this review, I’m going to need to paint with a broader brush: once you see all aspects of human existence as a product of evolution, you never see them as anything else.  Modern-day consumerism is no exception and it’s the subject of Gad Saad’s fantastic book The Consuming Instinct.

Saad is a professor of marketing at Concordia University and writes a popular blog at Psychology Today called Homo Consumericus.  Using various parts of evolutionary theory, Saad dissects modern-day consumer behavior with applaudable gusto.  Parts of his analysis are sure to be offensive to some, which suggests to me that he’s on to something.  As a general rule of thumb, if some people are strongly offended by an idea, it’s worth giving it special consideration.  This is because many truths simply aren’t all that pleasant.  Many people respond to these types of books with knee-jerk reactions full of personal attacks and hatred because they confuse positive statements with normative ones.  I would urge these people to consider that explaining how things are says nothing about how they ought to be.

The subtitle of the book is What Juicy Burgers, Ferraris, Pornography, and Gift Giving Reveal About Human Nature.  Not surprisingly, they reveal quite a bit.  These four items speak to the four Darwinian pursuits that underlie human existence: survival, reproduction, kin selection, and reciprocity.  The consuming instinct, then, can be studied under the lens of evolutionary psychology (EP), which is a theoretical framework that proposes that the human mind evolved by the same Darwinian forces that shaped all animals.  The human brain is simply another product of the dual evolutionary processes called natural selection and sexual selection.  More people are familiar with former and not the latter, which can explain things like art, religion, and consumer behavior.

It’s worth noting that amongst those who believe in evolution, there seems to be a small contingent of people who believe that evolution can explain the human foot, but anything above the neck is off limits.  In other words, they are hesitant to give any credence to the field of evolutionary psychology  because they don’t like some of the logical implications that follow.  Like Saad, I believe this is an egregious mistake.  The human brain is an amazing thing, but the fact that some people want to elevate it to something that was created outside the bounds of the natural world is silly.  I think Malcolm de Chazal would remind us of the following: “Monkeys are superior to men in this: when a monkey looks into the mirror, he sees a monkey.”

Political correctness be damned, Saad takes a refreshing and no holds barred approach to debunking the myths of social constructivism, particularly the myths surrounding gender differences.  The Harvard evolutionist E. O. Wilson, once said: “The genes hold culture on a leash. The leash is very long, but inevitably values will be constrained in accordance with their effects on the human gene pool.”  Anyone who understands the power of evolutionary theory will understand that marketing efforts for products that don’t align with our natural instincts are doomed to fail.  Excellent marketers are intuitively well aware of this reality too — they understand that the way to market beer to men is different than is way to market cosmetics to women.

There is a reason why men consume more pornography, more Ferraris, and are more likely to participate in extreme sports than are women.  These differences are due to a deep rooted evolutionary causes and it’s a sad state of affairs when one is considered a cultural deviant for suggesting that men and women, thanks to the process of evolution, have deep biological differences.  I’ll proudly wear the label of “cultural deviant” if that’s the term used to describe people who are more interested in knowing the truth than they are in hearing fictitious, yet comforting stories.

Here’s an interesting fact from the book: studies show that when men drive a Porsche they experience an increase in testosterone levels.  It appears that the mere act of sexual signaling can cause an increase in testosterone in men.  How many men would care about driving a Porsche if no one were around to watch though?  I suspect that the answer is not many.  I think this is why you see men cruising around in Porsches and Ferraris in crowded hotspots like Chicago’s Viagra Triangle on a Saturday night and not in downtown Longmont, Colorado.  This, of course, prompts an interesting philosophical question: If a sexual signal is flashed and no one is there to receive it, does it really exist?

Another thing that’s bound to upset social constructivists is that universal metrics of beauty do exist, and are not arbitrary social constructs.  Studies show that a deep male voice is universally attractive, which makes sense since it indicates a greater exposure to pubertal testosterone.  Studies also show that women with the optimum waist-to-hip ratio of around 0.7 are preferred by men around the world.  Universally, for men, achieving high status in the social hierarchy matters greatly if one wants to be an attractive mate, while, for women, it’s physical beauty that matters most.

One of my favorite chapters was called “Marketing Hope by Selling Lies”.  In the chapter Saad explains that there are many unpleasant biological-based realities, like aging, mortality, sexual boredom in monogamous relationships, and the fact that children are born with innate differences in abilities.  Marketers, and self-help gurus of all varieties, see this as an opportunity.  After-all, it provides them a chance to sell hope, which is often nothing but an especially insidious form of snake oil.

Saad sees religion as the greatest (and perhaps evilest) product ever devised.  He writes: “Religion possesses unique attributes that render it a marketer’s dream product.”  Indeed it is.  A number of televangelists get in front of audience every Sunday and tell their delusional, yet optimistic followers that God has great things in store for them in the afterlife if only they give up their worldly possessions to their preacher in this life.  Don’t worry, God wants the preacher to have your money — apparently He said so.  Alas, these religious charlatans are smart enough to know that it helps to plant the seed of fear early if you want to swindle people out of their money later in life.

The Argentine shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis once famously said: “If women didn’t exist, all the money in the world would have no meaning.”  Even if you already intuitively understand why that is so, I highly recommend reading The Consuming Instinct anyway.

Comments Off | posted in Evolutionary Psychology

July 31, 2012

Metaphorically Speaking About The Human Body

By Greg Linster

I recently finished reading all of the responses to the 2008 Edge Question, which is: What Have You Changed Your Mind About?  In an effort to stay intellectually engaged, and to challenge myself, I’ve also deliberately started a quest to answer all the Edge questions myself (see my previous answers to the 2010 and 2005 questions).  I find it interesting to read these answers years after they were originally published since I have the gift of hindsight on my side.

John Brockman posed the 2008 Edge Question as follows:

When thinking changes your mind, that’s philosophy.
When God changes your mind, that’s faith.
When facts change your mind, that’s science.

WHAT HAVE YOU CHANGED YOUR MIND ABOUT? WHY?

Science is based on evidence. What happens when the data change? How have scientific findings or arguments changed your mind?”

***

Once upon a time, I thought eating three square meals a day (and some snacks in between) was optimal for human health.  I must confess that this was not even a scientific belief, rather, it was a belief formed on the basis of a combination of cultural conditioning, a poorly chosen metaphor, and what *seemed* to be common sense.  However, I have since recanted this belief because of strong scientific evidence supporting intermittent fasting, and a few personal anecdotes.

The type of metaphoric language we use to talk about worldly phenomena is of utmost importance.  At times all of us (usually unknowingly), fail to think critically about the metaphors we ourselves use and the ones thrust upon us in everyday affairs.  For example, when a runner talks about fueling up before a run, she is tacitly assuming that the human body needs fuel (like a car) before she can go anywhere.  Does the human body really work like a car though?  I’m afraid not, our beloved metaphor for the body is actually fundamentally flawed.

I think it’s fair to say that Descartes popularized the body as a machine metaphor, although I suspect he wasn’t the first person to have such a thought (such is the nature of history).  The human body as a machine metaphor is one of the most harmful metaphors that exists and though I can’t prove it, I believe it is at least partially responsible for the obesity epidemic.

We don’t understand nearly as much about the human body as we often think we do.  The body is a body, and not a machine — let’s stop thinking about it as if it were the latter.

3 comments | posted in Essays, Metaphors