Caveman Logic: The Persistence of Primitive Thinking in a Modern World by Hank Davis Read Free Book Online Page B

Everything we do and everything that’s part of us has a cost/benefit trade-off. The brain is an expensive thing to run. It takes more energy than any other part of our bodies. Anything our bodies do has got to be efficient. If a particular job isn’t really helping, it may get phased out altogether. Remember those TV documentaries about fish that live in the dark and eventually lose their eyes? You just don’t need them deep down in the ocean. Even if the job is important but it requires too many calories to do, there’s pressure to get it done more efficiently.
    And who is this cost cutter? This efficiency expert?
    Call it natural selection. The most ruthless efficiency expert that ever was.
    So this is why you don’t like the human mind? It’s too efficient?
    No, Nana. I love the human mind. It lets us do what we’re doing right now, you and I, which is wonderful. But the mind also has some real problems, and they have a lot to do with all those efficient shortcuts.
    Like what, Mister Critic?
    Well, think about how shortcuts work. First of all, they aren’t 100 percent effective. If they work more often than not, or enough to produce relative success, that may be good enough for natural selection.
    But not for you?
    The thing is, Nana, natural selection and I have different “agendas,” if you can use that word. I’m concerned with more than just survival and reproduction and moving genes into the next generation. I’m thinking about “quality of life” issues, like being smart and undeluded and clearheaded and informed. Natural selection is blind to those kinds of qualities, and to a lot more that many people think are important aspects of human life.
    Being right or seeing something correctly 70 percent of the time may be good enough to get some software into the next generation, but it still results in a lot of faulty perception. What if some of those mental mistakes start to receive social support? What if people bond around those mistakes that their minds frequently make in interpreting the world?
    You think that happens?
    All the time, Nana. And that’s under the best of conditions. Remember that these shortcuts work best under the particular conditions for which they were designed. That’s where natural selection did its work. What if the conditions have changed enough so that the shortcut is still triggered, but now the results are even less likely to be correct? Our minds don’t deliver a written disclaimer saying, “The conclusion you are about to reach may not be accurate. The image you think you see may actually be something else. In fact, it may be nothing at all. You could end up being entirely wrong. Sorry. I was really not designed to handle this situation for you. I’m at my best under slightly different conditions and even then, I do tend to get it wrong from time to time. It’s part of why I was chosen. I’m quick and inexpensive.”
    It sounds like the contract was given to the lowest bidder.
    That’s not a bad analogy, Nana.
    So you’re saying maybe people should get a second opinion before they reach conclusions or describe what they’re seeing?
    That might help, but it’s not how most of us conduct our business. Even worse, that second opinion is likely to come from another human who has just received the same faulty information. Now there are two of you and it’s even harder to get you to question your conclusions.
    So if we humans are so defective how come your efficiency expert hasn’t done away with this whole mess?
    A few reasons, Nana. First, natural selection moves very slowly and can only choose among alternatives. Second, you have to think about the costs of being wrong under these conditions. Remember, natural selection isn’t necessarily looking for “smart” or “accurate” or “nondelusional.” It’s concerned with survival and reproduction. So what if you see a face in the clouds that isn’t there? You still get to have dinner and make babies. If the