The Elephant in the Brain

About the book

Book author: Kevin Simler & Robin Hansson.

The book is about hidden motivations in people and in everyday life. Are we as virtuous as we seem? What don’t we want to acknowledge in ourselves? Our brains are not designed just to hunt and gather, but also to help us get ahead – socially, deceptively, politically and really, by many means. While we are self-interested, we have much to benefit by signaling and pretending that we are not.

This book is essentially a red pill into the “dark side” of human nature, seen through a lens of history, evolution and effects on behaviour. Why do we laugh? Why do we think artists are sexy? Why do people choose the most visible charities instead of the most charitable? What is a mixed-motive game? We learn tons. But, the authors claim that what we learn isn’t exactly something you can talk about at parties. Remember that humans are different from human motives. I agree – I didn’t realise that were was a lot more naivety to shave off from my beliefs regarding motives. I’m glad I took the pill and dove in deep! It really is a wild ride.

Reflection and takeaways

“We should often blush at our noblest deeds, if the world were to see all their underlying motives” - François de La Rochefoucauld

I loved the introduction to this book. It’s chilling, and the authors warn you that once you learn these things it’s hard to “unlearn them”. I refer back to the analagy of the red pill of the mind.

For this section, I’m going to record my favourite takeaways. The book is structured into chapters about different topics. These are quite independent. As are my learnings, because they are bits from different chapters.

#1 : When observing the animal world, interestingly it’s not always the strongest chimps that lead packs. Social skills matter even more, as two or more weak chimps can team up on the big chimp. Why do monkeys groom each other? It doesn’t make sense just to clean someone elses fur for them to clean your fur, because they groom much more than they get groomed, and there are is a limited amount of much crap and dirt in the fur. It’s because it creates a platform for stronger bonds, because they signal that they care. Essentially, this is a self-interested game. It is somewhat practical (clean fur), but the real value is social gain. Moreover, this behaviour can be observed among certain birds, where the “stronger birds” bribe less ranked males with social credit. But are monkeys and birds even aware that they are grooming and bribing much more than they need? I don’t think they think about motives in a scheming fashion. It’s evolved behaviour – the monkeys that groomed other monkeys more reproduced more. It’s probably because they “died less” in conflicts. So – this invokes a natural question: what evolved behaviour do we humans have?

#2 : Humans became so smart because we were competing with other humans. Brains didn’t evolve only to think, but to socially navigate, cheat, compete. This is referred to as “The Machiavellian intelligence hypothesis”. This can be looked at in conjunction with “The Redwood theory”. Why aren’t there Redwood trees all over the place? Because the only redwoods left, that live for centuries, have killed off all the nearby Redwoods through shade.

“Interaction with an organism of approximately equal mental abilities whose motives are at times outright malevolent makes formidable and ever-escalating demands on cognition” - Steven Pinker / Paul Bloom

Being a computer scientist, it’s easy to see the parallell to the Generative Adversarial Network idea, which is a very potent learning architecture where you emulate an arms race between a generator and a detector. It trains both the generator and detector at the same time.

People compete for social status, power and prestige. But there is a difference between dominance and earned respect through achievement and signaling. Either case, there is heavy cognitive demand. Signaling is very important. For example, going to the gym is a signal you are taking your health seriously and broadcasting virtue – you can gain value socially. Sometimes the signals are used to gain fortune and mates, and this can create magnificent things when trying to outdo the competition, like skyscrapers or Bach’s concertos, and all of Shakespeare’s works. But in one sense, these competitions can be incredibly wasteful. Sometimes broadcasting the strongest signal turns it into suboptimal competitive struggles. Consider the Redwoods – they invest literally all their energy in height. A 30 meter “high enough” cap and spamming pine cones to reproduce might be a better strategy? There is noone that can coordinate the Redwoods out of their suboptimal goal of becoming the tallest tree, but humans are different because we have a little foresight.

#3 : The power of norms. Norms enforce behaviour. Interestingly, you can even get a physical reaction when someone cuts in line. It’s very in-grained because when we were hunter-gatherers, non-compliance with established group norms meant death or exile (basically the same – exile almost always leads to death). Moreover, these “norms” can control the suboptimal competition into productive competition. It’s also interesting because norms are different from other animal behaviour. Big Albert can steal from Small Steve, but faces sactions from the rest of the community. There is collective enforcement. Also, with weapons in the mix, it makes it so that not only the physically strongest person dominates. Rather, political skill to join, lead and identify coalitions becomes the best and most valuable skill.

All of this of course hinges on the meta-norm: it’s vitally important that it’s incentivized to report or punish norm breaking.

#4 : Everybody cheats with stuff. What matters is if you get caught. The risk of being caught is also the biggest deterrant. “A little bit of cheating” is almost the norm. Is everyone completely honest with their taxes? However, sometimes cheating is okay, even if everyone knows you are doing it – for example drinking in public using a brown paper bag. Sometimes you can cheat the rules by pretexting. King Henry annulled his marriage by claiming that 20 years ago his wife wasn’t a virgin, cheating the system.

Deception is a very deep feature of life. Some animals look poisonous, while being harmless. Some animals play dead. It’s also something we do to ourselves, justifying behaviours. As a martial artist I keep going even if injured, telling myself it will be fine. Runners convince themselves to keep going. Some people also decieve themselves w.r.t. their self-esteem. A funny thought:

“We’re so vulnerable to being hurt that we’re given the capacity to distort as a gift”

#5 : Mixed motive games. I hadn’t heard this term before, but I knew immediately what it was. It’s where interest overlap but partially diverge. For example, consider the chicken race. You’re in a car facing a head-on collision with someone else, and one of you have to veer off. It’s the interest in both to do it, as to not die. The best strategy is actually to remove your steering wheel, wave it through the windshield and rev your engine. The opponent must conceed, because he knows you are all in. These kinds of scenarios lead to interesting effects.

#6 : Blindsight phenomenon: we can see something but can’t. The book I read earlier is aptly named. It happens with brain injured people, but it’s also the story of many of our faults. It turns out we are an ensemble of sub-personalities. It’s also interesting if you think of your most major fuck-ups. Something steps in and tells you not to dwell on this information, and it gets silenced. It would be embarassing, and you would lose confidence. Your mind also has a knack for sabotaging information in order to come ahead in social games. Split-brain experiments have shown that right/left brains operate independently, as we have covered in other books. An interesting result there was how reasons and justifications can be made up on the spot to explain a random decision. Our brains have a press secretary that post-hoc explains decisions. When asked to pick between which was the most attractive person between 2 photos, and were sleight-of-handed to the other pick, they provided a motivation to the choice. Strange.

#7 : The role of body language cannot be understated. It’s been with us since before language. Not only for you, but also your peers.

#8 : Laughter, a very strange phenomenon, is the main distinctor between playful and serious. This can be evidenced by making scary faces to toddlers. Laugh first, they laugh. Don’t laugh, they cry.

#9 : On Conversation. Getting information is costly and flattens out any advantage you have if you share it. So why do we talk more than we listen? It’s for broadcasting and pick up “potential allies” who react favorably to our information, and might share something to you, while signaling status. Really enjoyed(?) reading how people pick the most visible charities, not the most efficient, proving it’s for their own gain.

#10 : On Materialistic consumption: it’s a bogus status game. You pay for the premium.

#11 : On Charity. Peter Singer said it well: You help a child if it’s drowning, but you don’t help children starving in Africa. It is hypocrisy. It’s done only when you kinda have to care.

#12 : On medicine. It’s clear that in some countries we spend much more on medicine, but the efficacy of this is unclear.

#13 : On religion. Monarch butterflies swarm every year, as do wildebeest and other kinds of migrating animals. Humans actually have these too, as seen with the Hajj when Muslim pilgrims visit Mecca. Religion requires various forms of sacrifice {time, specific food, health (some flagellate)} shows commitment which gives status in the religious structure. You compete in the “holier-than-thou” arms race.

Religion is a kind of ultimate “elephant in the brain” when examined. Is it all just a social mating strategy? Who knows.

#14 : On politics. This chapter was a bit cynical but it reflects reality well.

Laws are like sausages: it’s better not to see them being made.

I love this quote. It’s not secret that there is a lot of lobbying and background dealing going on all the time.

There are lots of political do-gooders in the world: the architypical informed citizen, engaged with politics for “all the right reasons”. They are of course “earnestly focused on doing what’s best for their country”. It’s a shame most kinds of voting behaviour is different from voting do-gooder say. For example, in Sweden noone says they vote for the Sweden Democrats, but they have almost 20% of the votes.

At the opposite end of the political do-gooder, there is the soviet apparatchik from the Gulag Archipelago. There is a famous case where Stalin was not in the room for some sort of congress, but people stood up and applauded anyway. One minute passed… two minutes passsed… yet noone sat down… three minutes. After 11 minutes one director sat down, for the relief of all. He was later arrested and got 10 years in the Gulag. He showed signs of independent thought.

Another thing I learned here is: Showing loyalty and devotion to a party or organisation gives you reward loyalty. It’s earned even before you are informed. You don’t need to know exactly all the points the party stands for, but devotion says you will agree to it anyway. You don’t need to be informed to express that, so you can get reward without being informed.

Anoter fun example here: the do-gooders like to say that everyone deserves access to the same opportunities. Yet at the same time, they compete fiercely for their kids to get into the best schools.

Why did I pick it

Recommended to me by a friend after some beers and self-development talk.

Verdict

4.³⁄₅. I learned a lot of “dark stuff” from reading this book. I like reality served “raw”, so I really enjoyed it. I learned a lot and some naivety was shed.