"Just Babies: The Origins of Good and Evil" by Paul Bloom

Young children are highly aggressive; indeed, if you measure the rate of physical violence through the life span, it peaks at about the age of two. Families survive the Terrible Twos because toddlers aren't strong enough to kill them with their hands and aren't capable of using lethal weapons. A two-year-old with the physical capacities of an adult would be terrifying.

Some parents aren't so lucky as to have a two-year-old who is incapable of using a lethal weapon. But freak accidents aside, this sentiment is worth reflecting on. Young children are, after all, merely doing whatever it occurs to them to do. Their brains have simply yet to develop the inhibitory capacities that characterize human adulthood. Unfortunately for new parents, the types of behaviour that occurs to toddlers isn't always pretty or nice. The good news is that they're too tiny to do any real damage, except for maybe the odd bite or two.

Admonishing a young child for lacking in impulse control is misguided. It's not that's toddlers haven't learned right from wrong yet, that will come with time. The problem is with self-regulation. The mental machinery to resist "bad" behaviour isn't there yet. Parents should keep this in mind when dealing with youngsters. We should be no more upset with a child for failing to resist an impulse to hit or bite than with a toddler who cannot do calculus.

Parents: Be patient. Understand that part of normal brain development involves a greater ability to regulate behaviour and to consider the consequences of actions. Allow time for kids to grow into their brains. Remind yourself that humans are "born of risen apes, not fallen angels." Be mindful that we are evolved creatures and much enlightenment will follow.

Also, get your kids vaccinated you goofballs.

Thinking about "Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman

After briefly outlining the trajectory of his research with Amos Tversky, Daniel Kahneman drops this little nugget in the introduction to Thinking, Fast and Slow:

By and large, ...the idea that our minds are susceptible to systematic errors is now generally accepted.

The irony is that few minds ever confront themselves in the critical ways necessary to fully come to terms with this. Most of us are simply unaware of the kinds of cognitive biases and unconscious processes that shape how and what we think. What is doubly ironic is that we are overly confident in our beliefs, impressions, and preferences for no good reason. We seldom ask ourselves why we think what we do. Nor do we often consider the possibility that the conclusions we reach may be wrong and/or based on unfounded assumptions or unreliable information:

The confidence that individuals have in their beliefs depends mostly on the quality of the story they can tell about what they see, even if they see little. We often fail to allow for the possibility that evidence that should be critical to our judgement is missing—what we see is all there is.

I can assert without hyperbole that the world would be a much better place if more people seriously contemplated how our thought processes are riddled with systematic errors, or that the idea of the self (that there is a coherent and essential "I" in all of us that is the conscious author of our thoughts) is an illusion. The notion that humans are fundamentally free and rational agents has been dramatically undermined by the findings of cognitive psychology. As a result, economics has undergone somewhat of a revolution in light of our new understand of human behaviour. Now, behavioural economics is all the rage!

On a more personal level, accepting that our brains come loaded with biases can lead to better and more productive relationships and interactions. One of the main reasons I seek to learn about all the ways our intuitive reasoning fails us is so that I may be better equipped when I tell someone they are wrong on the internet. I readily admit that sometimes I just cannot help myself... (Wait, who is the "I" and "myself" in this sentence? Why should they be at odds and struggling for control? Just who is in charge here, anyway?)

So after seeing many references to Kahneman's work in other books, and seeing him in an episode of BBC Horizon called "How You Really Make Decisions", I finally picked up a copy of Thinking, Fast and Slow a few weeks ago at a used book store (hardcover in great condition). Better late than never, I guess.

And if this isn't a nearly perfect description of what it's like to be a "confident idiot" in a complex world, then I don't know what is:

A remarkable aspect of your mental life is that you are rarely stumped. True, you occasionally face a question such as 17 x 24 = ? to which no answer comes immediately to mind, but these dumbfounded moments are rare. The normal state of your mind that you have intuitive feelings and opinions about almost everything that comes your way. You like or dislike people long before you know much about them; you trust or distrust strangers without knowing why; you feel that an enterprise is bound to succeed without analyzing it. Whether you state them or not, you often have answers to questions that you do not completely understand, relying on evidence that you can neither explain or defend.

They're illusions, Michael: "Waking Up" by Sam Harris

Although we are only beginning to understand the human mind at the level of the brain, and we know nothing about how consciousness itself comes into being, it isn't too soon to say that the conventional self is an illusion. There is no place for a soul inside your head. Consciousness itself is divisible—as we saw in the case of split-brain patients—and even in an intact brain consciousness is blind to most of what the mind is doing. Everything we take ourselves to be at the level of our subjectivity—our memories and emotions, our capacity for language, the very thoughts and impulses that give rise to our behavior—depends upon distinct processes that are spread out over the whole brain. Many of these can be independently interrupted or extinguished. The sense, therefore, that we are unified subjects—the unchanging thinkers of thoughts and experiencers of experience—is an illusion. The conventional self is a transitory appearance among transitory appearances, and it vanishes when looked for.

Waking Up: A Guide To Spirituality Without Religion by Sam Harris

Em-dash overuse notwithstanding, this is such a good summary of how the self is an illusion that it should be printed up on little cards and handed out to people on the street. It is no coincidence that this passage appears near the end of a terrific book which also extolls (among many other fascinating and enlightening things) the importance of having a competent teacher who can point a student in the right direction on the contemplative path of inner exploration. 

Sam Harris has written another challenging and important book. It is also a necessary one. One of the many questions that invariably arises in response to the project of New Atheism to disabuse the world of faith-based malarkey is how is one supposed to find meaning in life without religion? It is not just believers who worry about this. It is not unlike the concern over whether humans can be moral without religion. In The Moral Landscape, Harris tackled this by showing how science and reason can guide us toward moral answers. Similarly, Waking Up provides us with good reasons for seeking spirituality (i.e. meaning) in a secular context through meditation and contemplating the nature of our own consciousness.

Not that "I" needed any further convincing but if one has lingering doubts about the death of dualism, Waking Up should close the case. Coming to terms with the fact that we are our brains is, as Sam Harris argues, liberating. That the stakes couldn't be any higher in recognizing this is illustrated by this eminently tweetable gem:

Confusion and suffering may be our birthright, but wisdom and happiness are available.

"I" mean, dude. Seriously. Admittedly, "I" was always going to like this book. Rarely are expectations so dramatically exceeded. The phrase gets thrown around quite a bit, but Waking Up truly is required reading. (Also, The Self Illusion by Bruce Hood.)

("I" briefly considered changing the title of this post to "Their illusions, Michael" which, I think, is funnier, but less clear and just looks like a typo instead of a reference.)

"Creating Freedom: The Lottery Of Birth" (2013): Not All Documentaries Are Created Equal, colon A Rope Of Sand

 "Creating Freedom: The Lottery Of Birth" (2013)
Directed by Raoul Martinez & Joshua van Praag

I downloaded this documentary after IMDb'ing Steven Pinker to see if he was in anything I hadn't already seen. I found Creating Freedom: The Lottery of Birth and saw that Daniel Dennett was also interviewed for the film. Too bad they're only featured for about three or four minutes in the doc just to say that humans are tribal and have evolved to trust their parents (and by extension, authority figures in general). Beyond that, there's little reason to give this documentary your time. Curiously, and despite the title, the real implications of the lottery of birth is scarcely explored. No, we do not choose the time, place, and to whom we are born. But the documentary makes only a passing reference to this rather obvious (though seldom recognized) fact before moving on to how none of this would matter if we were only able to overcome those nefarious social systems put in place to prevent us from being truly free... WAKE UP SHEEPLE!

If you already know a little about the human animal through the writings of smart people, this does not offer much in the way of anything new. The narration is a little over the top, and vaguely conspiratorial at times, what with references to shadowy Elites meeting in secret boardrooms trying to figure out why people are so hard to control in a democracy. The interviews with prominent scientists and other authors serve only to create a tenuous link between what we can reasonably say about what humans are actually like and the filmmaker's outlandish narrative about how society is organized to limit your freedom (as though there is such an attainable thing in the first place).

If you're interested in the brain, read something like Steven Pinker's How The Mind Works, or even something with a narrower scope like Michael Gazzaniga's Who's In Charge?. For the psychology of the self, check out Bruce Hood's The Self Illusion. And to learn more about how and why individuals slip easily into roles they otherwise would never imagine they could (Milgram experiment, the Stanford Prison Experiment, Abu Ghraib, etc), pick up Philip Zimbardo's The Lucifer Effect. These are just a few titles off the top of my head, and could probably name a few more if I put in the effort, but these books are a good place for the uninitiated to start as any.

"The Future Of The Mind" by Michio Kaku

This ain't your typical brain book. Writing from a physicist's perspective, Kaku focuses on the intersect between technology and neuroscience. From magnetic resonance imaging to electroencephalography, the study of the brain has undergone a revolution in recent decades as new tools have allowed scientists to probe the brain with increasing resolution and insight. Much of this technological advancement stems from our understanding of the physics of magnetic and electrical fields and applying them in novel ways to help answer the age old question of how the mind works.

But this is only the beginning of the story. When we look at the current state of art with respect to the study of the brain, a fascinating picture of the future starts to emerge. Fortunately, I possess just enough familiarity with Star Trek to get references to tricorders (cell phones with MRI capabilities) and the Borg (nanoprobe implants in the brain to enable telepathic communication). Scientists have already been able to read minds by creating a mental dictionary by matching up signals emanating from the brain when subjects focus on particular letters. This effectively allows someone to type using only the power of the mind. Needless to say, this is pretty wild. And we're just scratching the surface here...

Again taking a physicist's viewpoint, Kaku outlines a definition of consciousness that assigns "levels" which correspond to how an organism models the world according to a set of feedback loops and parameters. This is called the "space-time theory of consciousness" and it is certainly a handy way to think about the various ways in which animals are conscious. The "levels" in the theory roughly line up with stages in the evolution of the brain, from the reptilian, to the mammalian, to human. In increasing complexity, the brains of animals create models of the world in order to achieve their goals starting with simple sensory input about the environment (reptilian), then expanding their model to incorporate their relationship to others (mammalian), and ultimately including the parameter of time by evaluating the past to make predictions and plan for the future (human). Hence, the "space-time theory of consciousness".

Once thought impenetrable to scientific inquiry, the problem of consciousness is becoming less opaque by the day. With the recent news that scientists may have found the proverbial 'on/off' switch for consciousness, our lofty philosophical notions of the special place occupied by human awareness are slowly coming back down to earth. Granted, there's still a long way to go in fully comprehending how all the complexity of human mind emerges out of the traffic of the brain, but real progress is (encouragingly) being made. This is a good thing. I, for one, am perpetually enthralled and amazed by the capacity for the brain to know itself.

"Predictably Irrational" by Dan Ariely

Our irrational behaviors are neither random or senseless - they are systematic and predictable. We all make the same types of mistakes over and over, because of the basic wiring of our brains. So wouldn't it make sense to modify standard economics and move away from naive psychology, which often fails the test of reason, introspection, and - most important - empirical scrutiny?

Wouldn't economics make a lot more sense if it were based on how people actually behave, instead of how they should behave?

Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions, by Dan Ariely

Yes, Dan. It would make sense. Humans aren't nearly as rational as we tend to think we are, though we are fairly adept at rationalizing. People consistently make irrational choices. We are dishonest. We cheat and steal when given the opportunity, especially when we are a step or two removed from dealing with cash. We procrastinate and often discount or devalue the future at our peril. We are seduced by the powerful allure of FREE! We succumb to social pressures. Our experiences are modulated by our expectations of them. The placebo effect plays a much greater role in our lives than we ever could imagine. And so on...

And yet, standard economic theory would have it that humans are rational agents capable of acting in their own interest based on the best available information in the realm of the free market. If we mess up, "market forces" will correct the errors and set us back on the right path. To me, these ideas aren't just mistaken, but delusional. 

The reality is that humans are evolved creatures that come equipped with all sorts of cognitive biases and blind spots that serve to limit our ability to behave in an idealistically rational way. There is little room for freedom here. This is just another example of the disconnect between what we think the world is like (or wish it would be like), and what the world is really like. Ideology, unfortunately, often trumps a more evidence-based approach to understanding reality.

Currently Reading - "Touching A Nerve" by Patricia Churchland

Nothing groundbreaking to report here so far. I'm already convinced that I am my brain, and that dualism is bunk, and that we do not survive our own death. There has been some discussion of the neuroevolution of morality and mammalian caring, which is interesting to examine at the level of hormones and their receptors in the brain (specifically, oxytocin and vasopressin).

I was interested in Churchland's book (which I became aware of through here interview on The Colbert Report) because the study of neurophilosophy sounds so dang sexy. In the latter half of the book (which I have yet to read), I'm hoping for a little more in the philosophy department with regard to the broader implications of 'neuroexistentialism'.

Currently Reading: "Columbine"

"The media version [of Columbine] was a gross caricature of how [the students] saw it, and of what they thought they had described.

"It made it difficult for social scientists or journalists to come to Littleton later, to study the community in-depth and see what was really going on. Heisenberg's uncertainty principle had played out in full force: by observing an entity, you alter it. ... Heisenberg was a quantum physicist, observing electron behavior. But social scientists began applying his principle to humans. It was remarkable how similarly we behaved. During the third week of April, Littleton was observed beyond all recognition."

From "Columbine" by Dave Cullen 

While this book somehow manages to be meticulous in its detail while remaining engaging and accessible, I am hesitant to consume large portions of it in single sessions. This is because one is required to take frequent breaks in order to digest what one has just read. The topic is obviously horrific, and yet it is as relevant as ever. The writing is disarming. I have yet to decide if this is good or bad.

I have little memory of how the events unfolded in the media as they happened. My understanding of the shooting took shape later with the Michael Moore documentary Bowling For Columbine. I don't recall when I first watched it but the documentary wasn't released until 2002, a little over three years after the tragedy. Moore dealt mainly with the culture surrounding guns in America and how ubiquitous and easy to acquire they are. But the doc also touched on how the shooters were represented by the media and how people tried to rationalize the horror we had just collectively witnessed.

Which brings me to the quote from the book. In the race to find answers (which presumes answers exist in the first place), the media inevitably taints their own reporting by repeating unverified reports and relying on "eyewitness accounts" of the tragedy. Unfortunately in this case, as Cullen aptly points out, "witness" is conflated with "student". Not every student saw what happened, and yet their stories are both sought after and widely reported with little consideration for how this may affect the stories we are all constantly writing and revising in our own minds. This creates a kind of feedback loop of obfuscation where "more information" actually brings us further away from the truth. Thus, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle.

Memories are notoriously unreliable and prone to confabulation, yet we all place an undue amount of trust in our ability to accurately recollect the past. The brain rushes in to fill the gaps and reduce dissonance. There may be no intent to deceive, but an inherently faulty memory can do real damage in situations like these. Things get jumbled up in the chaos, and responders have to make decisions in real time based on unreliable information. Investigators then in turn have to deal with rumours masquerading as truth, which impairs their ability to ultimately find it.

Then there is everyone else who is struggling to make sense of it all. They latch on to misrepresentations, conjecture, and any other tidbit of  information (reliable or otherwise) which will allow them to speculate in any number of ways. This is where confirmation bias creeps in, where we seek to reaffirm our preconceived ideas about video games, androgenous rock stars, Goths, gun culture, etc. Whatever fits. Stories are built up and people become entrenched. Narratives become nearly impervious to truth, and real work must be done to change the minds that have already been made up.

I'm just starting Part Three of the book, "The Downward Spiral" which details the individual characters responsible for the attack. Further down the rabbit hole I go...