We don’t always know the “why” behind what we do but we always think we do.The most important self deception is about our own motives.Shame, guilt, and other negative emotions is our brain’s cue to avoid those neural pathways, putting our true desires even further out of grasp Our mind is built to help us advance socially.
#Elephant in the brain full#
Our brains architecture keeps some of our baser evolutionary motives hidden from full view and allows us to act hypocritically without truly realizing it. Our saving grace is inconsistency as one part of our mind’s “system” can be aware of something but be hidden from others.The main cost of self deception is that it can get us to act suboptimally.Cheater – turning a blind eye so you have plausible deniability.Loyalist – shows commitment and belief and will go along with the party or person no matter what.Cheerleader – a form of propaganda where you try to change other people’s beliefs.Madman – you’ll do anything to attain your goal and others know it.4 types of self deception in mixed motive scenarios.It is reproduction and in this case self deception helps us further this goal Modeling the world accurately isn’t the be all, end all of our brains. We are not as opaque as we believe and our thoughts can be quite transparent to others but if we don’t know something, others won’t be able to see it. Lying is hard to pull off, is cognitively demanding, and we are afraid of getting caught so not admitting it to ourselves is easier. We deceive ourselves to better deceive others. The new school is that self deception is used for manipulation and is self-promoting. Self-deception can be used to protect ourselves but if our mental models help us navigate the world, why would we have evolved to react this way? Information is the lifeblood and you’d think that with less or incorrect info we’d be worse off. We deceive ourselves but blame others and project our own failings or guilt onto others.The most honest signals are expensive to produce but even more expensive to fake.A little discretion can go a long way if you’re trying to cheat – think of the brown paper bag used when people want to drink in public. Humans are incredible at spotting cheating because our brains are adapted to it – meaning humans have always cheated as it gets you the reward without the cost if you can pull it off. However, everyone cheats and it is intentions even more than actions which are judged. Weapons originally and later gossip and reputation helped keep people in line and follow norms. The norm isn’t defined by how it is explicitly defined but by which actions are punished and to what degree. We hold ourselves back collectively for the greater good. Norms define these behaviors and is part of what we try to deceptively overcome. This is one of our species superpowers – turning wasteful competition into fruitful collaboration. Imagine how much shorter redwoods could be and how much energy they’d save if they could agree on a height maximum. A lot of energy is wasted with competition. Collaboration is the flip side of the same coin. Inter-species competition is at the root and is rarely discussed. The major social interactions which fall into this category for humans is sex, hierarchy and politics.Social grooming in apes is about hygiene but also politics, prestige, status, hierarchy, and reciprocation. By studying primates we can get a good idea of what our social interactions really mean.In some areas of life we are more likely to point out selfish motives (politics) but in others (medicine) we are more likely to gloss over and act like everyone’s intentions are pure This applies not only to our words but also our thoughts. Because people are judging us, we downplay our selfish motives and make our selves look as good as possible. We pretend like we know what we’re up to but we often don’t and this gets us into trouble.Elephant in the brain – an important but unacknowledged feature of how our mind works, an introspective taboo.This book shines the light on certain real world examples where self-deception is rampant In a word, the “elephant in the brain” is selfishness and this book shows why only by confronting it can we begin to deal with it and what’s really going on. We are strategically self-deceived – individually and as a society. Our brains try to get past this by keeping us in the dark – the less we know, the less we’ll give away. We are designed this way so that we can chase selfish motives while attempting not to appear selfish to others. Human behavior is not always what it seems as it tends to be driven by multiple motives and some of these motives are subconscious or we are at least not fully aware of them.
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