Tiptoeing.....................................

 We,  human beings, are a species that's not only capable of acting on hidden motives—we're designed to do it.  Our brains are built to act in out self-interest while at the same time trying hard not to appear selfish in front of other people.  And in order to throw them off the trail, our brains often keep "us," our conscious minds, in the dark.  The less we know of our own ugly motives, the easier it is to hide them from others.

     Self-deception is therefore strategic; a ploy our brains use to look good while behaving badly.  Understandably, few people are eager to confess to this kind of duplicity.  But as long as we continue to tiptoe around it, we'll be unable to think clearly about human behavior.  We'll be forced to distort or deny any explanation that harks back to our hidden motives.  Key facts will remain taboo, and we'll forever be mystified by our own thoughts and actions.  It's only by confronting the elephant, then, that we can begin to see what's really going on.

-Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson,  The Elephant In The Brain

The Elephant.......................

 So what, exactly, is the elephant in the brain, this thing we're reluctant to talk and think about?  In a word, it's selfishness—the selfish part of our psyches.

     But it's actually broader than that.  Selfishness is just the heart, if you will, and an elephant has many other parts, all interconnected.  So throughout the book, we'll be using "the elephant" to refer not just to human selfishness, but to a whole cluster of related concepts:  the fact that we're competitive social animals fighting for power, status and sex; the fact that we're somethings willing to lie and cheat to get ahead; the fact that we hide some of our motives—and that we do so in order to mislead others.  We'll also occasionally use "the elephant" to refer to our hidden motives themselves.  To acknowledge any of these concepts is to hint at the rest of them.  They're all part of the same package, subject to the same taboo.

-Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson,  The Elephant In The Brain

Ever-escalating demands on cognition...........

      "The worst problems for people," says primatologist Dario Maestripieri, "almost always comes from other people."

      The earliest Homo Sapiens lived in small tight-knit bands of 20 to 30 individuals.  These bands were our "groves" or "forests" in which we competed not for sunlight, but for resources more befitting a primate:  food, sex, territory, social status.  And we had to earn these things, in part, by outwitting and outshining our rivals.

     This is what's known in the literature as the social brain hypothesis, or sometimes the Machiavellian intelligence hypothesis.  It's the idea that our ancestors got smart primarily in order to compete against each other in a variety of social and political scenarios.

     "The way the brains of human beings have gotten bigger at an accelerating pace," writes Matt Ridley in his book on evolutionary biology, The Red Queen, "implies that some such within-species arms race is at work."  Steven Pinker and Paul Bloom also emphasize intra-species competition as an evolutionary cause of our intelligence.  In an influential 1990 article on language evolution, they write, "Interacting with an organism of approximately equal mental abilities whose motives are at times outright malevolent makes formidable and ever-escalating demands on cognition."

      Robert Trivers goes even further.  He argues that it was the arms race between lying and lie detection that gave rise to our intelligence.  "Both the detection of deception and often its propagation have been major forces favoring the evolution of intelligence.  It is perhaps ironic that dishonesty has often been the file against which intellectual tools for truth have been sharpened."

-Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson, The Elephant In The Brain

Interesting...........................

 

"Good strategies for a radically uncertain world avoid the pretense of knowledge — the models and bogus quantification which require users to make up things they do not know and could not know. . . . Good strategies for a radically uncertain world acknowledge that we do not know what the future will hold.  such strategies identify reference narratives, visualise alternative future scenarios and ensure that plans are robust and resilient to a range of plausible alternatives. . . . Robust and resilient plans confer positive options — opportunities to take advantage of developments which are not currently foreseen with any specificity or perhaps at at all — and avoid negative ones, which close off alternatives and limit future developments to those which can currently be envisioned. "

This is an interesting and worthwhile book.  If it was 100 pages shorter, I would have recommended it.

Smart guy............................

      Thales of Miletus, a Greek philosopher, made important discoveries in geometry and careful observations of the frequency of natural events.  His prediction of the solar eclipse in 585 BC was described by Isaac Asimov as 'the birth of science'.  Thales also used his scientific knowledge to anticipate an especially plentiful olive harvest.  He bought options on all the olive presses in Miletus, and when demand soared he rented them out at a substantial profit.  According to Aristotle, Thales' motive was not primarily pecuniary;  he aimed to provide an answer to the question so often thrown at philosophers and economists:  'If you're so smart, why aren't you rich?"

-John Kay and Mervyn King:  Radical Uncertainty:  Decision-Making Beyond The Numbers

Thales............................

 Οὔ τι τὰ πολλὰ ἔπη φρονίμην ἀπεφήνατο δόξαν

"A multitude of words is no proof of a prudent mind."

-Thales of Miletus

Fifty years ago.............................................

The Moody Blues...................................................Question

 

Why do we never get an answer
When we're knocking at the door
With a thousand million questions
About hate and death and war?
'Cause when we stop and look around us
There is nothing that we need
In a world of persecution
That is burning in its greed

Why do we never get an answer
When we're knocking at the door?
Because the truth is hard to swallow
That's what the war of love is for

It's not the way that you say it
When you do those things to me
It's more the way that you mean it
When you tell me what will be
And when you stop and think about it
You won't believe it's true
That all the love you've been giving
Has all been meant for you

I'm looking for someone to change my life
I'm looking for a miracle in my life
And if you could see what it's done to me
To lose the love I knew
Could safely lead me through

Between the silence of the mountains
And the crashing of the sea
There lies a land I once lived in
And she's waiting there for me
But in the grey of the morning
My mind becomes confused
Between the dead and the sleeping
And the road that I must choose

I'm looking for someone to change my life
I'm looking for a miracle in my life
And if you could see what it's done to me
To lose the love I knew
Could safely lead me to
The land that I once knew
To learn as we grow old
The secrets of our soul
It's not the way that you say it when you do those things to me
It's more the way you really mean it when you tell me what will be

Why do we never get an answer
When we're knocking at the door
With a thousand million questions
About hate and death and war?
When we stop and look around us
There is nothing that we need
In a world of persecution
That is burning in its greed

Why do we never get an answer
When we're knocking at the door?

Songwriters: Justin Hayward

A lesson in enantiodromia*.........................

 That’s a big, broad takeaway of Covid that repeats itself throughout history: Nothing too good or too bad stays that way forever, because great times plant the seeds of their own destruction through complacency and leverage, and bad times plant the seeds of their own turnaround through opportunity and panic-driven problem-solving. The same story, again and again.

-Morgan Housel, from this blog post

*A theory from Carl Jung that an excess of something gives rise to its opposite.

in an ordinary mind............................

      Andre-Louis, on his side, had made the most of his opportunities.  You behold him at the age of four-and-twenty stuffed with learning enough to produce an intellectual indigestion in an ordinary mind.  Out of his zestful study of Man, from Thucydides to the Encyclopaedists, from Seneca to Rousseau, he had confirmed into an unassailable conviction his earliest conscious impressions of the general insanity of his own species.  Nor can I discover that anything in his eventful life ever afterwards caused him to waver in that opinion.

-Rafael Sabatini,  Scaramouche

Wally........................

While maybe not the best role model, he has some skills:

The truth can be elusive..........................

 Says Sherlock Holmes:

     "That process," said I, "starts upon the supposition that when you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.  It may well be that several explanations remain, in which case one tries test after test until one or other of them has a convincing amount of support.  We will now apply this principle to the case in point. . . ."  

    "There remained the third possibility, into which, rare and unlikely as it was every thing seemed to fit.  Leprosy is not uncommon in South Africa.  By some extraordinary chance this youth might have contracted it. . . ."

Enters the "great dermatologist", Sir James Saunders, who says:

    "It is often my lot to bring ill-tidings and seldom good," said he.  "This occasion is the more welcome.  It is not leprosy"

     "What?"

     "A well-marked case of pseudo-leprosy or ichthyosis, a scale-like affection of the skin, unsightly, obstinate, but possibly curable, and certainly noninfective.  Yes, Mr. Holmes, the coincidence is a remarkable one.  But is it coincidence?  Are there not subtle forces at work of which we know little? . . ."

-Arthur Conan Doyle, The Blanched Soldier

Ed. Note:  In this story, the narrative is told by Holmes himself, for "The good Watson, had at that time deserted me for a wife, the only selfish action which i can recall in our association."

Lest we forget...........................

 ". . . innovation is not usually a choreographed, planned, or managed thing.  It cannot be easily predicted, as may a red-faced forecaster has discovered.  It runs mostly on trial and error, the human version of natural selection.  And it usually stumbles on great breakthroughs when looking for something else; it is heavily serendipitous."

-Matt Ridley, How Innovation Works And Why It Flourishes in Freedom

Can I get an............................

 ..................................................Amen?

Respect......................

 Go out of your way to find humility when things are going right and forgiveness/compassion when they go wrong.  Because it's never as good or as bad as it looks.  The world is big and complex.  Luck and risk are both real and hard to identify.  Do so when judging yourself and others.  Respect the power of luck and risk and you'll have a better chance of focusing on the things you can actually control.  You'll also have a better chance of finding the right role models.

-Morgan Housel, The Psychology of Money:  Timeless Lessons On Wealth, Greed, And Happiness

A few more snippets......................

 .................from Radical Uncertainty:  Decision Making Beyond The Numbers by John Kay and Mervyn King:

Evolution has produced a collective intelligence and social norms and institutions which are the 'secret of our success'; these social capabilities provide the reason that humans dominate the planet.

The World Values Survey shows a strong positive correlation across countries between per capita income answers to the question 'Do you think that most people can be trusted?'

Most behaviour is the product of both nature and nurture.  The biological determinism that it is 'all in our genes', and the behaviourist claim that the mind is a 'blank slate' on which anything can be written, are both untenable.

Evolution has fitted humans to deal with many kinds of radical uncertainty encountered in large worlds.  Different attitudes to uncertainty influence the chances of survival of individuals and groups.

. . . as Taleb has emphasised, evolution favors those who survive, and they are not necessarily those who maximise expected value.  Perhaps rational economic man dies out because no one would want to mate with him.

Humans are all better off because we are all different, and because there is no single way to be rational.

Scary.....................................

Gone but not forgotten.........................

 ...............................................Sean Connery.

The Longest Day

Goldfinger

The Man Who Would Be King

Molly Maguires

The Untouchables

The Hunt For Red October

The Rock

Entrapment

Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade

This day in history........................

   November 1, 1952:  The world's first hydrogen bomb was exploded in a test on some unfortunate atoll in the Pacific Ocean.  The difference, for those who care, between an atomic bomb and a hydrogen bomb may be found here.

Opening paragraphs..........................

      From a little after two oclock until almost sundown of the long still hot weary dead September afternoon they sat in what Miss Coldfield still called the office because her father had called it that—a dim hot airless room with the blinds all closed and fastened for forty-three summers because when she was a girl someone had believed that light and moving air carried heat and that dark was always cooler, and which (as the sun shone fuller and fuller on that side of the house) became latticed with yellow slashes full of dust motes which Quentin thought of as being flecks of the dead old dried paint itself blown inward from the scaling blinds as wind might have blown them.  There was a wistaria vine blooming for the second time that summer on a wooden trellis before one window, into which sparrows came now and then in random gusts, making a dry vivid dusty sound before going away: and opposite Quentin, Miss Coldfield in the eternal black which she had worn for forty-three years now, whether for sister, father, or nothusband none knew, sitting so bolt upright in the straight hard chair that was so tall for her that her legs hung straight and rigid as if she had iron shinbones and ankles, clear of the floor with that air of impotent and static rage like children's feet, and talking in that grim haggard amazed voice until at last listening would renege and hearing-sense self-confound and the long-dead object of her impotent yet indomitable frustration would appear, as though by outraged recapitulation evoked, quiet inattentive and harmless, out of the biding and dreamy and victorious dust.

-William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom!

Ed. Note: Your editor confesses to finding Faulkner heavy going hard work.  No denying the man was a craftsman with words and has much to teach about life its ownself, but..........

the infinite permutations of life....................

 "While we can never render complexity simple, we could embrace it as an adventure, calling us to investigate the infinite permutations of life that it contains. Surrendering agency, action and adventure for convenience is a miserable bargain. In the uncharted world, who is content to be left hugging the shore when we could use our freedom to explore."

-Margeret Heffernan, Uncharted:  How To Navigate The Future

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