People are idiots
I've been trying for many years to determine the universal theory of humanity, the single trait that describes all aspects of human thought, desire, and action. And it looks like it's going to boil down to something very like this: people are idiots.
I don't mean to be flippant. By this I mean something quite specific, yet very broad-reaching. I mean that people are trapped, by their very nature, into acting and believing in ways fundamentally contradictory to reason, and indeed contradictory to the advancement of the human race.
Let me elaborate. Sometimes, I'll be sitting on the sofa watching TV or reading a book or something and Marci will sit next to me and stroke my neck or even just rest her head on my shoulder; and most of the time I like this, but sometimes it will irritate me. I don't know why, it's just the mood I'm in.
It's a common feature of any man's relationship that he will often find himself wanting out not because there are problems with the relationship, but because he misses the freedom of being single, meaning to put it frankly he would quite like to sleep with other women. Yet this almost universally leads to unhappiness and any rational man would, if he could, 'switch off' that urge because all it does is cause trouble and distract him from making more of his current relationship. When I'm at a party or at some other suitable event I might find myself exhibiting courting behaviour - grooming myself, going out of my way to meet and introduce myself to new women, trying to sound clever, evaluating women on the basis of shallow parameters - even though I may be aware that the odds of anything happening are basically zero, if given the opportunity I would probably turn it down, and, if I didn't, I would regret not doing so because I'm perfectly happy with my current relationship. It's just madness.
Rowing is one of the best examples of something where psychology is more important than genuine consequences of your actions. When I'm doing an ergo (rowing machine) workout in the gym, I can improve my performance simply by making more effort to distract myself from what I'm doing, by thinking about something else, or watching TV, for instance. In other words, I am physically capable of rowing a lot harder than my brain is telling me I can by trying to get me to give up and putting me through all the pain and exhaustion.
Other examples: The instinct to shout at, argue with, or generally get annoyed with people who impede or delay you on the street or on the roads, regardless of whether it will do any good and even if a cool-headed evaluation puts the blame at your feet or at nobody's. Learned behaviour is the classic: if we've been brought up to think a certain way then we will obstinately ignore any contradictory evidence however glaring. This comes up all the time in my religious debates. Most religious people have absolutely no problem recognising the preposterousness of the supernatural beliefs of others but their own will be defended to the hilt as somehow inherently different. One particular opponent is always calling us atheists dishonest for drawing comparisons between fairies and Father Christmas, and religion, because they are somehow self-evidently absurd and nobody really believes in them, while we atheists genuinely cannot discern a difference in the quality of reasoning behind believing each idea.
Then you have truly bizarre behaviour, usually religious, which is totally counterproductive and against nature. Young abstinent priests. Circumcision. Suicide bombing and terrorism. Terrorism transparently does not achieve any of its aims yet the zealots' faith in its effectiveness seems unwavering.
We act in counterproductive ways because the modern world with all its technology, huge groups of people operating in close proximity, global travel, mass overpopulation, and pointlessly destructive weaponry is a side-effect of our ability to reason and use tools, which only evolved to give us a predatory advantage in a tribal environment with small communities. I get irritated with Marci because my neurochemical condition is a desire for solitude at a completely inappropriate moment, some remnant of a man's ancient need to recuperate and mull over the day's hunt undisturbed. I go on the pull without even really wanting to because monogamy was never part of the blind watchmaker's 'plan', I'm supposed to be out there spreading my seed around as much as I can and trying to get away with as little contribution to raising my children as I can get away with. My brain's never heard of rowing, it just has trouble reconciling my desire to do lots of hard work when I'm not in danger or on the hunt, so it keeps telling me to stop and preserve energy (as if resources were so scarce!). Road rage is a strange phenomenon that may be to do with the conflict between being in a mental state that says 'travel' yet not actually going anywhere, and perhaps our tendency to find causal agency for everything which means we're virtually incapable of accepting that something is nobody's fault. Our inability to adapt learned beliefs to new information is part of the mechanism that allows us to function at all, by preventing us from constantly reevaluating everything we know. Religion is almost certainly derived from our curiosity and our need to give all phenomena a causal agent, which used to be important for keeping us alive in a hostile world.
The problem is, we can't just switch this stuff off. It doesn't even really matter if we know what instincts are screwing with our reason, although it helps. I can't stop myself being human any more than I can just decide always to be interested and motivated by my work, or be turned on by my girlfriend every time I see her just like the first time.
Frankly, it's a nuisance. The sooner we can engineer the human race to fit better with the modern world, the happier everyone will be. I'm not suggesting doing so isn't problematic, but I am suggesting that not doing so is a dead-end. We cannot continue to be tribal animals in a civilised world. We must change ourselves, or we will drag our world back to join us in the feral tribalism of our instincts.
All people are idiots. Idiots do stupid things. That is not good. Let's change people.
I don't mean to be flippant. By this I mean something quite specific, yet very broad-reaching. I mean that people are trapped, by their very nature, into acting and believing in ways fundamentally contradictory to reason, and indeed contradictory to the advancement of the human race.
Let me elaborate. Sometimes, I'll be sitting on the sofa watching TV or reading a book or something and Marci will sit next to me and stroke my neck or even just rest her head on my shoulder; and most of the time I like this, but sometimes it will irritate me. I don't know why, it's just the mood I'm in.
It's a common feature of any man's relationship that he will often find himself wanting out not because there are problems with the relationship, but because he misses the freedom of being single, meaning to put it frankly he would quite like to sleep with other women. Yet this almost universally leads to unhappiness and any rational man would, if he could, 'switch off' that urge because all it does is cause trouble and distract him from making more of his current relationship. When I'm at a party or at some other suitable event I might find myself exhibiting courting behaviour - grooming myself, going out of my way to meet and introduce myself to new women, trying to sound clever, evaluating women on the basis of shallow parameters - even though I may be aware that the odds of anything happening are basically zero, if given the opportunity I would probably turn it down, and, if I didn't, I would regret not doing so because I'm perfectly happy with my current relationship. It's just madness.
Rowing is one of the best examples of something where psychology is more important than genuine consequences of your actions. When I'm doing an ergo (rowing machine) workout in the gym, I can improve my performance simply by making more effort to distract myself from what I'm doing, by thinking about something else, or watching TV, for instance. In other words, I am physically capable of rowing a lot harder than my brain is telling me I can by trying to get me to give up and putting me through all the pain and exhaustion.
Other examples: The instinct to shout at, argue with, or generally get annoyed with people who impede or delay you on the street or on the roads, regardless of whether it will do any good and even if a cool-headed evaluation puts the blame at your feet or at nobody's. Learned behaviour is the classic: if we've been brought up to think a certain way then we will obstinately ignore any contradictory evidence however glaring. This comes up all the time in my religious debates. Most religious people have absolutely no problem recognising the preposterousness of the supernatural beliefs of others but their own will be defended to the hilt as somehow inherently different. One particular opponent is always calling us atheists dishonest for drawing comparisons between fairies and Father Christmas, and religion, because they are somehow self-evidently absurd and nobody really believes in them, while we atheists genuinely cannot discern a difference in the quality of reasoning behind believing each idea.
Then you have truly bizarre behaviour, usually religious, which is totally counterproductive and against nature. Young abstinent priests. Circumcision. Suicide bombing and terrorism. Terrorism transparently does not achieve any of its aims yet the zealots' faith in its effectiveness seems unwavering.
We act in counterproductive ways because the modern world with all its technology, huge groups of people operating in close proximity, global travel, mass overpopulation, and pointlessly destructive weaponry is a side-effect of our ability to reason and use tools, which only evolved to give us a predatory advantage in a tribal environment with small communities. I get irritated with Marci because my neurochemical condition is a desire for solitude at a completely inappropriate moment, some remnant of a man's ancient need to recuperate and mull over the day's hunt undisturbed. I go on the pull without even really wanting to because monogamy was never part of the blind watchmaker's 'plan', I'm supposed to be out there spreading my seed around as much as I can and trying to get away with as little contribution to raising my children as I can get away with. My brain's never heard of rowing, it just has trouble reconciling my desire to do lots of hard work when I'm not in danger or on the hunt, so it keeps telling me to stop and preserve energy (as if resources were so scarce!). Road rage is a strange phenomenon that may be to do with the conflict between being in a mental state that says 'travel' yet not actually going anywhere, and perhaps our tendency to find causal agency for everything which means we're virtually incapable of accepting that something is nobody's fault. Our inability to adapt learned beliefs to new information is part of the mechanism that allows us to function at all, by preventing us from constantly reevaluating everything we know. Religion is almost certainly derived from our curiosity and our need to give all phenomena a causal agent, which used to be important for keeping us alive in a hostile world.
The problem is, we can't just switch this stuff off. It doesn't even really matter if we know what instincts are screwing with our reason, although it helps. I can't stop myself being human any more than I can just decide always to be interested and motivated by my work, or be turned on by my girlfriend every time I see her just like the first time.
Frankly, it's a nuisance. The sooner we can engineer the human race to fit better with the modern world, the happier everyone will be. I'm not suggesting doing so isn't problematic, but I am suggesting that not doing so is a dead-end. We cannot continue to be tribal animals in a civilised world. We must change ourselves, or we will drag our world back to join us in the feral tribalism of our instincts.
All people are idiots. Idiots do stupid things. That is not good. Let's change people.
posted by extabgrad at 4:21 AM
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