Lecture notes: Gary Marcus on the human mind as a kluge (Google talks) – “Evolution is a tinkerer using spare parts”

New book: Kluge, the haphazard construction of the human mind

Hamlet: “what a piece of work is man…how noble in faculty”

Bertrand Russell: “it’s been said man’s a rational animal…all my life I’ve been searching for evidence that could support this”

Argues man is the RATIONALIZING animal (not the “rational animal”) – searching for reasons to explain why we do what we do

Default thinking is that natural selection leads to human optimalism
But how to reconcile with the manifest clumsiness of the human mind?

Visual system evolving for a billion years
But distinctively human things – like talking, rational deliberation – these are much more recent (eg, 50-100K years ago)

Hill climbing metaphor – issue of local maxima
Evolution won’t necessarily lead to superlative adaptation

Human spine is a kluge – but not best way to support bi-pedal creature, leads to back pain / fragility – eg, multiple columns would be better solution

Evolution builds kluges because it has no foresight nor hindsight – it’s effectively blind
Evolution is always in a hurry – shipping deadline of “now”

Darwin didn’t say “survival of the fittest” – what he meant was fittest of the available options
It’s really “Descent with modification”

Bird’s wing is a modification of the forelimb of all 4-legged creatures – wasn’t designed from scratch as best possible wing

Concept of “evolutionary inertia”
Genes are conserved
Evolution is a tinkerer using spare parts

Kluge is about 3 things
1. Limits of human mind
2. Where they came from
3. What we can do about them

Computer memory – there’s a master map of where everything is stored – like a series of safe deposit boxes
Stored once, saved forever

Human memories are nowhere near as reliable – there’s no master map
Human memory balances 2 things: RECENCY and FREQUENCY
That’s why you often forget where you put your keys, where you parked your car
That’s why pilots use checklists to make sure they do all the required tasks
Evolution didn’t bless us with an erase feature

Brain uses a broadcast system to retrieve info and memories – doesn’t know where individual memories are

Memory is context dependent – if you study while stoned, you might be better off taking test while stoned
Even your posture (eg, seated or standing) can affect memory recall (!)
Seems to apply to rat + maze experiments too

Eyewitness testimony is particularly subject to these memory errors
Shooting incident with 30 eyewitnesses where the witnesses cannot agree about what happened

Framing: “estate tax” versus “death tax”

Garbage in > garbage out

We take biased samples of data and reason from those limited samples

Confirmation bias – eg, religious beliefs, presidential elections

Depression – being depressed means you’re more likely to have depressing thoughts, negative spiral – normal brains have ability to stop this process

Languages have lot of ambiguities – “the spy shot the cop with the revolver”

Moral dilemmas – trolley problem – a person’s judgment can be affected by how messy the experimental room is!

Lecture notes: The Meaning Crisis by cogsci prof John Vervaeke

University of Toronto professor Dr. John Vervaeke
Lecture series

Symptoms:
-Sense of more bullshit everywhere
-People lost trust in authority
-Can see this evidence in public media, academia

We’re spending too much time in online environments, social media

Why are zombies and superheroes so big rn?
These myth forms are cultural expression of feeling “stuck”

Meaning crisis – interdependent with other crises like environmental crisis, political crisis

Wisdom = realizing meaning in life in a profound way
(“wizard” root = wise)

Questions
1. What is this meaning?
2. Why do we hunger for it?
3. How do we cultivate the wisdom to realize it?
4. Why do we seek to alter consciousness? Not just us, but animals do too!

Subset of mystical experiences are crucial – “awakening experiences” – “quantum change”

The same (mental) machinery that makes you intelligent also makes you foolish

We’re very belief centric – very focused on ideologies – but there’s many more kinds of knowing

Therapy is booming – because of meaning crisis, because loss of the many kinds of knowing

No simplistic answers, but will try best to offer rational, careful answers

Paleolithic revolution – 40K BCE
Radical changes
1. Start making cave paintings, music
2. Radical change in cognition – use of calendars, tracking time
3. Develop projectile weapons – throwing spears, slings

Why did it occur?
Near extinction event
To protect themselves, create broader trading networks
Widens scale for human cognition
Cognition is participatory

Rituals make this work
1. trade rituals – eg, handshakes
2. initiation rituals
3. shamanic rituals

Initiation rituals
As you interact more out-group, weakens in-group ties
So initiation / commitment rituals grow
Requires pain and fear = shows commitment
Must improve ability to regulate emotion

Exaptation = evolutionary mechanism
eg, using tongue for speech, but not evolved primarily for this purpose (primary = taste / poison detector)

Shamanic rituals
Take enhanced perspective on others – “mind sight”
Shamanism = altering consciousness to control mental and emotional states
Archetype – wise old man (Yoda, Merlin)
Shamans improve a group’s healthcare, coordination, wisdom
Shamanism thesis = explains rise in cognition
Not hardware but software change

You’re a natural born cyborg = evolved to integrate with machines = your clothes, shoes, pens, computers, desks, literally everything except your naked body

This can apply to not only physical but intangible / cognitive things too (psycho tech)
eg, literacy

Shamanism = sleep deprivation, long periods of singing + dancing, imitation / masks, social isolation
Psychedelics
Altering consciousness
Disrupting how you find patterns in world
How you find patterns is profound

Shamanism teaches you HOW to disrupt patterns and gain new insight
Participatory knowing
Enhancing your cognition by manipulating the meaning of things