Michael Shermer’s “The Believing Brain” is a gem: a treatise on the brain as a “belief engine”.

I strongly recommend it: Shermer shows how “dependent our beliefs are on a multitude of subjective, personal, emotional and psychological factors”; how belief systems are “formed, nourished, reinforced, changed and extinguished”; how belief systems operate ‘”with regard to belief in religion, the afterlife, God, extraterrestrial, conspiracies, politics, economics and ideologies”; and finally how we know which beliefs are true and which are false.

Here are a few selected quotes – I hope you find them intriguing enough to make you want to get the book and read it.

On how we form beliefs:

“The first process I call patternicity: the tendency to find meaningful patterns in both meaningful and meaningless data.

…

The second process I call agenticity: the tendency to infuse patterns with meaning, intention, and agency.

…

These meaningful patterns become beliefs, and these beliefs shape our understanding of reality. Once beliefs are formed, the brain begins to look for and find confirmatory evidence in support of those beliefs..”

On belief- dependent realisms:

“In fact, all models of the world, not just scientific models, are foundational to our beliefs, and belief-dependent realism means that we cannot escape this epistemological trap. We can, however, employ the tools of science, which are designed to test whether or not a particular model or belief about reality matches observations made not just by ourselves but by others as well.”

“What you believe is what you see. The label is the behavior. Theory molds data. Concepts determine percepts. Belief-dependent realism.”

On the relationship between “believing weird things” and intelligence:

“A common myth most of us intuitively accept is that there is a negative correlation between intelligence and belief: as intelligence goes up belief in superstition or magic goes down. This, in fact, turns out not to be the case, especially as you move up the IQ spectrum… once people commit to a belief, the smarter they are the better they are at rationalizing those beliefs. Thus: smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for nonsmart reasons.”

On why it makes sense we evolved to err on the “false positive” side, i.e. believing something is real when it is not

“If you assume that the rustle in the grass is a dangerous predator but it turns out that it is just the wind, you have made what is called a Type I error in cognition, also known as a false positive, or believing something is real when it is not. That is, you have found a nonexistent pattern.

…

“If you assume that the rustle in the grass is just the wind but it turns out that it is a dangerous predator, you have made what is called a Type II error in cognition, also known as a false negative, or believing something is not real when it is. That is, you have missed a real pattern.”

“[our] default position is to assume that all patterns are real; that is, assume that all rustles in the grass are dangerous predators and not the wind.”

…

“Several psychological studies appear to support [seventeenth-century Dutch philosopher Baruch] Spinoza’s conjecture that the mere comprehension of a statement entails the tacit acceptance of its being true, whereas disbelief requires a subsequent process of rejection,…”

On science vs. anecdotal thinking:

“Anecdotal thinking comes naturally, science requires training.”

On how behaviors that were highly adaptive in the past misfire in today’s environment:

“(A) sweet and rich foods are strongly associated with (B) nutritious and rare. Therefore, we gravitate to any and all foods that are sweet and rich, and because they were once rare we have no satiation network in the brain that tells us to shut off the hunger mechanism, so we eat as much as we can of them.”

On uncertainty and “magic thinking”:

“Uncertainty makes people anxious, and anxiety is related to magical thinking.”

On reductionism:

“All experience is mediated by the brain. The mind is what the brain does. There is no such thing as “mind” per se, outside of brain activity. Mind is just a word we use to describe neural activity in the brain. No brain, no mind.”

On the relationship between creativity and madness:

“The connection between patternicity, creativity, and madness comes from a thinking style that is too all inclusive and that indiscriminately sees patterns everywhere.”

On religious attitudes and genetics:

“approximately 55 percent of the variance in religious attitudes is genetic, approximately 39 percent can be attributed to the nonshared environment, approximately 5 percent is unassigned, and only about 3 percent is attributable to the shared family environment”

On liberals vs. conservatives:

“Liberals are higher than conservatives on 1 and 2 (harm/care and fairness/reciprocity), but lower than conservatives on 3, 4, and 5 (in-group/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity).”

…

“…a more reflective approach is to recognize that liberals and conservatives emphasize different moral values and tend to sort themselves into these two clusters.”

On being realistic vs. political utopias:

“Good fences make good neighbors because evil people really are part of the moral landscape.”

On libertarianism:

“Ludwig von Mises was first among equals; he taught me that interventionism leads to more interventionism, and that if you can intervene to protect individuals from dangerous drugs, what about dangerous ideas?”

“Principle of Freedom: all people are free to think, believe, and act as they choose, so long as they do not infringe on the equal freedom of others.”

“… a dozen essentials to liberty and freedom that need shielding from encroachment:   1. The rule of law.   2. Property rights.   3. Economic stability through a secure and trustworthy banking and monetary system.   4. A reliable infrastructure and the freedom to move about the country.   5. Freedom of speech and the press.   6. Freedom of association.   7. Mass education.   8. Protection of civil liberties.   9. A robust military for protection of our liberties from attacks by other states. 10. A potent police force for protection of our freedoms from attacks by other people within the state. 11. A viable legislative system for establishing fair and just laws. 12. An effective judicial system for the equitable enforcement of those fair and just laws.”

“Organizing libertarians is like herding cats.”

On science:

“Feynman echoed Galileo’s principle in his observation about determining if your theory is right or wrong: “If it disagrees with experiment, it is wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. It doesn’t make any difference how beautiful your guess is, how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is. If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. That’s all there is to it.”

“Science begins with something called a null hypothesis.

…

the hypothesis under investigation is not true, or null, until proven otherwise. A null hypothesis states that X does not cause Y. If you think X does cause Y then the burden of proof is on you to provide convincing experimental data to reject the null hypothesis.”

“So many claims of this nature are based on negative evidence. That is, if science cannot explain X, then your explanation for X is necessarily true. Not so. In science lots of mysteries remain unexplained until further evidence arises, and problems are often left unsolved until another day.”

On skepticism:

“A skeptic simply does not believe a knowledge claim until sufficient evidence is presented to reject the null hypothesis (that a knowledge claim is not true until proven otherwise).”

_______________

And this is just a sample.

In the book you can also find: a complete and detailed list of cognitive biases; an interesting account of the neuroscience of beliefs; a great (and very respectful) chapter on religion, atheism and agnosticism; insightful stories about Michael Shermer’s own life; well written stories about the emergence of science (e.g. about Galileo and the reaction to his discoveries)… and more!

Tags: beliefs, cognitive biases, libertarianism, Michael Shermer, neuroscience, science, Skepticism, The Believing Brain

HOW PLEASURE WORKS

Yale psychologist Paul Bloom gave us a book about pleasure that is a pleasure to read.
Though it is basically a pop-psych book, it reads almost like a collection of short stories – each one with the aim of illustrating from different angles what the nature of pleasure is, each one solidly grounded in psychology or neuroscience.

In the author’s view, human pleasures are universal and are not culturally determined: “we start off with a fixed list of pleasures and we cannot add to the list.” When we derive pleasure from new technologies or cultural habits, it is because they connect to pleasures that humans already possess.

However, most of these hardwired pleasures are not adaptations, but rather are by-products of mental systems evolved for other purposes.

For example, we can get a kick out of coffee, but this is not because “coffee lovers of the past had more offspring than coffee hater” – it is because we like to be stimulated, and coffee is a stimulant.

This is just the starting point for Paul Bloom – the book itself is a journey through the pleasures of food, of sex and love, of collecting objects, of art, of imagination, of sport, of science, of religion. In each entertaining chapter the author argues for his main claim: that “the pleasure we get from many things and activities is based in part on what we see as their essences”.

In other words pleasure is grounded in our BELIEFS about the deeper nature of a given thing – even our sensations are always colored by our beliefs.

That is why an original Picasso is worth a lot of money, but a perfectly executed replica is not. That is why sexual pleasure is not merely a matter of sensations, but it is also rooted in beliefs about who someone really is and what someone really is – as illustrated by the use of bedtricks in plays and fiction, and by our preference for partners that are faithful, smart and kind. That is why how we think about food and drink affects how we judge it – orange juice tastes better if it is bright orange, yogurt and ice cream are more flavorful if described as “full fat”, and experts rate highly the same Bordeaux if it is described as “grand cru classe” but not if it is labeled “vin du table”.

I found particularly interesting the chapter dedicated to imagination, where the author develops a very tight explanation of how imagination arose in evolution and why now we take so much pleasure in it – from daydreaming to playing videogames.

I was also intrigued by philosopher Tamar Gendler’s notion of alief, introduced by the author in that very same chapter regarding imagination.

While beliefs are attitudes that we hold in response to how things are, alief are more primitive – they are responses to how things seem.

Psychologist Paul Rozin found that “people often refuse to drink soup from a brand-new bedpan, eat fudge shaped like feces, or put an empty gun to their head and pull the trigger. Gendler notes that the beliefs here are: the bedpan is clean, the fudge is fudge, the gun is empty. But the aliefs are stupider, screaming, “dangerous object! Stay away!” (p.169).

In Bloom’s essentialist framework, even science and religion can be seen as an obvious source of pleasure – even though they are very different, both science and religion share the basic assumption that there is a deeper reality that has significance. Science can tell us about it, religion provides tools to experience that reality.

Our essentialist nature appears in us as infants, as research carried out by the author and others has demonstrated. With science and religion we come full circle: essentialist properties are attributed to the very fabric of the Universe – and in this insight I, as a reader, took a great pleasure.

Tags: aliefs, beliefs, book review, essentialism, how pleasure work, Paul Bloom, pleasure, Psychology

When I lead a self-mastery or leadership workshop, one of the main things I want the participants to learn firsthand is the power of beliefs: our reality is shaped by the beliefs we have. As the research of Carole Dweck has shown, beliefs about change are a strong predictor of whether change will happen or not.

I think workshops are a great opportunity for people to stop and think about their own beliefs: what are my beliefs? Are they still useful? Are they “up to date”? How do they affect me?
That is something that can be done more easily while interacting with others, following a specific format – self-reflection alone can lead to delusions.

To bring home to the participants of my training workshops the power of beliefs & the power of a reality check on beliefs I use a wide array of tools all designed to burst the bubble of certainty & unchecked assumptions in which we live: visual illusions, stories, simulations, demonstrations and role plays. And, from now on, the following video:

And here is the story, in the words of David DiSalvo of the blog Neuronarrative:

The video is a terrific illustration of self delusion’s power, both internal and external.  The older gentleman is a self reputed Kiai Master — Kiai being a martial art that requires no physical contact with one’s opponent. The wielder harnesses his or her Kiai (or Chi/Ki) energy to fight instead of using hands and feet.  You’ll see at the beginning of the video that the Kiai Master appears to effortlessly throw his students around the dojo without ever physically touching them.

Clearly this guy has a big following and plenty of students who believe exactly what he says — and evidently, so does he. So sure is he that his power is real that he offered a $5000 challenge to anyone willing to fight him.  Unfortunately for him, someone took him up on it.

H/T: Todd Stark

Tags: beliefs, martial arts, reality check, Todd Stark, workshops