Ancestors III

They occupied Eurosia for more than 200.000 years before disappearing some 28.000 years ago.

A handful of Neanderthal sites indicates that they used jewelry - long before modern humans arrived in Europe 40.000 years ago?

Neanderthals are not modern in anatomy, but could they be modern in behaviour?

Decisive Moment - How do we make decisions?

Making good decisions is something of a black art. It takes years of practice, and still it can be quite difficult to explain the mechanics behind it. In the end, our best decisions are a finely tuned blend of feeling and reason, where the precise mix depends on the situation. And with Jonah Lehrers book ''The Decisive Moment'' we become a little wiser on exactly how the brain makes up its mind.
Still, when there is so much to learn, obviously, one book can only take us so far. But this book is a good place to start. And takes us through at least some of the issues involved in human decision making:
a) Limbic impatience.
b) Framing.
c) Loss aversion.
d) Mental accounting.
e) The achoring effect.
f) Rational vs. emotionalprocessing.
g) Outsourcing of decisions.

Limbic Impatience

Understanding the brain circuitry of temptation is one of the practical ambitions of scientists studying decision making. Jonathan Cohen, a neuroscientist at Princeton University, has begun to diagnose the specific brain regions responsible for our attraction to credit card and subprime loans. Putting people inside a fMRI machine he could see that when subjects contemplated long term consequences for their actions, rational planning areas of the brain, such as the prefrontal cortex region, were more active. But when subjects thought about satisfaction here and now, brain areas associated with emotion were more active - such as the midbrain dopamine system and nucleus accumbens. Cells that tell a person to take a morgage (he cant afford) and run up credit card debt, damned be the future. I.e. Cohens study locates the neural source for many financial errors. When self control breaks down, and we opt for rewards we cant afford, it is because the rational brain has lost the neural tug of war. The emotional brain is very impatient. When it wants something - it wants it now.

Framing

People are more likely to buy meat, when it is labelled 85% lean, instead of 15 % fat. And twice as many patients opt for surgery, when told there is an 80 per cent chance of survival, instead of 20 percent chance of dying.
Inside the fMRI machine one can see an activated amygdala whenever a person thinks about losing something. So, framing a question in the direction of loss activates the amygdala and warps the decision towards not taking risks.

Mental accounting

People tend to think about the world in terms of specific accounts. It helps us think faster, but unfortunately, it also introduces new errors. Richard Thaler, economist at the university of Chicago, has investigated mental accounting at work: When he asked people: If they would save 5 dollars on a 15 dollars calculator by driving 20 minutes to the other end of town - 68 percent said yes, they would do that. However, only 29 percent would drive 20 minutes to save 5 dollars on a 125 dollar leather jacket. The same principle goes for luxury hotels charging 6 dollars for a can of peanuts etc. Inside a larger budget it doesnt matter - According to Thaler: ''We have a slow, erratic CPU, and we are busy with other stuff - the prefrontal cortex can only handle about seven things, so we have to bundle things in order to make life manageable''.
We dont have the computational power to process it smarter.
Indeed, to much information is a huge distraction. As the brain has a lot of trouble ignoring irrelevant information.

Rational vs. Emotional processing

So, a lot of the extra information just gets in the way. And often people can perform much better with less information. Another problem is our bad understanding of when we are doing emotional reasoning, and when we are being rational. Finding the right balance, where our emotional centers handles the enormous complexities of daily life and rational centers help us guide the emotions - isnt all that easy.
Instead, people can easily fall into the trap of spending to much time (with their rational centers) on thinking about unimportant minor things. Ignoring that, the prefrontal cortex isnt a place that can handle to much complexity by itself.
Loss aversion and limbic impatience is the other way around, with too much emotional control. People also tend to confuse what decisions are actual rational decisions and what are emotional decisions! It goes back to Kant. Where Kant and other philosophers thought that morality were based on the rational brains thinking. It turns out not to be the case. Confronted by ethical dilemmas the unconscious (emotional) mind generates an answer, which it then interpreted by rational brain centers.
With the human ethical decision system in the hands of the emotional subconscious system, what the rational system actually does is working like a lawyer. It makes the emotional reaction seem reasonable (Psychologist Jonathan Haidt have made some rather startling examples about sibling sex, dog eating families, etc.,that demonstrates how emotions have decided what is right and wrong long before rationality have hada chance of stepping in).
And that human behaviour isnt rational should come as no surprise. Take altruism. It feels good to do acts of charity. From the perspective of the brain it is much better to give (to the group) than to receive. People are programmed to care about each other. And feel each others pain. Sympathy is one of humanitys most basic instincts. The brain is filled with mirror neurons and brain areas that can theorize about other minds.
Same thing goes for monkeys - in one experiment with rhesus monkeys they would receive food by pulling a chain. But with a terrible side consequence - a separate monkey in a different cage was then given a painful jolt of electtricity. All the other monkeys saw what happened
- And all the other monkeys were willing to settle for less food, as long as their fellow monkey wasnt hurt. Some monkeys actually stopped pulling for food - starving themselves for many days, so that the monkey they didnt know wasnt hurt.
Hardly, rational monkeys?

Outsourcing of decisions

Economists also assume that humans are more rational than they actually are. In a typical line of reasoning they assume that shoppers do a rational cost benefit analysis of a certain items price and expected utility.
But studies have shown that it isnt always the case. Instead, it has been demonstrated that the brain outsource these decisions to the emotional brain: The nucleus accumbens (Nacc) is activated according to our desire for a particular object. And the insula produces aversive feelings when we think about the amount of money the item will cost us.
By measuring the relative amount of activity in each brain center, scientists could predict the shoppers decisions, before people themselves did. Pleasure vs. pain tells you want to buy.

The default state of the bain is indecisive disagreement. Various brain parts are constantly insisting that other parts are wrong. Making up your mind is all about ignoring annoying fears and nagging suspicions. Still, the brain should keep on tracking dissonant data - Failing to respond to dissonant data can lead to disastrous results. According to Jonah Lehrer, we should force ourselves to think about data that disturbs our entranched beliefs. When we start censoring our minds, turning off those brain areas that contradict our assumptions, we end up ignoring relevant evidence.
In a final piece of advice concerning making good decisions. Mark Jung-Beeman has shown that people in a good mood are considerable better at solving hard problems, than people who are cranky or depressed. He speculates that this is because brain areas associated with executive control arent preoccupied with managing emotional life. Happy people aren't spending cognitive resources on why they aren't happy. And complex problems needs all the resources they can get:
Use the conscious mind to acquire all the information needed for a decision, and then go on holiday, while your unconscious mind digest the information, and come up with the solution.

-Simon

Seeing Red - a study in consciousness

In Nicholas Humphreys research with rhesus monkeys, he has showed that they have strong and consistent emotional responses to colored light. When, for example, a monkey is put in a chamber bathed in red light, it becomes anxious and fidgety. When the chamber is bathed in blue,it becomes relatively calm. So, given the chance, rhesus monkeys strongly prefer a blue chamber to a red one.

Most humans have similar preferences, but not exactly. In a study of peoples preferences for colored cards, 70 percent cionsistently preferred blue/green hues to yellow/red hues. But a signicant subgroup of 20 percent preferred yellow/red to blue/green.

Seeing Red

But onwards to the seeing red thing. Whenever there is a subjective experience, obviously there has to be a subject. It seems absurd to us that a pain, a mood, a wish should rove around in the world without a bearer. The inner world presupposes the person whose inner world it is?

But the situation can also be understood the other way around. That is to say, it is our experience of the inner world that confirms the existence of a person! Certainly sensations are important to us humans, as is being conscious. We even like consciousness in other people. Certainly, the last thing we want is to be conscious in a world where everybody else are zombies.

Sensation

What sensation does is to track the subjects personal interaction with the external world - creating the sense each person has of being present and engaged, lending a hereness, a nowness, a me-nessto the experience of the present moment [p 70].

By putting sensation on the production side of the mind rather than the reception side, we get a degree of central control of what it is like. Sensation are therefore affected by changes in mood, by mind-altering drugs etc. Indeed, mood changes,such as depression, might actually change sensation, just as mescaline or LSD can alter the qualityof sensory experience. Furthermore, it should be noted that it is possible to have sensations that are entirely selfgenerated (visions, dreams).

To Humphrey and others the special quality of consciousness lies with ''re-entrant circuits'' in the brain, neural activity that loops back on itself, so as to create self-resonance. That is to say, the command signals for sensory responses could begin to interact with the very input to which they are response. So as to become almost self-creating and self sustaining. Sure they take cues from the body, but they are also becoming signals about themselves. According to Humphrey: The moment of conscious sensation is not blending past, present and future -put taking a moment and holding on to it! Experiencing it longer than it actually happened!?

Why then, would sensory response circuits have evolved to the point of supporting sustained feedback? What is the payoff - the functional biological payoff - of feedback that brings about this thickening time of consciousness? According to Humphrey, the payoff that it gives the subject is a new sense of self: It lifts the subjectout of zombiedom. It changes ''I have such and such experiences therefore I am'' to ''I am because I have such and such experiencess''.

So, what is then required of an experience, if it is to be something a subject can proudly be the subject of? According to Humphrey: The substantiality that goes with existing in thick time is key.A self that has this as it center will be a self to be reckoned with. Natural selection will then need only a little more work, to shape it up a bit more, so that it becomes the organizing principle for each individuals mental life.

With a self - a human being has a life worth pursuing. Something to build a rich subjective life around. A huge advantages compared to the zombie state of not being there. The more important the self, the greater the boost to human self-confidence and self-importance. The greater the value of own and others life.

-Simon

http://www.simonlaub.net/

Vain Brains

A MIND OF ITS OWN.
- How your brain distorts and deceives.

by Cordelia Fine.
Amazon review (4 out 5 stars). http://www.amazon.com/review/R3JB65N0GP1QSC/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm

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Selfknowledge is a dangerous thing, as Cordelia Fine brilliantly demonstrates in this witty book about the vain human brain.
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A group of students are asked to read one of two (fabricated) scientific articles. The first article claims that an extroverted personality helps people to achieve academic success. The second article, handed out to just as many students, claims instead that introverts tend to be more academically successfully.
What happens? I.e. Someone has just offered the students a glitering selfconcept that says - hey, I am going to make it in the world ...
So, whichever personality trait the students thought was the key to success, they rated themselves more highly as possessing [p 12].

That is how reasoning works in vain human brains. Sure, human reasoning is a very powerful tool, but -in vain human brains- certainly not a tool used in a crusade for truth.
No, in vain brains, reasoning is there to save us from truth!?
In vain human brains reason is a lawyer (that works for you).Evidence that supports your case is quickyly accepted. Evidence that threatens reasons most important client (i.e. you), is subjected to gruelling cross-examination. Accuracy and plausibility all come under attack, and the case is soon won.
A victory for justice and truth - Not really, as the only lawyer working in the courtroom was working for you!
The only people who actually come close to the truth about themselves, with a balanced balanced self perception, who assign responsibility for success and failure evenhanded
- are the clinically depressed. Selfknowledge is indeed a dangerous thing!

It is all part of our ''Terror Management System''. In a healthy vain brain it is the ''protective shield designed to control the potential terror that results from awareness of the horrifying possibility that we humans are merely transient animals groping to survive in meaningless universe, destined only to die and decay''.

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And when our vain brains are not busy editing history,then our feelings are busy changing what the world actually looks like:

The book gives us another wonderful experiment to illustrate the point: A charming stooge enters a room where a volunteer is waiting, sporting a T-shirt from the volunteers university, and offers cookies all around. Another stooge, from a rival university, arrives late, and snaps at the volunteer.
Next, the stooges will begin to play TV tennis. Obviously... the volunteers sentiments towards the stooge bias what they see. Balls that were actually out, but hit by the amiable stooge,were called in - and vice versa. No agenda being served - either consciously or unconsciously - yet attitudes towards the stooges powerfully influenced what volunteers actually saw [p 43].

And apparently all of these feelings are necessary. In the rare cases where the prefrontal cortex succeeds in holding the emotions in a tight leash this leads to depersonalisation episodes. Where life is flat and disturbingly unreal. Music doesnt move anymore, people (spouse,children) becomes distant actors etc. One patient thought she would rather be dead than continue living like this.
// Btw. And the Cotard delusion is even worse. Where depersonalisationl eaves the world distant and unreal - The depersonalisation patientsmay feel as if they were dead - the Cotard patients may actually believe that they are dead. //

So, in the end, it might be our feelings that gifts us with our sense of self. No matter how trivial, they let us know that we are still alive.
Depersonalisation suggest that when the brain turns down the volumen on the emotions, our sense of self begins to slip away.

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And the brain has more distortions coming our way. Finished with editing history and using feelings to distort reality the vain brain believes all sorts of weird stuff.

I.e The brain likes the ''just world hypothesis'': Our perception of a person is very sensitive to what (we think) will happen to that person next. If good things happens - then the person probably deserves it, and must be a good person - and vice versa. This hypothesis then obviously allows all sorts of horrors to take place without anyone intervening. According to the ''just world world hypothesis'' victims have only themselves to blame [p 61].

And obviously the clergy are no better than anyone else.
In yet another lovely experiment, divinity students are asked to preparesome thoughts on the Biblical story about the Good Samaritan. The researchers then manipulate the urgency of the students mission by telling them that they are late for their speaking assignment in another building. When the students set off to the other building for their speech, they encounter in the alleyway a coughing, distressed man asking for help. Obviously ... the students offer help if they think they have time to do so. But.... If the theologians have little time preparing that all important speech about the Good Samaritan, they would litterally step over the victim as they hurried on their way. Apparently, the brain thinks it is much better to speak about good deeds than doing them.
Especially if that makes the vain brain look better. Immoral?
Then lets proceed to the Milgram experiment, where two-thirds of ordinary men and women will obediently electrocute fellow human being, because a scientist in a lab coat tells them to do so. Cordelia Fine notes that the (vain) brains of her readers obviously are among the one third who would never do such a thing ....
Concerning mad human beliefs, Cordelia Fine concisely notes,that there simply arent enough psychiatrists around to cope.So the definition of a delusion has to be that it must be somewhat rare.

Our natural urge - our default position - is to believe. Afterall, people speak the truth more often than not. It is therefore more efficient to assume that things are true, unless we have reason to think otherwise. The problem is of course, if your brain is distracted or under pressure, you will tend to believe statements that you would normally find rather dubious.
So, sure everyone knows that we should ''consider the counter evidence''and ''entertain alternative hypotheses'' - but, the problem is, again, that the vain brain thinks that it is doing just that ... without spending time on it .....
And the brain is stuffed with stereotypes, ''black men are aggressive'', ''men are more dedicated workers than women'' etc. Why? (Because) A bigoted brain is an efficient brain. A brain unburdened by egalitarian concerns can decide quickly and move quickly to the next thing on the to do list. Sure, the speed comes at cost - mostly to others - of accuracy, particular when the schemas dont reflect reality.But with no time, motivation or mental resources the brain thinks it is the best solution.
Sure, sometimes it leads to very bad results. Take the ''black men are aggressive'' stereotype. Framing the mind in this way can obviously be bad for peaceful black men. Fine mentions the situation after the 2005 London bombing - where it was not a good idea for Londoners of ethnic origin to run after buses. Surely, one unlucky, innocent brazilian was gunned down by police officers with ''framed minds''.

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Only mum can make people do a good job. Apparently, the only time when people are really doing a good jobi s when they are thinking ''I must do well, so that I can tell mum about this and make her proud of me''. In this lovely experiment - researchers have volunteers write down the sort of goals they have with respect to their mothers. Months later, the researchers prime the mother schema in some of the volunteers by asking questions about their mother. The unprimed volunteers were instead asked questions about themselves. Next all volunteers were asked to take a test: Volunteers who wanted to make their mothers proud and had their mother schema activated outperformed all other groups. It all happened unconsciously obviously, but when the ''make mother proud'' schema were initiated the volunteers worked really hard on the test.
Self control is somewhat tricky for the human brain -try not thinking about white bears for the next 5 minutes - but, if you want to make mother proud, apparently you can do it [p 167].

June 20th 2010
-Simon

Simon Laub
http://www.simonlaub.dk/ http://www.simonlaub.net/