Caveman Logic: The Persistence of Primitive Thinking in a Modern World (5 page)

In short, perceptual accuracy was not an agenda of natural selection. Survival and reproduction were. The worldview of this less successful hominin may have been more realistic than that of his neighbor who scampered away from nearly everything and also saw faces in the clouds. But, again, accuracy wasn’t the real concern. Survival and reproduction were. Over time, natural selection probably favored perceptual systems and pattern detectors that were hyperreactive enough to make their share of Type I errors. In a perilous world, Type I errors tend to be less costly. And one of natural selection’s mottos has always been, “Better deluded than dead.”

You may find it disturbing to think that something is wrong with your mind. Certainly it is better to learn that our entire species is saddled with a flawed piece of equipment. At least it’s nothing personal. But thinking like most people doesn’t mean your mind deals in accurate perceptions and analyses. It just means you’ve got lots of company.

Needless to say, if a lot of flawed minds work together, they are likely to produce cultural institutions that enshrine their flaws. There will be little support for, and perhaps even active resistance to, questioning our perceptions and beliefs about the world around us. The protagonist of Carl Sagan’s book
Contact
,
⁷
an astronomer named Ellie Arroway, is denied the opportunity to travel into space to meet an alien race because she does not believe in God. She is told in no uncertain terms that 95 percent of the world’s population believes in some form of supreme being. She is asked, in effect, “How can you, a nonbeliever, be trusted to represent our species?”

Consensual validity is a very powerful force. In many cases, if those around you believe it, it must be true. It is also a prime example of what are called
heuristics,
or shortcuts that save each member of the group (or species) from having to reevaluate the same evidence. Just accept what your neighbor says and save a few calories of effort. But it is also a dangerous impediment to growth or progress when the belief in question may not be true. It takes considerable courage to stand up, as Ellie Arroway does, and say, “Yes, I want this mission very much and I believe I am highly qualified to accept it. But I do not share the belief of the group. I have examined the same evidence and reached a different conclusion.”

This book is about standing apart. It examines the workings of the human mind and identifies some of the areas in which our minds are likely to misfire. The neuroscientists and psychologists who conducted much of the research we discuss deserve great credit. Admittedly, it is easier to hold unconventional views within science, but it still remains difficult for the human mind to analyze itself. Those same limited, highly constrained mental processes we are about to dissect are the very tools we will be using to perform the operation. You’ve got to be quite logical to find gaps in logic. You have to be highly perceptive to see perceptual illusions. In short, this might have been a far easier task for another species to perform.

“What’s wrong with how I use my mind?”

To begin with, you were born with a device that was designed for service at least 50,000 to 100,000 years ago. Are you content to operate it on the same automatic-pilot settings that served your ancestors? Assuming there is some flexibility in the system (and new evidence of “neuroplasticity” seems to suggest there is), why not consider making a few adjustments? Admittedly, we can’t change cognitive architecture overnight, but at least we can change our slavish dependence on it. This is not to disparage the original autopilot settings. They were probably a good idea for our hominin ancestors, who understood little about the physical universe around them. But those autopilot settings may have long ago outlived their usefulness.

Consider Steven Pinker’s statement, “The mind is what the brain does.”
⁸
In that spirit, I follow the lead of much contemporary scholarship (e.g., Atran and Norenzayan)
⁹
and make no distinction between the terms
mind
and
brain
. Plainly, in the latter case we are talking about a physical organ, but it is ultimately the mind—that is, what the brain
does
—that is of concern to us and that provides the phenotype on which natural selection operates.

I have a friend who sometimes looks at my wardrobe or record collection and says (lovingly), “The sixties are over! Get over it!” Sometimes I want to say to our species (perhaps not so lovingly), “The Pleistocene era is over. Get over it!” We’re living in so-called modern times. A lot of the default settings in the human mind are really showing their age. They are no longer necessary. Continuing the analogy to a physical device, the autopilot mode can be safely turned off in favor of more-enlightened manual settings that reflect thousands of years of human knowledge and civilization. We can safely open the package, reason independently, and move past those fail-safe, one-size-fits-all, safety- and comfort-oriented settings that got our ancestors through the terrifying night. Let’s grow up.

But can we or will we? For some of us, the answer, sadly, is no. There are all kinds of reasons for this, rooted in fear, ignorance, and lack of social support. That makes it all the more imperative for those who can entertain such changes to take their first steps toward doing so. Consider that we take similar steps every day. Biological predispositions are overridden regularly. For example, we diet. We resist impulses toward violence or sexual aggression. Even if it doesn’t come more naturally to us, there is no reason we cannot also think more clearly and less primitively about the world around us and our place in it. Admittedly, this is difficult work. And it will be more difficult for some than for others, just like dieting or resisting impulses. Changing how we think about the world around us will require effort and force of will.

What makes it so difficult? First, it is important to remember that the mental predispositions we are talking about have their roots in biology. That doesn’t mean they can’t be changed. It just means there will be work involved, like pushing against something that’s been in place for a long time. But it will move.

Second, there is strong social support for much of this faulty mental work. People who share belief systems and perspectives bond together. The sense of belonging within a community feels good. As many have learned, communities do not suffer defections and defectors lightly. You may suffer disdain or worse if you withdraw from a shared belief system.

Third, you will be losing comfort. This particular comfort comes in two flavors. It entails the comfort of familiarity—you may have held these beliefs for a long time. There is also comfort in the beliefs themselves. As we shall see, many widely held mental distortions are geared to keeping the existential demons (like the impermanence of life or our insignificant place in the universe) at bay. They offer the mental equivalent of a thumb to suck or a skirt to hold. Which leads to the fourth reason it can be difficult to change how we think about the world around us: Fear. Alternate views of the world may not only be unfamiliar, they can be downright scary.

There is comfort in the status quo even when it isn’t right. Ideas attain a status quo position for a lot of reasons, the majority of which are nothing to be proud of. There was a time in most of our lives when belief in Santa Claus was appropriate.
¹⁰
It felt good and it had the social support of your parents and your friends. It doesn’t anymore. The Flat Earth Society fought valiantly to maintain its dominance over its upstart rivals. The pre-Copernican view of the universe was not quickly cast aside when a few extremists suggested that, despite the loss of comfort and power to some, Earth was not nestled firmly in the center of the universe.

Many of these ancient shortcuts we’ve inherited lead to incorrect conclusions about the world around us. Earth is
not
flat. Neither is it five thousand years old. And, in the words of one comedian, Adam and Eve did not ride to Sunday school on the backs of dinosaurs. To borrow Richard Dawkins’s humorous (if intemperate) comment, “That is not just wrong. It is catastrophically, utterly, stupefyingly wrong.”
¹¹
There are many additional beliefs that are also not true. The spirits of dead ancestors do not swirl around us, influencing the lives of the living. Nor do the living speak with the dead. All of these views, many of which are widely held, constitute factual errors that can result from Caveman Logic.

But there are other reasons to abandon such mental distortions. In addition to a factual argument, there is also a moral one for upgrading our thinking. As we note on several occasions in this book, a strong case has been made by writers like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens that incorrect supernatural belief systems can and do lead to atrocious acts of violence and destruction. Not all of these are directed at fellow humans. In
How We Know What Isn’t So
,
¹²
Thomas Gilovich offers a distressing list of animal species whose numbers have been needlessly decimated because of erroneous and superstitious belief systems involving medical cures and aphrodisiacs. More widely publicized acts of violence have been directed against fellow humans. In the first quarter of the twenty-first century, this point needs little amplification. But the issue of “violence in the name of religious differences” is hardly unique to the twenty-first century. The real philosophical question is whether we need to wait until more such violence occurs in order to condemn the underlying thinking. If we believe that violence and mistreatment are inevitable consequences of religious distinctions and xenophobia, then encouraging mental upgrades makes sound philosophical sense even before the next terrorist attack rules the headlines.

Another reason for abandoning Caveman Logic is essentially a philosophical argument about human potential. Consider a beautifully constructed automobile or airplane, capable of navigating as no such vehicle has done before. Precision turns, higher altitudes, speed changes: all these possibilities and more lie within the capability of this machine. However, for reasons of practicality, the equipment is delivered with an autopilot setting locked in place. This allows the automobile or plane to navigate in unexceptional and generally competent ways. You’ll get to the supermarket safely or fly from Dallas to Denver on time, but the trip will be boring and safe and just like most trips before it.

The thing is, time and effort have been spent on this engine, only for its new owner to fail to use the majority of its potential. In fact, many drivers or pilots have actually forgotten that the autopilot setting is locked in place. They’ve never experienced the thrill (or the risk) of taking control of all those high-end features that were part of the package. When someone even suggests that an autopilot setting might be limiting his potential as a driver or a pilot, the owners become defensive. Some will argue (getting back to caveman logic), “If we’re so primitive and deluded, how come we can . . .” Here they offer a litany of man’s technical accomplishments, perhaps including building the Large Hadron Collider (to address questions about how the universe began), or the medical advances of our age, or our daily use of computers and satellite transmission to process data and bridge the miles. Collectively, these works seem to call into question any suggestion that human intelligence is compromised or bounded.

So what do we make of this? How can we be so clever and so primitive at the same time? Are there two separate species of humans? The intellectually gifted and those who grovel at the feet of idols, talk to ghosts, or go to creationist theme parks?

No, there aren’t. And that’s just the point. If there were two separate species, this book would be wholly unnecessary. Improvement would be out of the question. We’d be facing a real “us versus them” divide: the rocket scientists and the grilled cheese sandwich worshipers. I might as well write a book about the limited intelligence of zebras. All
they
ever do is graze and make more zebras. Why can’t they be more like
us
and design spaceships and write books?

That’s not the case here. The problems I describe in this book are species-wide. Anatomically, there are not two classes of
Homo sapiens
. The spectacular accomplishments of some of us define the potential of all of us. With training and social support, we can all work around the lure of Caveman Logic. The impulses and perceptions that arise in us all do not have to be honored. Carl Sagan offers a very moving narrative in his book
The Demon-Haunted World
¹³
(itself, a forceful polemic against Caveman Logic). Sagan describes how deeply he missed his deceased parents, and how he sometimes veered toward the comfort of widely held beliefs about their souls still being with us, communication with them, and an afterlife in which we are all united. But Sagan recognized these needs for what they were and did not act on them. This book, as well as Sagan’s, acknowledges how powerful such impulses can be but encourages you not to follow the well-worn path to delusion and superstition, despite the comfort it offers. In his view, as in mine, the transient benefits are extremely costly in terms of our intellectual integrity.

There is another aspect to the argument against Caveman Logic, and it has to do with wasted human potential. Many people are strongly opposed to feeling they are being “controlled.” Notions of “free will,” although they may rest on shaky philosophical ground, remain central to pride and self-respect. It is understandable that individuals want to feel in charge of the important decisions they make. They want to believe that they have thought things through clearly before making a decision, that the evidence before them has been weighed carefully, that their highest mental faculties have been brought to bear on their beliefs, perceptions, and actions. Anything less than that would be cause for concern, even embarrassment.