Hard to Be Human

Overcoming Our Five Cognitive Design Flaws

Ted Cadsby

• Publisher: Dundurn Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781459748866
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Cognitive Psychology & Cognition
• Index: Psychology

Powerful strategies to combat the design flaws of the human brain that make life in the twenty-first century unreasonably difficult. If other animals could study us the way we study them, they would be puzzled by our unique ability to inflict misery on ourselves. We expend a lot of energy replaying past anguish, anticipating future distress, and stewing in self-righteous anger. Other animals would call us out for being oddly paradoxical creatures who long to be happy but who are the source of their own suffering, We worry about things we have no control over. We complain about not being understood while casting a critical eye on others. We stubbornly defend our beliefs despite contradictory evidence. Complicating all of this is our struggle to adapt to a complex world that we created. who struggle to adapt to a confusing world that we ourselves created. In our defence, we haven't yet mastered our neuron-packed brains, whose incredible complexity evolved over millennia in a very different world than today's. The result of this evolutionary journey? Five design features that often morph into design flaws in need of fixing. Hard to Be Human corrals the best insights from psychology, neuroscience, physics, and philosophy to reveal powerful strategies for the five big battles we each face in the war with our misguided, misbehaving selves. Tapping into deeply personal stories to ground the concepts in real life, Cadsby reveals how we can overcome our design flaws to be smarter, happier, and better adapted to the complexities of life in the twenty-first century.

PART 1

the human predicament

CHAPTER 1

Big Cognitive Problem

Man is the most botched of all the animals and the sickliest. — Friedrich Nietzsche

The list of our body’s design imperfections is a long one. And the brain is no exception.

In order to move, a body needs a brain. Unlike immobile life forms such as plants and floaters like jellyfish, the brains of travelling animals evolved to navigate their environments. While the human brain may be the most sophisticated “algorithmic compressor” or “Bayesian processor” on the planet, it still expends most of its energy performing an elaborate version of what all animal brains do — getting us through another day and coaxing us to duplicate ourselves along the way.

Given enough time and mutations, Mother Nature’s trial-and-error process (aka natural selection) is a competent but highly imperfect engineer. Like all living things, we are a patchwork of bits and pieces that were shaped, reshaped, and added to over time. For example, our throats open into two passages — one leading to the lungs and another to the stomach — which makes us vulnerable to choking when food goes down the wrong tube. The list of our body’s imperfections is a long one. And the brain is no exception.

Our two-in-one brain creates trouble for us because the two don’t always play well together.

The human brain was cobbled together over millions of years of sculpting and rework, with natural selection gradually adding new mechanisms to old ones. The result is, figuratively speaking, two brains: the “old” one, which operates largely below our conscious awareness, and the “new” one, which evolved more fully over the past one hundred thousand years and is the key to conscious self-awareness. Our unique two-in-one brain is what creates trouble for us, though, because the two don’t always play well together. Their interaction is the focus of this chapter, and our two-in-one design is the first of five crucial things to know about the intricate human mind.

Need-to-Know #1: We Have Two Brains in One

The old brain is our ancient automatic-thinking system — the kind most animals are limited to and the basis of our subconscious intuition. The new brain is our modern, effortful-thinking system — the basis of voluntary, conscious deliberation. Some other animals are capable of this second type of thinking but in a much simpler form (such as chimps experimenting with tools). But our kind of effortful thinking is “brand new”: its prototype originated in great apes sometime in the past fifteen million years, leading to the first human primates and eventually fully conscious, self-aware, modern humans sometime in the past thirty thousand years.

The distinction between automatic and effortful thinking (referred to as the “dual-process” model of human cognition) is obvious in many examples: eating a meal versus cooking one; walking across a street versus planning a vacation. We’re usually not attentive to our mental processes when eating and walking — the thinking is largely subconscious — whereas cooking and planning require some concentrated effort.

While psychologists generally agree on the points of contrast between the two thinking processes, the terms they use to describe each are nowhere near universal, as this very partial list reveals:

AUTOMATIC (ANCIENT)	EFFORTFUL (MODERN)
Intuitive Instinctual Emotional Reflexive System 1	Analytic Controlled Rational Reflective System 2

Systems 1 and 2 are the most commonly used descriptors and the terms I will be using.

The fusion of old System 1 and new System 2, while one of Mother Nature’s more miraculous achievements, is still a work in progress. System 1, “fast thinking,” and System 2, “slow thinking,” haven’t quite got their act together, largely because the former — the ancient brain system — is a bully.

Need-to-Know #2: System 1 Is a Bully

We are largely at the mercy of our System 1 ancient brain because it orchestrates the vast majority of our thinking and behaviour and because its workings are largely opaque to our conscious awareness. Whereas System 1 chugs along as consistently as our heart beats, System 2 works at its highest potential only sporadically. Despite the impressive accomplishments of System 2 (as in Shakespearean plays and Einsteinian physics), it is slow and inconsistent, easily distracted and readily influenced by external factors such as how much sugar is in our bloodstream and how much sleep we’ve had. It may not seem like it, but we are very selective in how we focus System 2’s effortful attention; we’re quite stingy with how much intense concentration we’re willing to commit to any particular problem.

How do we decide when to engage our precious effortful thinking? Here’s the kicker: the amount of effortful System 2 we invoke is largely determined by automatic System 1, based on its own assessment of whether the effort is worthwhile. As psychologist Daniel Kahneman notes, “When System 1 runs into difficulty, it calls on System 2 to support more detailed and specific processing.… System 2 is mobilized when a question arises for which System 1 does not offer an answer.”¹

This principle is key to understanding how the human mind works. Effortful thinking is largely at the mercy of the automatic thinking that underlies it. There is no conscious System 2 without subconscious System 1 preceding it.

First of all, subconscious thinking is always at the party; in fact, it’s basically System 1’s party. Subconscious System 1 kicks in at between 350 milliseconds and a full ten seconds before conscious awareness of an event.² It’s why we jump at the sound of a loud bang before we consciously process that it’s just a car engine misfiring. The speed of System 1 is what protects us and why we’re still here. It’s also why we fly off the handle in rage before we catch ourselves and wish we hadn’t lashed out.

Second, as the party’s de facto host, System 1 decides whether to invite System 2 or not, as per Kahneman’s observation above. It’s worth repeating: System 1 processing brings into conscious awareness whatever it deems worthy of further deliberation, that is, when it decides it needs System 2’s flexible and deliberative strength to help figure things out. If System 1 feels it has everything under control (as in eating and walking), then it won’t bother inviting System 2 to the party and wasting precious mental energy.

Third, not only is System 2 late to the party and only there at the invitation of System 1, but System 2, upon arriving, often has great difficulty finding the host! The subconscious thoughts and motivations that give rise to our conscious thinking are often hidden from our awareness and therefore difficult to access and challenge.

System 1 is so powerful — we are so captive to our subconscious, automatic thinking — that psychologists have created a variety of metaphors to describe its dominance:

David Eagleman:	Our consciousness is like a stowaway on a steamship, taking credit for the journey without acknowledging the massive engineering that is actually running the ship.^3
Jonathan Haidt:	Automatic thinking is the powerful elephant on whose back conscious deliberation rides as an adviser, attempting to cajole the elephant.^4
Steven Pinker:	The conscious mind is a spin doctor whose job is to create a story that explains the actions the unconscious mind initiates.^5
Owen Flanagan:	Consciousness is a figurehead president. It has status and putative authority, but it is limited to explaining the real work and output of the subconscious.^6
Daniel Wegner:	We may feel that we are freely choosing, but subconscious processing is doing the choosing for us and just “letting us know” what it has decided.^7
Daniel Kahneman:	System 2 is a supporting character who believes itself to be the hero. But System 1 is more influential as the secret author of many of the choices and judgments you make.^8

Although some psychologists argue that conscious thinking is nothing but the pawn of the powerful cognitive operations that reside below our awareness, the majority are convinced that conscious, effortful thinking can have some influence over the subconscious operations that underlie it. Otherwise, contrary to our everyday experience, any notion of free will would be nonsensical and we would have no ability to change our habits or redirect our goals. But this power over ourselves doesn’t come easily because of the bullying. System 1 pushes us to overeat when System 2 tells us not to; to lash out at people when System 2 knows we are escalating conflict; to stay up late watching TV when System 2 knows we need more sleep. And System 1 bulldozes its way through complex problems, hanging “mission accomplished” banners everywhere it ventures before System 2 has had sufficient opportunity to weigh in.

System 1 hangs “mission accomplished” banners wherever it ventures, usually before System 2 weighs in.

In fact, when tackling complex problems, not only is System 2 invited late, at the whim of System 1, which often hides its motives, but the commanding, invisible host can also dismiss System 2 whenever it wants! As soon as System 1 determines that it has things under control, it will eject System 2 from the party by unleashing its weapon of choice: the feeling of knowing.

Need-to-Know #3: System 1 Uses the Feeling of Knowing

System 1 instigates this feeling — and yes, knowing is a feeling — the very instant it decides that it doesn’t need any more of System 2’s help. When System 1 is satisfied, it replaces the discomfort of not knowing with the soothing feeling of knowing. System 1’s weaponization of this feeling keeps us “captive to our biology,” to use Taleb’s terminology. One of the biggest battles we (as in System 2) have to fight against ourselves (as in System 1) is the Need-to-Know — our addiction to certainty. Sugar, alcohol, tobacco, sex — none of these compare to our relentless craving for the feeling of knowing. Chapter 5 examines our certainty addiction in more detail; for now, it’s crucial to understand that our subconscious-thinking system dominates our conscious one with the feeling of knowing. In turn, this disengages System 2, deterring us from putting further energy into effortful thinking. It’s a very efficient process … except when it doesn’t work.

Sugar, alcohol, tobacco, sex — none of these compare to our craving for the feeling of knowing.

Need-to-Know #4: System 1 Lacks Self-Awareness

The partnership between System 1 and System 2 is highly imperfect because the bully in charge — subconscious System 1 — is not always a good judge of its own expertise. It has strong opinions about all matters and fancies itself an expert in most of them, but is largely ignorant of its own deficiencies.

The root of human struggle is that automatic thinking, while crucial for survival, is

• poorly calibrated to the increasing number of complex problems we face,
• not particularly adept at promoting our overall happiness, and
• oblivious to these two weaknesses.

Our brains evolved in a harsh world that was comparatively simple to figure out: there is nothing ambiguous about a charging tiger. A simple view of the world, which we rarely second-guessed, was well matched to the straightforward threats and opportunities that confronted us, many of which demanded fast, decisive responses. Rushing to simple conclusions works not only for dodging predators on the savannah but also for crossing busy street intersections and avoiding dangerous neighbourhoods. System 1’s operating style perfectly suits the hundreds of micro-decisions we make every instant where the patterns that define the problems are regular and predictable.

But as we evolved higher levels of conscious processing, we innovated and shared our learnings with others; in an evolutionary instant the complexity in our world ramped up through the agricultural, industrial, and information ages, and now the digital revolution. Today, most of us are living in crowded communities where we are largely anonymous and struggling with complex problems that would have been unintelligible to our not-so-distant ancestors who knew everyone in their tribe. Because System 1 relies on regular, repeated patterns to make reliable predictions, it has a hard time developing expertise in solving complex problems, since no two complex problems are identical. Unbundling the causal factors that define complexity is arduous, time-consuming work — the kind that System 2 was designed for, when it is invited to do so by System 1. But System 1 often withholds that invitation because it was designed to conclude as quickly as possible, so it isn’t easily deterred by the ambiguity and intricacy of complexity. If it can find a quick-and-dirty answer that feels right wi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction: Other Animals Have It Easier
• Part 1: The Human Predicament
• Part 2: A Fix for Every Flaw
• Conclusion: We’re Still in Beta
• Notes
• About the Author
• Back Cover