Reflections on The Believing Brain by Michael Shermer

The Believing Brain: From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies - How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths by Michael Shermer is an excellent book that combines evolutionary biology, psychology, and a splash or sociology to attempt an explanation for our belief patterns. A wonderful read that will have you questioning even your deepest held values, this book will give you a fresh perspective of who you really are. As Francis Bacon put it back in 1620:

"For the mind of man is far from the nature of a clear and equal glass, wherein the beams of things should reflect according to their true incidence; nay, it is rather like an enchanted glass, full of superstition and imposture, if it be not delivered and reduced."

Beliefs come first, explanations for beliefs follow

"Belief-dependent realism, where our perceptions about reality are dependent on the beliefs that we hold about it." If we believe that the world is a beautiful place, we will surely find beauty in it every day.

In the case of Steve Jobs, this was his "reality distortion field". Although Jobs's perception of the world was not always reality, through his charisma and passion, he would often bring others into his reality distortion field. With brilliant colleagues at Apple, he was able to change reality to match his perceptions. 

Voltaire would have been proud of Mr. Jobs:

"Every man is the creature of the age in which he lives; very few are able to raise themselves above the ideas of the times."

Before we move on, here are the two main components of Shermer's belief-dependent realism:

Patternicity: the tendency to find meaningful patterns in both meaningful and meaningless data.

Agenticity: the tendency to infuse patterns with meaning, intention, and agency.

When belief-dependent realism goes unchecked in a psychiatric hospital, you have a recipe for a Christopher Nolan blockbuster.

The Danger of Mental Institutions

Let's take a look at a real life experiment where researchers checked themselves into a mental institution to test the the theory of belief-dependent realism: 

Belief-dependent reality: To a doctor, patient A is checked into a mental institution and appears to be mentally unstable. For example, the copious amount of notes she is taking are likely a behavioral manifestation of schizophrenia.

Reality: Patient A is actually a mentally healthy psychologist that checked himself into the institution to run a real-life experiment. The notes she is taking are chronicling the doctor's behavior toward the "patient". 

Conclusion: "It is clear that we cannot distinguish the sane from the insane in psychiatric hospitals. The hospital itself imposes a special environment in which the meaning of behavior can easily be misunderstood."

Another researcher overheard a doctor interpreting her paintings as displaying "real disturbances in her sensorium". She concluded that: "The statements that mental health professionals make about patients often tell us more about the professionals than they do about the patients."

Smart people are just as susceptible to massive misjudgements of the world around them.

Smart People Believe Weird Things

Intuitively, we may think that there is a negative correlation between intelligence and superstition (as intelligence goes up, belief in superstition goes down). This is not the case. Rather, "intelligence is usually not a factor in belief, with one exception: 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."

If you are reading this, you are likely a fairly smart individual. What beliefs are you skilled at defending? ;) Richard Feynman's advice follows:

"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool."

Why are we so easy to fool? Our brains like to give us the illusion of control, the illusion of "free will", when in reality they are often on autopilot.

Your Brain on Autopilot

Do you ever have those days where you just feel like you're on autopilot, going through the motions without really thinking about them? I have had plenty of those days myself, and it seems there is a legitimate reason. Our brains are actually making decisions before we are consciously aware of those decisions. 

"In a famous 1985 study by neuroscientist Benjamin Libet, he took EEG readings of subjects sitting in front of a screen in which a dot was moving about a circle (like a second hand on a clock face). The subjects were asked to do two things: (1) note the position of the dot on the screen when they first became aware of the desire to act, and (2) press a button that also recorded the position of the dot on the screen. The difference between 1 and 2 was two hundred milliseconds. That is, two-tenths of a second lapsed between thinking about pressing the button and actually pressing the button. The EEG recordings for each trial revealved that the brain activity involved in the initiation of the action was primarily centered in the secondary motor cortex, and that part of the brain became active three hundred milliseconds before subjects reported their first awareness of a conscious decision to act. 

0.3 seconds lapsed between the brain making a choice and our awareness of the choice.

What happens when our autopilot steers us in the wrong direction? Between genius and madness there exists a short bridge that is easily crossed unbeknownst to the traveler.

The Fine Line Between Genius and Madness

"People with high levels of dopamine are more likely to find significance in coincidences and pick out meaning and patterns where there are none."

Why? "Dopamine enhances the ability of neurons to transmit signals between one another." One prominent theory explains that "dopamine increases the signal-to-noise ration (SNR), that is...the proportion of patterns that your brain detects in the background noise, whether or not the patterns are real."

Or put another way, "increasing dopamine increases pattern detection; scientists have found that dopamine agonists not only enhance learning but in higher doses can also trigger symptoms of psychosis, such as hallucinations, which may be related to that fine line between creativity (discriminate patternicity) and madness (indiscriminate patternicity). The dose is key. Too much [dopamine] and you are likely to to...find connections that are not really there. Too little and you...miss connections that are real. The signal-to-noise ratio is everything.

Take a step into the schizophrenic brain for a moment. "A stranger across the room looked at you, then made a phone call, and then looked at you again, therefore [you conclude] that person is stalking you, and was calling conspirators to come and hunt you down." False pattern recognition. The pattern-detection dial is cranked up too high. 

It is also possible to walk the thin line of sanity in such a way that you have one foot on the solid ground of genius and the other in the swamp of madness.

Genius and Madman

John Nash saw patterns everywhere. He put together complex conspiracies with nonexistent government agents that had no basis in reality. Though he was diagnosed with schizophrenia, his pattern detection system was so sensitive that he was also a brilliant code-breaker. For his work on top-secret government projects to decipher enemy information patterns, he received a Nobel Prize in game theory. Know the movie?

"We are all pattern seekers, but some people find more patterns than others... Some people are ultraconservative in their patternicity, see very few patterns, and are not very creative, while others are indiscriminate in their patternicity and find patterns everywhere they look; this may lead to creative genius or conspiratorial paranoia." 

Have you found the line? Would you even know if you did?

A Demon-Haunted World

"I worry that...pseudoscience and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive. Where have we heard it before? Whenever our ethnic or national prejudices are aroused, in times of scarcity, during challenges to national self-esteem or nerve, when we agonize about our diminished cosmic place and purpose, or when fanaticism is bubbling up around us - then, habits of thought familiar from ages past reach for the controls. The candle flame gutters. Its little pool of light trembles. Darkness gathers. The demons begin to stir."

I get chills whenever I read this passage from Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World. Though he makes a legitimate point about the dangers of pseudoscience and superstition, I am hopeful that the internet will continue to be a source of knowledge to free society from the described peril.

A common issue when encountering mysteries in the world is our human tendency to ascribe supernatural causes when no natural explanations seem plausible. However, "the fact that we cannot fully explain a mystery with natural means does not mean it requires a supernatural explanation." Throughout history this trend has prevailed:

1. Discover mystery -> attribute mystery to "the gods".
2. Science/technology improves -> attribute mystery to natural causes.

For example:

1. The sky appears blue -> there must be a layer of water held aloft in the heavens.
2. Science improves our understanding of visible light -> the blue is actually a result of scattered photons!

This is why I love science so much. We can appreciate natural beauty at deeper levels through a deeper understanding of what is actually occurring. The blue light that you're observing on a sunny day is actually about 4 minutes old, having just been created on the surface of the sun via fusion of two hydrogen atoms to make helium, in the process ejecting a massive amount of energy in the form of a photon (that acts both as a particle and a wave!), accelerating faster than any other known substance toward the earth, reaching our atmosphere in about 4 minutes and scattering as it collides with gas molecules in the air, and being that blue light travels as shorter, smaller waves, it is scattered more than other colors and gives us the beautiful skyblue color above. Amazing.

But the gods have served their purpose in history, and we may not have become the civilized society we are today without "their" help.

The Evolution of God

God has taken many forms throughout history - Yahweh, Amon Ra, Aphrodite, Apollo, Baal, Brahma, Ganesha, Isis, Mithra, Osiris, Shiva, Thor, Vishnu, Wotan, Zeus and ~1000 others. But where did this need for an all-knowing creator come from?

Evolutionary biology may have the answer: "around five thousand to seven thousand years ago, as bands and tribes began to coalesce into chiefdoms and states, government and religion co-evolved as social institutions to codify moral behaviors into ethical principles and legal rules, and God became the ultimate enforcer of the rules. In the small populations of hunter-gatherer bands and tribes with a few dozen to a couple of hundred members, informal means of behavior control and social cohesion could be employed by capitalizing on the moral emotions, such as shaming someone through guilt for violating a social norm, or even excommunicating violators from the group. But when populations grew into the tens and hundreds of thousands, and eventually into millions of people, such informal means of enforcing the rules of society broke down because free riders and norm violators could more readily get away with cheating in large groups; something more formal was needed. This is one vital role that religion plays, such that even if violators think that they got away with a violation, believing that there is an invisible intentional agent who sees all and knows all and judges all can be a powerful deterrent of sin." 

In other words, religion evolved as "a social institution to create and promote myths, to encourage conformity and altruism, and to signal the level of commitment to cooperate and reciprocate among members of a community." Religion helped us civilize. 

As religion evolved, so too did the myths and stories associated. There is speculation that the ancient Greek god of wine may have evolved into Jesus of Nazareth. 

Was Jesus the God of Wine?

It is very interesting to observe the evolution of myths throughout history. The flood myth of my own namesake, Noah, was predated by centuries by another eerily similar flood story, the Epic of Gilgamesh. But that is just one example of many.

"Consider the parallels between Dionysus, the ancient Greek god of wine, and Jesus of Nazareth. Both were said to have been born from a virgin mother, who was a mortal woman, but were fathered by the king of heaven; both allegedly returned from the dead, transformed water into wine, and introduced the idea of eating and drinking the flesh and blood of the creator, and both were said to have been liberator of mankind."

This is not to say that Jesus was consciously based on Dionysus. However, the divine concepts of Dionysus likely existed in society at the time of Jesus, and through belief-dependent realism, distorted the perceptions and recollections of those who encountered and recorded the life of Jesus. Was Jesus a revolutionary with a message that changed the world? Very likely. Was he born of a virgin mother? I'm skeptical. Perhaps it was meant to be interpreted in a more metaphorical sense, perhaps that he was born of a very pure and loving mother.

Time warp to present day. Is God now evolving into aliens?

Divine Intervention or Alien Encounter?

Shermer presents a mind-blowing question in his chapter on belief in God. "How could we distinguish an omnipotent and omniscient God or Intelligent Designer from an extremely powerful and really smart extraterrestrial intelligence?" He calls this "Shermer's last law: any sufficiently advanced extraterrestrial intelligence is indistinguishable from God."

I think of it like this: you are visited from a being so far intellectually and technologically superior as to seem, to the human mind, nearly all-knowing, how can you say if it is "God" or it is simply another product of evolution from another planet, or an "extraterrestrial". Unless that nearly omnipotent being chose to disclose this information, it would be nearly impossible to say. You could speculate one way or the other, but when it comes down to it, we would not know.

Perhaps the first being we encounter with omniscience may be a product of our own creation.

"Science and technology have changed our world more in the past century than it changed in the previous hundred centuries - it took ten thousand years to get from the cart to the airplane, but only sixty-six years to get from powered flight to a lunar landing. Moore's law of computer power doubling every eighteen months continues unabated and is now down to about a year. Computer scientists calculate that there have been thirty-two doublings since World War II, and that as early as 2030 we may encounter the singularity - the point at which computational power will rise to levels that are so far beyond anything we can imagine that they will appear nearly infinite and thus, relatively speaking, be indistinguishable from omniscience. When this happens the world will change more in a decade than it did in the previous thousand decades."

"If today we can engineer genes, clone mammals, and manipulate stem cells with science and technologies developed in only the past half century, think of what an [alien] could do with fifty thousand years of equivalent powers of progress in science and technology. For an [alien] who is a million years more advanced than we are, engineering the creation of planets and stars may be entirely possible. And if universes are created out of collapsing black holes - which some cosmologists think is probable - it is not inconceivable that a sufficiently advanced [alien] could even create a universe by triggering the collapse of a star into a black hole."

"What would we call an intelligent being capable of engineering life, planets, stars, and even universes? If we knew the underlying science and technology used to do the engineering, we would call it an extraterrestrial intelligence; if we did not know the underlying science and technology, we would call it God."

But those of us who have already encountered aliens are likely just confusing the encounter with an out-of-body experience. The experience was likely generated in one part of our brain, and subsequently interpreted by another part of our brain as coming from an external source. Susan Clancy, a leading researcher on the study of alien abductees, gave the following conclusion for these encounters:

"Alien-abduction beliefs can be considered a type of religious creed, based on faith. Indeed, a vast body of scientific data indicates that the believers are psychologically benefitting: they're happier, healthier, and more optimistic about theirs lives than people who lack such beliefs. We live in an age when science and technology prevail and traditional religions are under fire. Doesn't it make sense to wrap our angels and gods in space suits and repackage them as aliens?"

Indeed it does make sense. But let's return to the topic of God for a moment and explore a realistic take on Her from the most famous scientist of our day, Albert Einstein.

Einstein's God

Arguably the most brilliant theoretical physicist to date, Einstein is a name that is now synonymous with genius. As a man of science, what was his take on God?

"The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws but only dimly understand these laws."

He later elaborated on his concept of God:

"I cannot conceive of a personal God who would directly influence the actions of individuals or would sit in judgment on creatures of his own creation. My religiosity consists of a humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit that reveals itself in the little that we can comprehend about the knowable world. That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God."

And lastly, he allows his stance a label:

"You may call me an agnostic...I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being." 

Let's take a 180 now and get sexual for a moment. But weirdly sexual.

Is Incest Absolutely Immoral?

Before you say yes, read the following scenario and weigh the following questions in your mind:

Julie and Mark are brother and sister. They are traveling together in France on summer vacation from college. One night they are staying alone in a cabin near the beach. They decide that it would be interesting and fun if they tried making love. At very least it would be a new experience for each of them. Julie was already taking birth control pills, but Mark uses a condom too, just to be safe. They both enjoy making love, but they decide not to do it again. They keep that night as a special secret, which makes them feel even closer to each other. What do you think about that, was it OK for them to make love?

If you think it was wrong, then why? Julie can't get pregnant, it didn't hurt their sibling relationship, and no one else found out.

Now here's the next question: are all people created equal? Well that really depends on your definition of equal...

All Men Are not Created Equal 

Thomas Jefferson first used the phrase "all men are created equal" in the Declaration of Independence

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

In this sense, it certainly seems that we are all created equal. However, when it comes to individual ability and capacity, we are certainly not created equal. The empirical data gives us a realistic vision of human nature. To name a few examples of how we are unequal:

1.  "Clear and qualitative physical differences among people in size, strength, speed, agility, coordination, and other physical attributes translate into some being more successful than others; at least half of these differences are inherited."
2. "Clear and quantitative intellectual differences among people in memory, problem-solving ability, cognitive speed, mathematical talent, spatial reasoning, verbal skills, emotional intelligence, and other mental attributes translate into some being more successful than others; at least half of these differences are inherited."
3. "Failed communist and socialist experiments around the world throughout the twentieth century revealed that top-down draconian controls over economic and political systems do not work."

With this realistic vision in mind, what kind of political system can we build? James Madison penned this famous dictum about the dilemma:

"If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary."

Our political system seems to be working better than most. Think of our neighbors over in the Middle East (not that we can't take a large chunk of the blame for the situation)! Though it seems that their savior may have come in the form of a two-dimensional little blue bird.

Twitter: the Modern-Day Che Guevara

Thanks to that little blue bird who we sometimes think is just filling our minds with useless information ("Eating breakfast now! #yum"), it is also opening the minds of repressed populations, allowing them to see what life can be like with more personal freedom.

The following passage from David Frum and Richard Perle's An End to Evil describes the situation like this:

Take a vast area of the earth's surface, inhabited by people who remember a great history. Enrich them enough that they can afford satellite television and Internet connections, so that they can see what life is like across the Mediterranean or across the Atlantic. Then sentence them to living in choking, miserable, polluted cities ruled by corrupt, incompetent officials. Entangle them in regulations and controls so that nobody can ever make much of a living except by paying off some crooked official. Subordinate them to elites who have suddenly become incalculable wealthy from shady dealings involving petroleum resources that supposedly belong to all. Tax them for the benefit of governments that provide nothing in return except military establishments that lose every war they fight: not roads, not clinics, not clean water, not street lighting. Reduce their living standards year after year for two decades. Deny them any forum or institution - not a parliament, not even a city council - where they may freely discuss their grievances. Kill, jail, corrupt, or drive into exile every political figure, artist, or intellectual who could articulate a modern alternative to bureaucratic tyranny. Neglect, close, or simply fail to create an effective school system - so that the minds of the next generation are formed entirely by clerics whose own minds contain nothing but medieval theology and a smattering of third world nationalist self-pity. Combine all this, and what else would one expect to create but an enraged populace."

Capitalism doesn't sound so bad anymore, does it? "Market capitalism is the greatest generator of wealth in the history of the world and it has worked everywhere that it has been tried." Furthermore, "liberal democracy is the best system yet devised for giving people a chance to be heard, an opportunity to participate, and a voice to speak truth to power." We've got it good (some of us).

What is truth?

I can't answer that. But I can tell you that science is a great tool for uncovering more truthful observations and series. However, even science is far from infallible. As the English philosopher Francis Bacon put it:

There are and can be only two ways of searching into and discovering truth. The one flies from the senses and particulars to the most general axioms, and from these principles, the truth of which it takes for settled and immovable, proceeds to judgement and to the discovery of middle axioms. The other derives axioms from the senses and particulars, rising by a gradual and unbroken ascent, so that it arrives at the most general axioms last of all. This is the true way, but as yet untried.

It seems that we can see the path to truth, but to actually walk that road is a nearly impossible task. As Shermer concludes his book, so too shall I conclude this post.

Ad astra per aspera!
(A rough road leads to the stars!)