The two minds #

We seem to be at least two minds — the fast, animal one that acts, and the slow, cognitive one that explains the action after the fact (as Kahneman wrote). These notes follow that suspicion, sometimes uncomfortably far.

Are we domesticated too? #

Dogs and the other domesticated animals: a dog is a wolf bred too closely, and something a little stunted came out of it. That is how it began, once humans kept wolves as mates in captivity (for sacrifice, perhaps? — René Girard). The same with cattle. And humans — are we domesticated too?

A vehicle for our genes #

We are only a vehicle for our genes — a vehicle that carries them across time.

On the nature of thought #

Is thinking added to the human mainly as a device to fool ourselves?

I came to this while standing in my kitchen cutting up goat cheese, a little peckish. The cheese slipped from my hand, and my body reacted automatically to catch it, without any mental intervention on my part. By the time I realized what was happening, the cheese was already back in my hand, and I was surprised (I was smoking at the time, so perhaps more receptive). So we are at least two different minds, as Kahneman wrote — the primitive one and the cognitive one. My theory is that this is what sets us apart from animals: the addition of this second brain. In a way it was the animal Kamil who caught the cheese; the mental Kamil needed more time to understand it, because more cells are needed to process the same information in a human way. The animal part needs fewer cells, because it runs on heuristics, not on the analysis and imagination of the higher, human part.

So the only question that remains is: who does the thinking, and who executes its results — and is thinking not a reverse process (more on this later)? First, to define further: when I decide to get up and walk to the fridge for a bite of cheese, is it the analytical Kamil making the decision (“I want to eat cheese because I want to” — but where does that impulse come from?), or the animal Kamil (the body sends a hormone or signal to the brain to feel hungry)? Plainly it is the animal Kamil deciding, even if the higher Kamil thinks he decided (“I judged it a good idea, given the body’s need for calcium”). Even when the body needs calcium, it will send signals so that one feels peckish for a specific food — because the body knows the food and its composition. So again it is Kamil 1 making the decision, and Kamil 2 rationalizing it backwards to give an illusion of control.

I think that in at least some cases it could be proved (I would need a method) that the causation runs from Kamil 1 to Kamil 2, and not the other way, as everyone seems to think. This is counterintuitive: that all the decisions are made by the animal, who is interested only in survival, and who then invents all sorts of theories to fool others — because in society one cannot simply kill others physically without suffering the consequences sooner or later. And that is how culture runs. So my thesis is that we are a bunch of monkeys who fool themselves that they are human because they lack a tail, or by some other exotic definition about the thickness of the cortex. We must be a band of apes that reached the apex of the animals, at this stage.

Reflexes, and why we keep touching the fire #

Once we get burned, we don’t touch the hot iron again — reflexes, and mind 1, are too strong for mind 2 to do anything. What I mean is this: in the physical world people are governed by mind 1. The people at level 2 have their imaginary problems — for instance they are in a toxic relationship and stay in it. Yet if such a person fell into a tank of toxic chemicals in a factory, would they leap out, or sit in the barrel as if drugged? (Munger and his frog that boiled because the water was heated slowly.) In the physical world we don’t put our hand in the fire, but in the mental world we do, and though we get burned we keep doing it.

Perhaps the mental world is one big computer game, a giant role-playing game to help us live like monkeys in this world — monkeys, but improved: hairless, and with an extra “mind” that lets them build more complex societies. And those societies have individuals — nodes in a network — which has a convex effect: each extra node has an exponential effect on some characteristic. So these monkeys with the extra mind can improve their technology and live in technological conditions made by humans. Either way, there is a difference between the reactions of mind 1 (“I don’t touch fire”) and mind 2 (“I can’t resist this reaction”). It follows that someone who cannot stop his bad reactions either (A) has unwanted reactions (from mind 1?) that he knows harm him, or (B) the reactions he knows to be bad are stronger — or only fictitiously stronger, for how do we know we cannot stop them at all? Because we feel it?

And what if, in everyday reactions, the mind decides using heuristics — because it knows the world is chaos, with no rules except the cyclical ones like the sunrise, and not much more, so it must use heuristics? And the more of them — or the fewer? For only the bad ones spoil the good ones. Better fewer heuristics, all good, than more with a mix of good and bad, since it is like mixing water with a little poison: all the water turns bad. The same with heuristics: even one bad heuristic can spoil all the others. A mean way of living, for instance, poisons everything, because the basic communication between the nodes of the network is disrupted — no one wants to deal with a boor. So: fewer heuristics. (The same rule in life? Only good things and people, never a mix, because one bad thing or person can spoil all the rest — so keep your distance.)

Back to the thread. Primo: we are improved monkeys with a self-deceiving addition, the brain. Secundo: mind 1, the monkey in the example, makes decisions the way an orangutan does in a tree. If the orangutan wants a banana, it plucks it; it needs no theory about a magnesium deficiency from drinking too much coffee — it knows it wants a banana, and takes it. In the animal world (and in human mind 1) no one hands out bananas for free; there is always some interest for the seller. Take orangutan number two, the banana seller: he does not know the concept of money, but he may give a banana in exchange for sex with orangutan one — because what does an orangutan want? Females, bananas, security, and that is all. And humans? They need far more. So the banana seller in version two — and only humans have brain two, the frontal cortex; orangutans do not, so the theory goes — orangutan two is someone who sells sophisticated things for simple things: money, or sex, or the promise of a similar favour. He will be, for instance, a banker. Instead of a banana, the banker sells toxic stuff — CDOs, derivatives of junk — and it is far easier for some banana-sellers-two to fool the other orangutans: the bankers’ clients.

What if the brain only coordinates? #

What if we did not know how our organs work? What if the brain were not for thinking — if the whole body thought, and the brain were only there to coordinate the thinking, not to do it itself?