Hidden Motives: The Elephant in the Brain

In this interview, Sam Harris spoke with Robin Hanson about the ways in which humans hide their true motives from other people and even from themselves. Here are my notes.

The basic idea

Our conscious mind is not making as many decisions as we think. It’s actually our subconscious which makes the choices, and our conscious is left to try to explain the reasons for them. Often the justifications it makes are not at all accurate. (Analogy: Our consciousness is not the President, it’s more like the Press Secretary.)

If we can uncover how our subconscious is really driving us, we may realise that our actions are not as closely aligned with our conscious beliefs as we thought they were.

The same is true for institutions. They say and they believe that they are trying to do one thing, but in fact they are trying to do another.

Signalling

We say that conversation is primarily about exchanging information. But we can observe that is not really true. If that really was the case, individuals would want to listen more than they want to speak. Robin suggests instead that conversations are about signalling our worth to the other person. We are trying to show that we are a useful ally, and will continue to be useful in the future.

Signalling in-group loyalty

Some people hold extreme positions on religious or political matters. These can be costly to publicise, if society at large disapproves. But they are a signal to the rest of the group that they are a devoted member of that tribe. The more extreme the position, the stronger the signal.

(Trump is an example of this. His outrageous behaviour is a signal to his supporters that he is not like other politicians. He is loyal to them, not to the status quo or to accepted norms.)

(Similarly, those who work for Trump signal their loyalty to him every day when they defend his outrageous behaviour, at a cost to their own reputation.)

Hidden exchanges in public life

We say that we want one thing, when really we want the other thing that comes with it, but we don’t want to admit it.

So often politicians can’t directly give people what they want, because people don’t want to admit that they want it, either publicly or privately. Politicians (and marketers) must instead give people something which they can publicly admit they want, but which also comes quietly bundled with the thing they really want.

Stop having so many opinions

We can’t realistically know all those subjects in detail. It would be better if we admitted we don’t know, and instead of speaking, listened to the opinions of experts.

We should not be asking random celebrities for their opinions on the political topic of the day, unless they happen to be experts in that field.

Hacking your behaviour

One very effective way to change yourself is to change your context. Surround yourself with people who will challenge you.

Placing wagers can help you to think more rationally.

What can people do to avoid their biases? Use betting markets or prediction markets. The potential loss of money will force you to be honest with your beliefs/facts.

Politics

Immigration

Regarding US immigration, he says that even the most selfish native would still benefit from having some immigrants, to do the jobs nobody else wants. (So a flat-out ban on immigration would simply be self-harm, and yet some people still call for it.)

Blue sky

Robin says that many political issues manifest as a tug of war between two opposing and polarised positions. This leaves a large opportunity to pull sideways, orthogonal to the main debate.

In a political tug-of-war, seize the opportunity and pull perpendicularly to the main debate.

As an example he suggests: What if your citizenship was a thing you could sell to someone else? Then an American pensioner who does not have enough money could sell that citizenship and go and retire abroad.

There is a wide space of possibilities that are not being considered.

Interesting observation: People have very different attitudes to immigrants crossing national borders than state borders. So evidently sometimes we think porous borders are just fine. (And yet, in some industries your job is is more likely to be stolen by taken from a neighbouring state than someone from a different country.) Why is this?

Rewarding moral behaviour

Sam says briefly that he thinks society could be structured in a way such that individual incentives align with the greater good. So even the least skilled people will find it easy to do the right thing, and contribute to the whole.

This is something I have Sam raise in various podcasts, and it is an excellent point. In many ways our current society rewards immoral behaviour (profit motive, pollution) and makes moral actions difficult or inconvenient. If we could change the rewards, we could almost certainly change the behaviour.

Morality and laws

Sam: Is torture ever justifiable? Yes, but we should still have laws against it!

Robin: Any hard rule you come up with, will always have situations where its morality becomes questionable. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have laws. The question is whether the law as a whole does more good than harm.

Various notes from the question/answer session

Trump’s election may help to correct liberalism. Good conversations occasionally change minds.

MDMA changed Sam’s mind. But … ? [Sorry I didn’t complete that note.]

To save lives, we should not campaign for an assault weapons ban.

Sam thinks an assault weapons ban might help but it might cause a loss of momentum when the real target must be handguns.

Sam does not have a “religious attachment” to The Constitution. Refreshing!

Religious societies do less well than secular societies. But ironically, within a given society, religious individuals do better than non-religious individuals (in terms of health, happiness etc.).

The aim of government should be to cancel out bad luck. (Being born poor, or in a problematic culture, is really unjust on the individual.)

Robin: Historically, inequality always increases except during wars, famines and social upheavals. So do you really want inequality to decrease?! Perhaps we can at least hope that the floor keeps rising.

Corporations make good scapegoats for the bad moral choices of individuals.

When quizzed about the problematic consequences of profit motive, Robin said that corporations make good scapegoats because they do the bad things that individuals don’t want to do. Then he said that we still haven’t found a better system for accountability than money. But the question was whether there might be alternative structures for incentive that could avoid the negative aspects of profit seeking. Robin did not seem confident that we will find better systems soon, but he did say that we are only just beginning to explore the space of institutions, so there may be potential for better structures through institutions.

We are only just beginning to explore the space of possible institutions. This is NOT the end of history!

(Sci-fi fans could consider for example the “phyles” in The Diamond Age, the Bene Gesserit in Dune or the OPA/Mormon Navoo in The Expanse. These are examples of humans living and working in radically different ways to how we do at present.)

Conspiracy theories as a social function. In reality we are surrounded by small conspiracies, in business and in relationships. Claiming to believe in a conspiracy might be a social signal “You can’t fool me. I’m watching out!”

(Robin seems rather keen to view every question in terms of hidden motives, even when there are other points of view that could be taken. Well, perhaps researching and writing a book can do that to you! Anyway this perspective has been englightening.)

Sam segues: A belief in the lack of free will is a massive enabler for forgiveness, residually in situations where it would usually be impossible to forgive. Evil is just bad luck. Be mindful, and it can cancel emotional reactions, including directed anger or personal shame.

Robin counters, the increased social mobility that we enjoy today may also increase our capacity for shame. That freedom to rise may be analogous to free will, but a failure to rise may cast guilt on the individual. And given all these opportunities, it is harder to blame failure on circumstance (compared to say a peasant in the middle ages, who would have no chance for social ascent).

FIN

If you are interested in the book that Robin co-authored, which covers these topics, visit http://elephantinthebrain.com/

Here is an unrelated quote, but I thought it was fun:

“Behavior is what someone is doing, intention is why they’re doing it. You judge yourself based on your intentions, and everyone else based on their behavior.”

— via Sahil Lavingia @shl on Twitter