Notes - Faulty Brain Powers

• The human brain is a less-than-perfect device. A new book explains how our minds work and sometimes don't.


• Kluge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind," by New York University professor Gary Marcus uses evolutionary psychology to explore the development of that "clumsy, cobbled-together contraption" we call a brain and to answer such puzzling questions as, "Why six percent of sky-diving fatalities occur due to a failure to remember to pull the ripcord, and why hundreds of millions of dollars are sent abroad in response to shockingly unbelievable e-mails from displaced African royalty. "


• According to Marcus, while we once we used our brains simply to stay alive and procreate, the modern world and its technological advances have forced evolution to keep up by adapting ancient skills for modern uses--in effect simply placing our relatively new frontal lobes (the home of memory, language, speech and error recognition) on top of our more ancient hindbrain (in charge of survival, breathing, instinct and emotion.)


• It is Marcus's hypothesis that evolution has resulted in a series of "good enough" but not ideal adaptations that allow us to be smart enough to invent quantum physics but not clever enough to remember where we put our wallet from one day to the next or to change our minds in the face of overwhelming evidence that our beliefs are wrong.
  Evolution is conservative and stingy, it uses what it has. It doesn't start over--as a statistical matter, something is much more likely to evolve if it involves tinkering.


• A kluge (rhymes with "huge") is defined as a clumsy or inelegant solution to a problem.
  In his attempt to define the "klugey-ness" of the human mind, Marcus would have us look no further than our memories, which he describes as "the mother of all kluges." Unlike computers, we cannot readily recollect all that we've remembered. Turns out, our memory is driven by cues. We need hints and context to remember where we put our purse ("Retrace your steps"). To free associate from one memory to the next may, Marcus writes, "lead depressed people to seek out depressive activities, such as drinking or listening to songs of lost love, which presumably deepens the gloom as well."


• Another problem with our contextual memory is that memories tend to run together and are prone to contamination. You may remember being 5 years old and watching mom hit dad in the face with a cream pie. The only problem is that it never happened. It was a dream that, for some reason, youremember as fact.


• Marcus believes our memory evolved in this way in an attempt to prioritize memories since our brains are much slower than the memory system available to computers and our neurons cannot keep all our recollections at hand for immediate retrieval. It's a workable system but one that doesn't allow us the time or ability to check memories for accuracy as a computer would be able to.


• And why are humans so prone to believe absolutely anything from the existence of the Loch Ness monster to Atlantis? Marcus explains that "evolution has left us distinctly gullible … the systems that underlie our capacity for belief are powerful, they are also subject to superstition, manipulation and fallacy. Beliefs, and the imperfect neural tools we use to evaluate them, can lead to family conflicts, religious disputes and even war."


• He argues our brains didn't evolve in a way that allowed us to thoroughly evaluate how well our beliefs represent reality. Our older subconscious brain moves reflexively ("We're hungry, eat that mushroom now"), while our newer prefrontal cortex struggles to catch up with other alternatives ("Check your guidebook to see if it's poisonous or wait until we get to camp and eat some gorp").


• Marcus theorizes that "the human tendency to most clearly remember information that seems consistent with our beliefs [or emotions] makes it very hard to let those beliefs go."
  So the next time you get into an argument with your spouse and he or she snaps, "You only hear what you want to hear," you can reply, "We all do. We've evolved that way."

"Kluge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind," by New York University professor Gary Marcus