eSkeptic: The Matrix of the Brain
Michael Shermer
eSkeptic
the email newsletter
of the Skeptics Society
Tuesday, November 20th, 2007
ISSN 1556-5696
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In this week's eSkeptic:
- Shop Skeptic: Blow Out Sale on Skeptic VHS Lecture Tapes
- geology tour reminder: Oceanview Mine in Pala, California
- feature article: The Matrix of the Brain
- Skepticality: A Secret of the Universe
- lecture reminder: The Great Debate: D'Souza v. Shermer
- erratum: In last week's eSkeptic feature introduction
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BLOW OUT SALE ON SKEPTIC VHS LECTURE TAPES
Skeptic is holding a blow out sale on all of our Caltech lecture
series VHS tapes, now reduced to $7.99 each, discounted from the
regular price of $19.95, as long as supplies last. Order lecture
recordings of your favorite scientists and skeptics, including:
James Randi, Stephen Jay Gould, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett,
Steven Pinker, Carol Tavris, Philip Zimbardo, Michael Shermer, Jared
Diamond, Nancy Segal, Frank Sulloway, Victor Stenger, Susan
Blackmore, Jack Horner, Robert Zubrin, Donald Prothero, Lawrence
Krauss, John McWhorter, Timothy Ferris, Peter Ward, Robert Kirshner,
Christof Koch, David Brin, Edward Tufte, Michio Kaku, Bill Nye (the
science guy), and dozens more. Our lecture series is a veritable
Who's Who in science, and now you can see their lectures first hand
on VHS tape. These tapes are being discontinued as all lectures will
now be available only on DVD, CDs, and audio cassettes.
BROWSE BY CATEGORY:
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geology tour reminder ...
OCEANVIEW MINE IN PALA, CALIFORNIA
Sunday, December 2, 2007
The geology tour is filling up fast! The Oceanview Mine in the Pala
mining district of northern San Diego County is the last operating
mine from a region that once had 73 mines, producing beautiful
tourmalines (some with "watermelon" colors of green and pink),
lavender lepidolite mica, plus beautiful crystals of quartz,
morganite, beryl, kunzite, garnet, spodumene, and many other rare
gems. You get to screen as many buckets of fresh material from the
mine as you like and keep any gems you find!
DOWNLOAD the registration form:
<www.skeptic.com/downloads/GemGeology_reg_form.pdf>
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In this week's eSkeptic, David Ludden reviews by Cordelia Fine's
book entitled A Mind of its Own: How Your Brain Distorts and
Deceives (W.W. Norton, 2006, ISBN 0393062139). David Ludden is an
associate professor of psychology at Lindsey Wilson College in
Columbia, Kentucky, where he teaches courses in cognitive,
physiological and evolutionary psychology.
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THE MATRIX OF THE BRAIN
a book review by David Ludden
In the 1999 science-fantasy film The Matrix, people have been
plugged into a giant computer that creates a virtual reality that is
both pleasing and plausible. A few renegade humans have unplugged
themselves from the Matrix, only to wake up to a miserable
underground existence below a war-scorched Earth. In a similar
fashion, our brains generate a comforting version of reality that
protects us from the desolation and despair of the real world.
We implicitly trust the products of our brains -- our perceptions,
our memories, our judgments, our sense of self. We say, "I know what
I saw," and we ask, "How could I forget?" After all, if you cannot
trust your own brain, who can you trust? But all is not as it seems.
More than half a century of cognitive and social psychology research
has shown that much of what we see, remember, and think is an
illusion. In her new book A Mind of its Own, Cordelia Fine lays out
in a highly entertaining fashion the myriad ways in which our vain,
immoral, pig-headed brains are constantly deceiving us.
Although we like to think of ourselves as rational beings, our
brains covertly strive to create for us a view of the world and of
ourselves that is self serving but not necessarily consistent with
reality. Beliefs and opinions are formed quickly and become part of
how we define ourselves, so the brain selectively perceives and
recalls evidence that supports cherished beliefs while disregarding
or forgetting evidence that contradicts our beliefs. Fine calls this
"motivated skepticism." We are naturally skeptical of anything that
challenges our beliefs, but accepting of anything that bolsters our
beliefs, and hence our egos. For example, it is for us easy to mock
the tenets of other religions -- "How could they possibly believe
that?" -- while swallowing whole the equally far-fetched teachings
of our own church.
Motivated skepticism can even lead to belief polarization, a process
whereby counterevidence only strengthens the convictions of our
beliefs. The counterevidence is strenuously scrutinized for any
weakness, which is then used to diminish the validity of evidence
for our opponent's point of view. Our selective perceptions are
further bolstered by illusory correlations. These are caused largely
by selective memory, in which we remember only supporting examples
but not counterexamples. For instance, if you already believe the
stereotype that all Asians are shy, you will only recall experiences
that support this stereotype. When confronted with an assertive
Asian, the reaction is likely to be: "Yes, but she grew up in
America." In such a fashion, counterexamples are simply dismissed as
aberrations.
Our brains also trick us into believing we have more control over
situations than we really do. We blow on dice and perform other
rituals to influence events. We also feel safer driving than flying
because we think we are in control behind the steering wheel. This
is especially true when things turn out in our favor. For instance,
we take the credit for picking a winning lottery ticket, but blame a
losing ticket on bad luck. It would seem that going through life
deluded by our own brains would not be a good thing, but that is not
necessarily the case. Some people have markedly more balanced
self-perceptions than normal people -- they know clearly what their
limitations are and how little control they actually have over their
lives. They are also clinically depressed, and seeing reality for
what it is, they become overwhelmed and lose the desire to go on
living. So it seems that our brains delude us to keep us happy,
healthy and ready to face life's challenges. In fact, people who are
generally optimistic tend to live longer.
Emotional arousal also plays an important role in cognitive
functions. Brain damage can create a mismatch between emotion and
rational thought. People who cannot experience arousal during the
decision making process, for example, become incapable of making
decisions or consistently make poor choices. It seems that the gut
feeling we get when faced with a choice is more important than any
rational decision-making process.
The experience of emotion is also integral to our sense of self. In
a condition known as Capgras syndrome, patients no longer feel any
sort of arousal in the presence of family members, and so they
become convinced that their loved ones have been replaced by
impostors. Others lose the ability to feel emotion altogether; they
also feel detached from themselves and lose all interest in life.
Even healthy individuals experience this depersonalization
sometimes, particularly during traumatic experiences. Afterward,
people report a feeling of detachment from the events around them
and even from themselves. This seems to be a coping mechanism of the
brain to keep it from becoming overwhelmed.
By three quarters of the way through the book, the reader is
yearning for a return to blissful ignorance, as there seems to be no
escape from what Fine calls "our innate lack of scientific rigor."
But still there is hope. Fine advises that we "[t]reat with the
greatest suspicion the proof of [our] own eyes." In other words, we
need to trust in the scientific method to lead us out of the tangle
of deceptions our brains weave around us. As with any other
behavior, modes of thinking can be practiced until they become
automatic, and so Fine is hopeful that practice in critical thinking
can help guard us from the extravagances of our own brains.
One of the strongest points of this book is the way Fine deftly
describes how research is done in psychology. She does not just tell
what is known about how the brain deceives, she explains how we know
it. In friendly terms, she presents hypotheses to test, clearly
describes how experiments are set up, and shows us how reasonable
conclusions are drawn from the data. Thus, she demonstrates how the
scientific method can be used to overcome our false beliefs and
misconceptions.
Life is pleasant inside the virtual reality of our minds. So what if
we think we are more intelligent or virtuous than others and believe
we are more in control than we really are? Such minor
self-deceptions are, for the most part, harmless, and they may help
us to get through the day. But we are not necessarily prisoners of
our minds. When the deceptions become harmful to ourselves and
others, there is a way out. Science gives us a way to unplug
ourselves from the Matrix of our brains.
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A SECRET OF THE UNIVERSE
Many Skeptic readers are all too aware of The Secret, a slick
repackaging of the principles of New Thought and Unity Christianity.
This week, Skepticality tackles an altogether different secret.
Derek & Swoopy talk with author and podcaster Stephen L. Gibson
about his own new book, A Secret of the Universe. A far cry from
most books that offer up a secret message, A Secret of the Universe
is a work of dramatic allegory about how we come to form knowledge
about the Big Questions: God, sexual ethics, morals, political
ideology -- and how those beliefs affect our actions, our lives, and
the world around us.
Then Derek gets an update from Jeff Wagg, General Manager of the
James Randi Educational Foundation, about a recently administered
Million Dollar Challenge in which Jeff himself became a test
subject...
SUBSCRIBE to Skepticality within iTunes:
<http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=
73797923>
DOWNLOAD Episode #65 (36MB MP3):
<http://media.libsyn.com/media/skepticality/065_skepticality.mp3>
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lecture reminder ...
THE GREAT DEBATE: DINESH D'SOUZA V. MICHAEL SHERMER
Sunday, December 9th, 2pm
Beckman Auditorium
In this debate on what are arguably two of the most important
questions in the culture wars today -- Is Religion a Force for Good
or Evil? and Can you be Good without God? -- the conservative
Christian author and cultural scholar Dinesh D'Souza and the
libertarian skeptic writer and social scientist Michael Shermer,
square off to resolve these and related issues ...
READ more about this lecture:
<www.skeptic.com/lectures/2007/12/09/the-great-debate/>
DOWNLOAD the campus map:
<www.skeptic.com/images/map-BaxterHall.pdf>
IMPORTANT TICKET INFORMATION
Tickets are first come first served at the door. Sorry, no advance
ticket sales for this lecture. Seating is limited. Notice to our
regular lecture goers: we have raised our prices for the first time
in 15 years. $8 Skeptics Society members & Caltech/JPL Community;
$10 General Public.
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CORRECTION TO LAST WEEK'S ESKEPTIC ...
ANSWERING PUBLIC QUESTIONS ON UFOS AND ALIENS
This is a correction to the short introduction and photo caption for
David Morrison's essay in last week's eSkeptic. Not "all" amateur
astronomers saw the rise in brightness of Comet Holmes, of course,
but the point was that enough did to show that there are lots of
people scanning the skies each night. Dr. Morrison's job at NASA
includes answering questions about astrobiology sent to "Ask an
Astrobiologist." Although he has encountered questions about UFOs in
his career (which is why he wrote this commentary), this is not a
part of his duties at NASA.
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