Behavior
Book Review: Caveman Logic: The Persistence of Primitive Thinking in a Modern World by Hank Davis
(out of 5 stars)
Behavioral psychologist Hank Davis reveals his thoughts on why stone age thinking is so pervasive in the 21st Century in his book Caveman Logic. While there is little groundbreaking work here, the book provides a nice exploration of the phenomenon and offers a bit of insight into our mental and behavioral tendencies.
When Davis describes "primitive thinking", he is specifically addressing the widespread beliefs in religious and supernatural events and beings, especially where such beliefs rely on things deemed meaningful despite being coincidental. Coincidence is carefully explored, and Davis explains why humans are so likely to see agency and causal relationships despite possessing only the flimsiest evidence. This behavior dates back to our primitive ancestors who were much more likely to survive if they registered false positives when ascribing events to intentional agents than those who did not (such as seeing "faces", the ancestor who believed a face was staring tended to also run from real predators, whereas the one who did not see the face almost certainly failed to run as often from real threats).
A nice introduction to these concepts which have provided a great deal of support for the theories put forth Richard Dawkins and others, Caveman Logic is an excellent starting point for anyone wishing to consider the reasons for why beliefs in supernatural beings and unreasonable events are so widely and strongly held. Likewise, if someone you know tends to interpret coincidences as something more concrete, this book is a good jumping off point. Four stars.
Ants and Neurons: Emergent Decision Making
This is a fascinating article about the emergent decision making of ant (and bee) colonies and how this can shed light on the decision making of neurons in the brain.
The efficiency of a social insect democracy is largely a product of the simplicity of its constituents. "Human groups have factions with conflicting agendas, whereas social insects in a colony have much less self-interest and genuinely 'want' to converge on the best option," Marshall says. Still, Seeley believes that there is much to be learned about decision making from honeybees. "I have learned several things from the bees that I have employed as department chair," he says. Seeley cites a number of what he terms "swarm smarts," such as the honeybee’s ability to avoid groupthink by having each "voter" assess options independently. Furthermore, when disaster strikes, the honeybees adapt their decision making by lowering their threshold levels and deliberation time. While we, as individuals, do this constantly (rushing to meet deadlines, ordering quickly in a crowded deli instead of weighing our options), our democracy can be slow and ungainly, endlessly logjammed over issues of immediate need.
The similarities between ants and neurons "suggest there are general principles of organization for building groups far smarter than the smartest individuals in them," Seeley says. Group decision making is occurring constantly at different levels of complexity and across different scales of space and time; understanding how it works in one context can inform our understanding of other systems that might be more complicated or difficult to explore. By looking at decision making in all of its diverse incarnations, we can step outside of standard modes of reasoning and find new ways to talk about complexity in our ecosystems, our communities, our governments, and our minds.
