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The Future of Reasoning
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Hey Vsauce!
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Michael here.
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Where is your mind?
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Is it in your head?
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I mean, that’s where your brain is — and
your brain remembers, plans, makes judgements,
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solves problems … but you also remember
and plan with things like these and this.
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And you solve problems and make judgements
with all sorts of other stuff, too.
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The more you think about it, the more you
realize that while the brain is a wet lump
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of fat and protein, no firmer than a glob
of tofu, the MIND is something much larger:
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it’s an ever-expanding organ of tissue AND
wood and stone and steel.
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And people.
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Because of communication we can even make
OTHER PEOPLE extensions of our minds.
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We can access their memories and perceptions
and knowledge by simply asking.
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Or not.
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I don’t need to learn how to fix a car AND
practice medicine AND vulcanize rubber OR
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remember everything … other people are doing
that for me just as I do things for them.
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We are a species of individuals that is also
one big interdependent lumbering growth.
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A frantic blur of flesh and concrete.
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A ‘techno sapien’ powered by imaginations
and passions made real by a hallowed faculty
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we call REASON.
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Reason, it is said, guides us to truer knowledge
and better decisions.
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It’s allowed us to increase life-expectancy,
suffer less, work together better, and it’s
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bound to take us further and higher until
the end of time.
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Or is it?
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The organ we USE to reason takes millions
of years to evolve, but the fruits of reason
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grow rapidly and are ever accelerating.
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In the next four decades, we’re expected
to build the equivalent of another new york
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city every month
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More concrete was installed in the last two
decades outside the US than the US installed
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during the entire 20th century.
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This growth means that quality of life around
the world is rising.
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It means that electricity, manufactured goods,
food, comfort and transportation are all becoming
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more common and accessible.
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But there are hints that reason and logic
are struggling aginst the complexity of it
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all; against our growing dependence on the
things we’ve built and their unintended
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consequences.
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Nearly every part of life as we know it today
involves or relies on a process that releases
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molecules with lopsided electrical charges.
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This property causes them to absorb and re-emit
thermal radiation, pinging it around so that
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it escapes into space more slowly.
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Having more warmer parcels of air means stronger
weather events.
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They can’t be pinned on any particular extreme
storm, but they make extreme storms in general
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more extreme and frequent.
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What’s a stake isn’t just ‘bad weather’
it’s disaster: it’s more lives lost, more
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property lost, it’s more droughts, more
hunger, more famine, more people needing refuge,
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and a even greater reliance on the very things
that caused the problems in the first place.
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In total, we release about 51 billion tons
of such gases every year and we need to release
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zero.
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But how do you re-think … everything?
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Who gets to direct the costs and tradeoffs?
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How do you achieve collaboration between nearly
every local and national government when what
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works in one place won’t work everywhere,
when decisions effect jobs in one place and
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food in another.
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When not just things need to be re-thought,
but also habits and traditions and values.
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How do you achieve consensus when a problem
isn’t obvious to the senses, is far away
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in space and time, requires solutions that
affect people in different ways, and as a
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product of science, always carries some uncertainty?
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The philosopher Timothy Morton calls something
so massively distributed in time and space
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and so viscous — so STICKY that it adheres
to all that touch it, a HYPEROBJECT.
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Every civilizations that grows at the speed
of reason must at some point face hyperobjects.
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In fact, the fact that we still haven’t
found evidence of intelligent life beyond
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Earth has been brought up as evidence that
some sort of GREAT FILTER, might exist that
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few civilizations manage to get past.
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That a hyperobject like our impact on the
planet might be such a great filter is not
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a new idea.
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What it’ll take to solve it is the topic
of Bill Gate’s HOW TO AVOID A CLIMATE DISASTER.
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And I decided to do this video in partnership
with him and his team because the way we deal
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with hyperobjects reveals a lot about the
mind.
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It’s easy — and common! — to think that
we would all be better off if everyone was
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just more rational.
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But what if reasoning wasn’t built for what
we’ve become?
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Let’s begin by looking at behavioral inertia.
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Behavioral inertia is the tendency to keep
doing what you’re already doing.
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Status quo bias.
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It can be a frustrating bias if you desire
change, but its origin isn’t a flaw.
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If an organism has managed to survive long
enough to reproduce and provide and care for
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its offspring, then the state of its world,
was sufficient for its genes to spread.
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That’s all it takes to persist.
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The types of organisms we see around us will
naturally be those that managed to persist
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and didn’t, after reaching the point at
which they could persist, rock the boat too
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much.
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Behavioral inertia can help slow down the
accumulation of unintended consequences and
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the loss of ideas that work, but it can also
slow down innovation and adaptation.
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If the environmental impacts of our society
were more immediate and un-ignorable, it wouldn’t
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be so tempting to apply this inertial brake.
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But emissions are invisible and their consequences
aren’t immediate or local.
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They impact future people and people far away.
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Those who are different from us, poorer than
us, people we will never meet.
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This may be one of the first challenges advancing
civilizations face: weilding not just the
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power of technology and distributed cognition,
but also the responsibilities.
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Extending not just the mind but also EMPATHY
could certainly be a great filter.
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Our lower instincts may bias us, but surely,
REASON can help us navigate towards the future
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we want, right?
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Well, what IS reason?
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It’s a way of making inferences.
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An inference is any new information extracted
from the information you already have.
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We make inferences all the time — every
living thing does.
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We don’t have measuring-tape tentacles that
shoot from our eyes, and what actually enters
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our brain is just a 2D image, but our brains
nonetheless INFER depth by attending to cues
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like stereopsis, occultation, perspective,
parallax, size…
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When this happens, we accept it as reality.
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We aren’t aware of the visual processing
that made it possible and don’t have to
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be.
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If, however, we do consciously consider WHY
a certain conclusion was reached, then BOOM
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that’s REASONING.
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Reasoning is the process of making inferences
not automatically and instrinctively, but
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by looking at facts and seeing what conclusion
they support.
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When Eratosthenes calculated the circumference
of the Earth to within a percentage or two
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of the value accepted today, he didn’t do
it by MEASURING the Earth and he didn’t
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just percieve it as self-evident, he INFERRED
it from what he knew about shadows and how
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long it took camels to move.
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Stories like that make it easy to believe
that reasoning evolved because it supercharged
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our abilities; it clearly moves us towards
truer conclusions, better decisions, and knowledge
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no other species could infer.
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Attempts to describe the rules of good, orderly
reason, became logic and mathematics, concepts
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so general and abstract that while we were
still animals, armed with them, we were no
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longer beasts.
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But that’s the rub, isn’t it?
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If reasoning is so great, why are we the only
species with such a sophisticated grasp of
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it?
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And if its purpose is truth and good judgement,
why don’t we all agree on everything?
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These questions make up what Hugo Mercier
and Dan Sperber call the Enigma of Reason.
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It’s tempting to think that disagreements
happen because while I’M being rational,
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those who disagree with me are being irrational.
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Urgh!
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If only people would use reason and logic.
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What’s happened to the world!
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That’s a fair complaint if you’re arguing
over logic puzzles, but the world is not a
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logic puzzle.
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this, however, is:
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Paul is looking at Mary.
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Mary is looking at Peter.
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Paul is married.
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Peter is unmarried.
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Is a married person looking at an unmarried
person?
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Yes.
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No.
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Or not enough information to decide?
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think about it.
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The answer is YES.
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You may have thought there’s no way to know,
because we don’t know if Mary is married.
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But she either is or she isn’t.
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And if she IS, then she, a married person,
is looking at Peter, an unmarried person.
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If she ISN’T then Paul, a married person,
is looking at her, an unmarried person.
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No matter what Mary’s deal is, the answer
will be YES.
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When people get this puzzle wrong and the
correct answer is explained to them, they
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almost always immedaitely see why it’s right
and change their mind.
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Life is not usually like that.
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Now, take a look at this logical syllogism:
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All elephants are awesome.
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Michael is an elephant.
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Therefore, Michael is awesome.
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This conclusion is logically valid.
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But it’s not SOUND.
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The conclusion follows from these assumptions,
but are these assumptions true?
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No.
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I am NOT an elephant.
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Also, this premise … is subjective.
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What does it MEAN to be awesome?
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Can you measure it with an awesome-ometer?
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So you can see why, when analyzing something
like our impact on the planet, logic can only
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be a partial tool.
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If some people have more to lose than others,
who gets to decide which are fair?
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Still, though, it would seem that reasoning
should be able help out here.
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If each of us would just attend to ONLY the
facts, surely we’d all recognize the same,
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reasonable approach.
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Problem is, that’s not how reasoning works.
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Since the scientific study of human reasoning
began about a hundred years ago, it’s been
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found again and again that we’re not only
BAD at reasoning, lazy and biased, but almost
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seem PROGRAMMED to be bad.
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Like the flaws are intentional…
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In an episode of Mind Field I once used a
magician to pull off a little experiment.
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He asked people to look at two faces and choose
which of the two they would prefer to work
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with, placing their preferences in one pile,
and those they rejected into another.
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Then, the pile of people they picked were
shown again and each person was asked to provide
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a REASON for why they chose that person.
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But with a little slight of hand, the magician
managed to sneak in some of the faces they
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had just rejected.
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Amazingly, the majority of people didn’t
even notice the trick.
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Not only that, they were able to effortlessly
explain the reasons behind their choice — a
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choice they never actually made.
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Remembering faces you’ve only seen briefly
isn’t the easiest thing to do, but other
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studies have shown that even if the task involves
answering questions about one’s political
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beliefs — things we would seemingly have
a firmer grasp on — still nearly half of
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participants will fail to notice that answers
they gave have been reversed when they’re
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later asked to explain them.
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Point is, we seem practically BUILT to give
reasons for whatever we think we must, and
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NOT the reasons we actually used to reach
a conclusion.
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What if we don’t even USE reasons to form
our beliefs?
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Let’s talk about INTUITIONS.
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Our brains have evolved over millions of years
to react to the world around us in brilliant
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ways with little to no input from us.
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For example, when you notice that someone
is upset, you’ve don’t consciously think,
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“ok, so their eyebrows and oriented like
that, their speaking is curt, their posture
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… hmmmm … ah ha! those are reasons to
conclude that they are upset!”
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Instead, the belief that they may be upset
was just apparent.
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You intuited it.
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You ‘know’ it without exactly know HOW
you exactly you came to know it.
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The mood recognizing parts of your brain operate
in a way that is opaque to your awareness.
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BUT if someone asks you, why you think they’re
upset, you can nonetheless produce all sorts
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of reasons — some may have been the ones
your brain actually attended to.
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But they’re all just guesses.
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Instead of using reasoning to COME to conclusions,
we use conclusions to come to reasons.
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To be fair, we CAN go the other way.
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We love puzzles and when we don’t have a
strong intuition either way, we can sit down
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and mull over various reason to think one
thing or another.
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Our love of puzzles suggests that reasoning
has a survival value.
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Organisms that found it pleasurable would
be more likely to use it.
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But when we reason alone, even when we have
no motivation to reach any particular conclusion,
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we STILL exhibit deep biases that seem less
like mistakes and more like features.
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For example, it’s been shown that between
two otherwise similar products, people will
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prefer to buy the one with more features — even
if they don’t want those features, never
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plan to use them, and think they’re all
pointless and over complicated.
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Why?
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Well it might be that we find such decisions
easier to justify … to OTHERS.
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We won’t feel embarrassed if someone criticizes
us for getting fewer features.
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After decades of findings like this, Hugo
Mercier and Dan Sperber began to hypothesize
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that reasoning to help us make better decisions,
but instead, to help us make social decisions.
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Humans inhabit a cognitive niche on this planet.
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We aren’t strong or sharp or hidden or venomous,
instead, our advantage comes from cognition:
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reasoning and cooperation.
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We can plan hunt, build traps, and engage
in coordinated strategies that can be tested
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and modified on the fly, not by millennia
of evolution.
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Reasons allow us to so those things.
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It’s hard to convince people that your intuitions
are true.
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But if you can give REASONS for them, its
a whole heck of a lot easier to convince other
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people that you’re right.
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Reason also allows us to justify ourselves
in the eyes of others.
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To explain who we are and express the kinds
of reasons we like, what other people can
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expect from us, and what we will likely expect
from them.
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This social theory of reasoning helps explain
why two people can earnestly and rationally
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arrive at different views.
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They each have their own unique brain and
values and dispositions and experiences and
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THAT’S what drove their thinking.
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The reasons they give may or may not be the
REAL reasons they came to their conclusions,
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but it’s the best anyone can do.
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The social theory also explains why people
tend to give such weak reasons for their beliefs
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at first or when their intended audience doesn’t
need much convincing.
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It would be a waste of time and cognitive
reasources to construct grand slam reasons
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for everything I said and did and thought
when it wasn’t necessary.
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Instead, I can off-load some of the work to
other people.
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If I say, “I want to have lunch at ABC Burgers”
my friend might say, “ah, no thanks, I had
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burgers yesterday” and I might reply back,
“oh well that’s no problem, they also
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have hot dogs and great salads”
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But if my friend said “ah, no thanks, I’m
trying to spend less money eating out this
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month” I might reply, “oh well ABC Burgers
is really cheap and I;ve got a coupon!”
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What’s going on there is that I’m providing
reasons only as my interlocutor presses for
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them.
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If they press harder and harder, my reasons
will become better and better until either
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I win them over, or we come to some different,
more harmonious decision.
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So when people appear to be lazy reasoners
or to have bad reasons or none at all, it’s
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usually just the case that they’re using
reason as it evolved to function; socially.
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It starts off weak, improving if others push
it and always tailoring its work to an intended
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audience.
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the social theory of reasons can even explain
the existence of biases that otherwise make
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little sense.
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For example, it would seem that in coming
to conclusions about the world, it would behoove
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an organism to pay particular attention to
information that went against what it believed.
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That way, they would be able to adjust their
beliefs making them truer, more general, and
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more complete.
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To a certain extent, that IS what happens
… but not always.
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When someone “does their own research”
they often come to the very conclusion they
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wanted after all.
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When a person strongly believes that our impact
on the planet isn’t a problem, they tend
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to gravitate towards reasons it might not
be and see such reasons in all kinds of data.
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This is called the CONFIRMATION BIAS: our
tendency to look for, prefer, and interpret
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information so that it confirms what we already
think.
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It frustrates our ability to accept new, inconvienent
data and is a problem for the intellectualist
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view of reason.
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If reason is for finding truth and making
better decisions, why would it have this major
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weakness?
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Because, the social theory says, reasoning
is a GROUP ACTIVITY.
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If I think that option A is true and the best,
and you think option B is true and the best,
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if we both researched BOTH options and sifted
through reasons in support of BOTH options,
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we would both have twice the work to do than
we would if, instead, I simply came up with
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reason for why I was right, and you attended
to reasons for why YOU were right.
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The confirmation bias at least HALVES the
cognitive work that must be done.
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Now sometimes a lone reasoner will have a
bad idea.
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Or a decent idea with some bad parts.
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The reasons they have to justify and argue
for it will be suffiencent for them and those
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who intuitively agree but may be weak.
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But subjected to deliberation, put forth into
the machine of collective thought, it can
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be evaulated and judged not by one mind or
a group of minds thinking alike, but by something
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special … the crowd.
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Humans have long known of the WISDOM OF THE
CROWDS: the phenomenon by which a collection
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of many people can process information into
a conclusion better than any one person could
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do alone.
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It’s why we don’t trust big decisions
to a single person, no matter how educated
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or powerful they are.
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Instead, we ask a group of to deliberate.
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To reason together.
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In this way, the biases and errors of each
is smoothed out and the decision wiser.
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In a famous example, it’s been repeatedly
shown that if you ask a bunch of people to
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guess how many jelly beans are in a jar, you’ll
find that the average of all of their answers
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is CLOSER TO THE REAL NUMBER than any one
individual was alone.
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Even the smartest individual.
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What happens is that although some people
may guess a number way too big, that mistake
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is balanced out by the fact that others will
inevitably guess a number way too small.
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All together, their disagreement evens out
into spectacular accuracy.
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We have now arrived at the problem.
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Reasoning evolved to be used socially where
many different perspectives had to all deliberate
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towards a common conclusion.
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Such contexts are becoming less and less common.
00:22:40
And it is becoming easier and easier to simply
be a lone reasoner, justifying only a particular
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viewpoint without doing the harder work of
deliberating and acting.
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The internet gives voices to more perspectives
than ever before in our history, but it also
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makes it easy to disengage from accountability
and find places where everyone believes what
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you do.
00:23:04
Furthermore, because of technology, we confront
more issues more rapidly than ever before
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that we’re expected to have opinions about.
00:23:13
And the growing complexity and specialization
of the modern world makes it difficult for
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each of us to have well-informed prepared
reasons for the acceleraeting accretion of
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intutions we must form.
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in response, we look for lone reasoners who
can defend our intuitions for us.
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They reasons they give don’t need to be
good, just good ENOUGH that we can feel like
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justification exists.
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In the past, unconvincing reasons had to be
painted on sandwich boards.
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But now, the democritization of communication
means that even unpopular, unconvincing, nonsensical
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ideas can be presented with the same trust-inducing
typefaces and professional look as common
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ones.
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Those who disagree may challenge the reasons
you’ve been given, show them to be contradictory,
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and produce betters ones for THEIR side, but
to what end?
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It’s all preparation for a debate that never
comes.
00:24:08
You play a very small role in deciding how
society is run.
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Even if a good faith discussion between a
representative slice of America came to a
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resolution, if nothing can come of it, why
not just throw shade and sick burns or revel
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in the pleasure of reasoning by treating everything
like a big giant puzzle?
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It's easy to think that it doesn’t matter,
because after all, those in charge, the brilliant
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scientists and powerful billionaires, will
surely come to our rescue.
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Some giant TECHNOSALVATION is surely on the
horizon.
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Perhaps it is.
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But everything we know about reason suggets
that those implementing it should be held
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accountable by as many different perspectives
as possible.
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Leaders could lead deliberations and be elected
for their ability to moderate social reasoning,
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but that’s boring!
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Why lead when you could follow: look at what
some people believe and generate reasons for
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why they’re right, and they’ll love it!
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Of course, the hard work — the REAL work
— the work that truly elevates us on this
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planet, is not in telling poeple that they’re
right, but in trying to convince others and
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in so doing, use reason as it evolved to be
used.
00:25:29
The future of reason may in fact be the past
of reason.
00:25:35
In practice, what does all this look like?
00:25:38
Some researchers have gone so far as to recommend
national deliberation days where citizens
00:25:44
celebrate by literally joining small groups
and talking through their opinions and comparing
00:25:49
reasons.
00:25:51
Tests of such strategies have shown that a
return to the small, targeted discussions
00:25:56
our reasoning abilities evolved to excel in
leaves all participants with a greater understanding
00:26:02
of not just what they believe and why, but
about decisions that could actually be made
00:26:07
and actions that could be taken.
00:26:10
Others have gone even further, recommending
that the true future of reason at its best
00:26:16
is the construction of a lottocracy.
00:26:19
A form of government where decisions are made
not by elected leaders, but by people literally
00:26:26
chosen at random.
00:26:28
We decide the fate of a person this way, why
not the fate of the people?
00:26:34
What IF decisions were made not by politicians
alone, but at least occasionally by groups
00:26:40
of actual citizens representing differences
in thought, not just geography, who were brought
00:26:45
together and paid for their time to learn
from experts and then deliberate on an assigned
00:26:51
issue until a conclusion was reached or, at
the least, a recommendation?
00:26:56
Instead of being motivated by re-election,
money, attention, and power, individuals chosen
00:27:02
at random would have only their conscious
to guide them.
00:27:06
Special interests and corporations wouldn’t
be able to cozy up to those likely to be elected
00:27:11
— if any one of us could some day serve,
they’d have cozy up to and protect … all
00:27:19
of us.
00:27:20
Instead of the learning and deliberation being
done by people you never meet with offices
00:27:25
in buildings you can’t access, gradually,
over time, more and more of your very own
00:27:30
neighbors would have had the honor.
00:27:33
People chosen at random would obviously lack
the same celebrity status and mandate that
00:27:39
elected leaders cultivate and achieve — and
iconic figures we relate to aren’t bad — but
00:27:46
our understanding of reasoning is making it
more and more clear that we evolved not to
00:27:50
be leave thinking up to a few great minds,
but to the authorty of THE great mind.
00:27:57
The lumbering organ of thought that is everyone
and everything.
00:28:03
This is, in fact, how democracy first worked:
lotteries were used to fill many political
00:28:08
positions in Anceint Athens.
00:28:10
Aristotle explained that
00:28:12
“the appointment of magistrates by lot is
thought to be democratic, and the election
00:28:17
of them is oligrchic”
00:28:19
where an oligrachy is government by only a
small number of people.
00:28:25
Regardless of HOW reason is brought back to
its social roots, if we can build more and
00:28:30
better areanas for deliberation and use them
to apply reason properly to hyperobjects like
00:28:36
the impact of emissions on the planet, we’ll
have taught one heck of a lesson to people
00:28:41
a hundred, a thousand years into the future.
00:28:44
I like to think that although widening participation
will be difficult, it might provide us all
00:28:51
with a kind of existential security.
00:28:54
The impact of emission on our planet is not
going to be the last hyperproblem we face.
00:29:00
If we can do a good job with it, maybe far
in the future, when our civilization has advanced
00:29:05
to the point at which people can be quantumly
re-recreated or something, they’ll look
00:29:09
back at our time and say, hey, let’s bring
them all back to life.
00:29:16
We could use the cooperative abilities they
had then.
00:29:19
Ultimately, the old saying that “history
is the great teacher” isn’t a bad guide.
00:29:26
We will all some day be teachers ourselves
because some day we will all be history, too.
00:29:32
we will some day be the ancients.
00:29:37
And we can choose what that will mean.
00:29:40
And as always, thanks for watching.
