Could you explain? BURTON : There are two separate aspects of a thought, namely the actual thought, and an independent involuntary assessment of the accuracy of that thought.
To get a feeling for this separation, look at the Muller-Lyer optical illusion. Even when we consciously know and can accurately determine that these two horizontal lines are the same length, we experience the simultaneous disquieting sensation that this thought—the lines are of equal length—is not correct. This isn't a feeling that we can easily overcome through logic and reason; it simply happens to us.
This sensation is a manifestation of a separate category of mental activity—-unconscious calculations as to the accuracy of any given thought.
On the positive side, such feelings can vary from a modest sense of being right, such as understanding that Christmas falls on December 25, to a profound a-ha, "Eureka" or sense of a spiritual epiphany. William James referred to the latter—the mystical experience—as "felt knowledge," a mental sensation that isn't a thought, but feels like a thought. Once we realize that the brain has very powerful inbuilt involuntary mechanisms for assessing unconscious cognitive activity, it is easy to see how it can send into consciousness a message that we know something that we can't presently recall—the modest tip-of-the-tongue feeling.
At the other end of the spectrum would be the profound "feeling of knowing" that accompanies unconsciously held beliefs—a major component of the unshakeable attachment to fundamentalist beliefs—both religious and otherwise—such as belief in UFOs or false memories. BURTON : Stick brain electrodes in rat pleasure centers the mesolimbic dopamine system primarily located in the upper brain stem. The rats continuously press the bar, to the exclusion of food and water, until they drop.
In humans the same areas are activated with cocaine, amphetamines, alcohol, nicotine and gambling—to mention just a few behaviors to which one can become easily addicted. It is quite likely that the same reward system provides the positive feedback necessary for us to learn and to continue wanting to learn.
The pleasure of a thought is what propels us forward; imagine trying to write a novel or engage in a long-term scientific experiment without getting such rewards.
Fortunately, the brain has provided us with a wide variety of subjective feelings of reward ranging from hunches, gut feelings, intuitions, suspicions that we are on the right track to a profound sense of certainty and utter conviction. And yes, these feelings are qualitatively as powerful as those involved in sex and gambling.
One need only look at the self-satisfied smugness of a "know it all" to suspect that the feeling of certainty can approach the power of addiction. It seems like we all turn into such partisan hacks every four years, completely certain that our side is right.
BURTON : The present presidential debates and associated media commentary feel like laboratory confirmation that the involuntary feeling of certainty plays a greater role in decision-making than conscious contemplation and reason. The mind is like an egg; the sperm are the myriad possible explanations for any given problem the mind tries to solve. In a harsh environment characterized by straightforward challenges that demanded quick responses, an indecisive caveman was a dead one.
The rush to certainty became our standard operating procedure for two reasons: i because we needed speedy thinking, and ii because speed did not force a significant tradeoff in accuracy.
The risk of interpretive error is low when you are confronted by a charging tiger or bush of lush berries because the cause-effect relationships in these straightforward situations are not convoluted or ambiguous. Even today, the majority of micro-decisions we make every hour are fairly straightforward, so there is no reason to second-guess or reflect on the limitations of our senses and intuitions.
But the whole speed-accuracy tradeoff falls apart in a world that tosses up complex problems. The need to be certain gets in the way of accuracy when it comes to problems that have multiple, interwoven causal factors that are difficult to unbundle. Complex problems require exploration, multiple perspectives, and a variety of possible explanations, before it is safe to draw any conclusions.
Many complex problems can only be tackled with experimentation because they do not converge to definitive solutions. Provisional truth requires that we think of our explanations as hypotheses — always subject to replacement based on new information or alternative ways of structuring existing information.
Pictures of brains are gross, so I traced one and made it colourful and stripy rather than grey and slimy. The most primitive part of your brain is the Reptilian brain coloured green. The part of our brain that gets us in trouble is the Paleomammalian brain, or Limbic System coloured orange. So in our brains, emotions are tied to survival. Then we have the outermost, or Neomammalian part of our brain coloured black. It was the most recent part to evolve.
Though I must warn you, WaitButWhy is such a fascinating site, you might fall down a rabbit hole learning about the Fermi Paradox and the dangers of AI, and not surface again for quite some time. Anyway, back to the brain.
And it has all the personality of a lizard, i. The real trouble maker is the Limbic System or Paleomammalian brain. You may have heard people who are into meditation talk about their monkey brain or how they need to tame their monkey brain. The monkey lives in the limbic system. And then we have the outer cortex.
It likes to think and create and solve problems. Unfortunately, our trouble-making monkey brain is a powerful thing. And because of this, it craves certainty. And so do we. Therefore, we absolutely, positively MUST learn to tame our monkey brains and make friends with uncertainty. Because when you look at my crude diagram, you see that a good chunk of our brains the lizard and monkey parts are wired for survival and not for truth. Your tolerance for uncertainty is directly related to the quality of your life.
The less certainty you need, and the more comfortable you are with uncertainty, the less you will listen to your monkey brain, and the more fulfilled you will be.
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