Flatland Revisited

I have seen some stuff lately (e.g., here) which has re-stimulated my interest in the Flatland model of how the human mind works. I don't know how long my new-found interest will last, but my intention is to start posting about it again. Much to my surprise, there is indeed a theory of mind out there which is compatible with (part of) the Flatland model, and even fleshes it out a bit. That part rests crucially on what researchers call confabulation.

Even when we think we are making rational choices and decisions, this may be illusory too. The intriguing possibility is that we simply do not have access to all of the unconscious information on which we base our decisions, so we create fictions upon which to rationalize them...

“The possibility is left open that in the most extreme case all of the people may confabulate [i.e., make shit up] all of the time,” says philosopher Lars Hall.

I took that discovery as encouragement. On the other hand, my interest in the subject has waxed and waned before. Modeling human nature is very hard, but I'm not afraid to make mistakes. I think the problem is that it is also very depressing. The more you figure out, or think you've figured out, the more depressing it gets. That is off-putting. I lose heart. What's the point in explaining all this human confusion if nothing is going to fix it?

I mean, just look at the primitive political (group) conflict going on in the United States right now. We can say a few things about it, things which require explanation if you're trying to theorize about human nature. Here are some examples/observations with a common theme.

• Bernie's progressives denied that Bernie would lose right up until he lost California and New Jersey by a wide margin. Various rationalizations were employed to keep things going. This was a massive case of "bad news" filtering because the existence of the group itself was at stake.  Requiescat in pace, Bernie Bros.

• The defensive posture of powerful American elites has never been so obvious as it is right now. But even as we see elite political bias (and status quo bias, naked self-interest) everywhere in the media representing them, there is no acknowledgment of bias, and can not be, because the elites are not only trying to deceive us, they are also deceiving themselves. This is the elite unconscious working overtime. The elites have been under threat this year—again, we have existential threats to social groups—so we see lots of post-hoc rationalizations (e.g., the U.S. economy is fine, especially when compared to other developed economies). We've been subjected to a veritable flood of bullshit by the people who run the country. And guess what? Those elite mouthpieces believe their own bullshit! Really!

• The United States is a very fucked-up place. There's hardly anything (housing affordability, wages & inequality, health care, college affordability, infrastructure, etc.) that works in this country. And what is the election about? Donald Trump! Racism! Homophobia! Transgenders and bathrooms! Terrorism! Border Fences! Every day we are presented with this depressing caricature of reality. From a human nature point of view, one must ask what unconscious psychological factors are at play in this massive self-deception. And who benefits from it? One might say that America-as-a-society is under threat. And what do humans do in the face of existential threats? Generally, they filter them, and in this case, they have changed the subject (which is also a way to filter threats.)

Thus America is like the drunk who lost his keys (Flatland, third essay).

A policeman sees a drunk man searching for something under a streetlight and asks what the drunk has lost. He says he lost his keys and they both look under the streetlight together. After a few minutes the policeman asks the drunk if he is sure he lost them there, and the drunk replies, no, he lost them in the park.

The policeman asks why he is searching under the streetlight, and the drunk replies, "because that's where the light is."

I could go on in this vein, but I trust I've made my point about Flatland. It's all very depressing.

Have a nice weekend.

 

Comments

[Dan]

"I could go on in this vein, but I trust I've made my point about Flatland. It's all very depressing."

I wonder if this sentiment can be defined as the "realist's dilemma." The ability to cut through the bullshit, but which in turn gives you the realization that practically no one else can, and in fact they continually produce it. Don't bother pointing this out to them, threat filtering is one hell of a defense mechanism.

Having a good general sense as to how the mind operates, one sees that there are hard limits to cognition. It's all the harder to take because you realize that humans evolved to this state, it isn't a bug but a feature. The ability of the realist is that they are for the most part able to keep this in check. I wonder what allows for this? Is there research you have come across that explores how a person is able to limit their motivated reasoning and threat filtering, etc.? I have not seen anything, but perhaps I am not looking in the right places. Or perhaps no one has even thought about studying this because there are too few realists out there to even have the idea in the first place.