The Knowledge Illusion part 5

This post is on the book The Knowledge Illusion by Steven Sloman (cognitive scientist and professor at Brown University) and Phillip Fernbach (cognitive scientist and professor of marketing at Colorado's Leeds School of business).

This post is the fifth in a series of sixteen that address The Knowledge Illusion and unless otherwise noted all quotes are from The Knowledge Illusion. I recommend reading all sixteen posts in order.

I have written on numerous other books on psychology, social psychology, critical thinking, cognitive dissonance theory and related topics already but discovered this one and feel it plays a complimentary and very needed role. It helps to explain a huge number of "hows" and "whys" regarding the other subjects I mentioned, all of the subjects.

In chapter two, Why We Think, the authors of The Knowledge Illusion present their idea of the reason that we think. They note that animals have a couple noticeable differences between them and plants. Plants don't have the ability to move like animals and they can't think.

One creature that gives us a clue is the Sea Squirt. This off little creature has different stages it goes through in life. At one point it needs to pick a spot on the bottom of the ocean or sea and attach itself for the rest of its life. Once that has happened it will remain there for the rest of its life.

Once the Sea Squirt has picked a spot and attached itself it does something remarkable. It literally absorbs into itself or eats it's own brain, well brainlike primitive structure. But still it is amazing to think of an animal having one decision to make then disposing of its brain permanently. But it has no more decisions to make. It isn't going anywhere and has no way to fight or flee.

The big difference between plants without brains and brainlike structures and animals with them is organized action. Animals commit actions and have to have senses to get information and a way to motivate actions. Plants rely on a different way of living. They use photosynthesis to produce energy. Animals rely on other methods and have to do actions to achieve those methods.

The more complex the actions required by animals the more developed their brains become. The more neurons present in a brain the more sophisticated the behavior by that brain can be. Human brains have billions of neurons.

In research it was discovered that Horseshoe crabs have very primitive senses and brains compared to humans. Hadan Hartline won a Nobel prize in 1967 for studying them. The crabs are not as smart as people, not to brag, and their senses are not as sophisticated. This makes studying their brains and nervous system and sense organs easier than studying human ones.

In 1982 Robert Barlow, a student of Hartline, led a team that found the simpler eyestalks of the crabs could tell differences in shading of light. They would try to mate with cement casings that resembled the female crabs in contrast with the sand and form. They didn't realize the casings were not in fact female crabs. The importance of reproduction from an evolutionary perspective cannot be overstated. If a species cannot reproduce it cannot survive. Period. So, the ability to relatively quickly pick out a female and start mating at the opportune time is the absolute highest priority for the crab and every species.

The crabs have very simple eyes but the feature of being able to pick out contrast in shades is one they cannot do without because the action of mating requires them.

Moving up from the relatively primitive crab to humans is a huge leap. Most scientists who study brains consider about a third of the human brain as devoted to our primary sense - vision. Many animals have a primary sense and about a third of their brain devoted to it. Dogs have smell as theirs.

Vision is so central to our perception that parts of the brain are devoted to minor details regarding it. We have one section devoted entirely to recognizing faces. It doesn't just recognize human faces as faces but particular faces. It recognizes them so well we can see a particular person and see them years or decades later with a lot of weight gained or lost, different hairstyle and clothing, different expression and very often easily recognize someone. And we see people from different angles, in different lighting and sometimes from close or far but still recognize faces.

As an example the authors discuss seeing a high school photo of Danny DeVito and recognizing high school Danny DeVito as the younger version of the actor. Our brains are primed to detect RELEVANT details. In dealing with people it is relevant if you are dealing a human being or not. It is relevant if you are dealing with the exact same human being over and over.

What makes things relevant for us ? For one thing if you are thinking as a way to guide action what situations accompany which circumstances becomes extremely relevant.

Our thinking is a kind of prediction machine. It is primitive in that it often treats correlation as causation or close enough for its purposes. It assigns cause to things by association.

The ability to pick out particular faces is useful because it greatly improves predictions of behavior. If you could not tell people apart then predicting their behavior would be much more difficult.

We are built to find certain patterns. We can recognize many songs for example if we hear them even if they are played with a few errors or unfamiliar instruments.

We are designed to find the relevant and to key in patterns, not to remember or even perceive everything.

There was an Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges who wrote about Funes the Memorious in a short story. Funes could remember everything, all his dreams and every event in fine detail of every day of his life. He could describe every moment of a day in full and it would take a full day to describe any one day. Funes was supposed to have gained this extraordinary ability after falling off a horse and hitting his head.

Funes was considered a creation of fiction. But in 2006 Elizabeth Parker, Larry Cahill, and James McGaugh of UC Irvine and the University of Southern California published a case study of an extraordinary patient they call AJ.

AJ like Funes recalls much more than an ordinary person. She can recall what day of the week it is accurately and what day of the week every day in her lifetime occurred on with no need for a calendar and from a very young age can recall what occurred on that day in extreme detail.

This condition is called hyperthymesia. It can be called a highly superior photographic memory. Apparently the human brain could store virtually every detail of almost our entire lives. So, the question is why doesn't it ? Because it isn't designed for that. It's only designed to facilitate action. Remembering everything on an absolutely equal basis is not helpful.

Borges understood this and had Funes say:

"I alone have more memories than all mankind has probably had since the world has been the world...my dreams are like you people's waking hours" "My memory, sir, is like a garbage heap."

AJ described her memory: "It is nonstop, uncontrollable and totally exhausting. Some people call me the human calendar while others run out of the room in complete fear but the one reaction I get from everyone who eventually finds out about this "gift" is total amazement. They can start throwing dates at me to try to stump me...I haven't been stumped yet. Most have called it a gift but I call it a burden. I run my entire life through my head every day and it drives me crazy!!! " (Page 40)

NPR reported in 2013 that 55 hyperthymeses have been identified and most struggle with depression.

"The reason that most of us are not hyperthymesics is because it would make us less successful at what we evolved to do. The mind is busy trying to choose actions by picking out the most useful stuff and leaving the rest behind. Remembering everything gets in the way of focusing on the deeper principles that allow us to recognize how a new situation resembles past situations and what kinds of actions will be effective." ( Page 47)


We are active and need to effectively and often quickly choose actions and carry them out quickly and to perceive our progress and failure or success with these actions quickly and determine which actions to take with that new information in a seemingly never ending dash. We are a sort of rapid data collection unit that must instantly sort, and treat data as relevant or irrelevant and keep and further sort or discard.

It is go, go, go and move, move, move very often. We think for how we live and we live lives of action.