Future Of Reasoning

*Future of Reasoning


Where is your mind?

Is it in your head?

I mean, that’s where your brain is — and
your brain remembers, plans, makes judgements,

solves problems … but you also remember
and plan with things like these and this.

And you solve problems and make judgements
with all sorts of other stuff, too.

The more you think about it, the more you
realize that while the brain is a wet lump

of fat and protein, no firmer than a glob
of tofu, the MIND is something much larger:

it’s an ever-expanding organ of tissue AND
wood and stone and steel.

And people.

Because of communication we can even make
OTHER PEOPLE extensions of our minds.

We can access their memories and perceptions
and knowledge by simply asking.

Or not.

I don’t need to learn how to fix a car AND
practice medicine AND vulcanize rubber OR

remember everything … other people are doing
that for me just as I do things for them.

We are a species of individuals that is also
one big interdependent lumbering growth.

A frantic blur of flesh and concrete.

A ‘techno sapien’ powered by imaginations
and passions made real by a hallowed faculty

we call REASON.

Reason, it is said, guides us to truer knowledge
and better decisions.

It’s allowed us to increase life-expectancy,
suffer less, work together better, and it’s

bound to take us further and higher until
the end of time.

Or is it?

The organ we USE to reason takes millions
of years to evolve, but the fruits of reason

grow rapidly and are ever accelerating.

In the next four decades, we’re expected
to build the equivalent of another new york

city every month

More concrete was installed in the last two
decades outside the US than the US installed

during the entire 20th century.

This growth means that quality of life around
the world is rising.

It means that electricity, manufactured goods,
food, comfort and transportation are all becoming

more common and accessible.

But there are hints that reason and logic
are struggling aginst the complexity of it

all; against our growing dependence on the
things we’ve built and their unintended

consequences.

Nearly every part of life as we know it today
involves or relies on a process that releases

molecules with lopsided electrical charges.

This property causes them to absorb and re-emit
thermal radiation, pinging it around so that

it escapes into space more slowly.

Having more warmer parcels of air means stronger
weather events.

They can’t be pinned on any particular extreme
storm, but they make extreme storms in general

more extreme and frequent.

What’s a stake isn’t just ‘bad weather’
it’s disaster: it’s more lives lost, more

property lost, it’s more droughts, more
hunger, more famine, more people needing refuge,

and a even greater reliance on the very things
that caused the problems in the first place.

In total, we release about 51 billion tons
of such gases every year and we need to release

zero.

But how do you re-think … everything?

Who gets to direct the costs and tradeoffs?

How do you achieve collaboration between nearly
every local and national government when what

works in one place won’t work everywhere,
when decisions effect jobs in one place and

food in another.

When not just things need to be re-thought,
but also habits and traditions and values.

How do you achieve consensus when a problem
isn’t obvious to the senses, is far away

in space and time, requires solutions that
affect people in different ways, and as a

product of science, always carries some uncertainty?

The philosopher Timothy Morton calls something
so massively distributed in time and space

and so viscous — so STICKY that it adheres
to all that touch it, a HYPEROBJECT.

Every civilizations that grows at the speed
of reason must at some point face hyperobjects.

In fact, the fact that we still haven’t
found evidence of intelligent life beyond

Earth has been brought up as evidence that
some sort of GREAT FILTER, might exist that

few civilizations manage to get past.

That a hyperobject like our impact on the
planet might be such a great filter is not

a new idea.

What it’ll take to solve it is the topic
of Bill Gate’s HOW TO AVOID A CLIMATE DISASTER.

And I decided to do this video in partnership
with him and his team because the way we deal

with hyperobjects reveals a lot about the
mind.

It’s easy — and common! — to think that
we would all be better off if everyone was

just more rational.

But what if reasoning wasn’t built for what
we’ve become?

Let’s begin by looking at behavioral inertia.

Behavioral inertia is the tendency to keep
doing what you’re already doing.

Status quo bias.

It can be a frustrating bias if you desire
change, but its origin isn’t a flaw.

If an organism has managed to survive long
enough to reproduce and provide and care for

its offspring, then the state of its world,
was sufficient for its genes to spread.

That’s all it takes to persist.

The types of organisms we see around us will
naturally be those that managed to persist

and didn’t, after reaching the point at
which they could persist, rock the boat too

much.

Behavioral inertia can help slow down the
accumulation of unintended consequences and

the loss of ideas that work, but it can also
slow down innovation and adaptation.

If the environmental impacts of our society
were more immediate and un-ignorable, it wouldn’t

be so tempting to apply this inertial brake.

But emissions are invisible and their consequences
aren’t immediate or local.

They impact future people and people far away.

Those who are different from us, poorer than
us, people we will never meet.

This may be one of the first challenges advancing
civilizations face: weilding not just the

power of technology and distributed cognition,
but also the responsibilities.

Extending not just the mind but also EMPATHY
could certainly be a great filter.

Our lower instincts may bias us, but surely,
REASON can help us navigate towards the future

we want, right?

Well, what IS reason?

It’s a way of making inferences.

An inference is any new information extracted
from the information you already have.

We make inferences all the time — every
living thing does.

We don’t have measuring-tape tentacles that
shoot from our eyes, and what actually enters

our brain is just a 2D image, but our brains
nonetheless INFER depth by attending to cues

like stereopsis, occultation, perspective,
parallax, size…

When this happens, we accept it as reality.

We aren’t aware of the visual processing
that made it possible and don’t have to

be.

If, however, we do consciously consider WHY
a certain conclusion was reached, then BOOM

that’s REASONING.

Reasoning is the process of making inferences
not automatically and instrinctively, but

by looking at facts and seeing what conclusion
they support.

When Eratosthenes calculated the circumference
of the Earth to within a percentage or two

of the value accepted today, he didn’t do
it by MEASURING the Earth and he didn’t

just percieve it as self-evident, he INFERRED
it from what he knew about shadows and how

long it took camels to move.

Stories like that make it easy to believe
that reasoning evolved because it supercharged

our abilities; it clearly moves us towards
truer conclusions, better decisions, and knowledge

no other species could infer.

Attempts to describe the rules of good, orderly
reason, became logic and mathematics, concepts

so general and abstract that while we were
still animals, armed with them, we were no

longer beasts.

But that’s the rub, isn’t it?

If reasoning is so great, why are we the only
species with such a sophisticated grasp of

it?

And if its purpose is truth and good judgement,
why don’t we all agree on everything?

These questions make up what Hugo Mercier
and Dan Sperber call the Enigma of Reason.

It’s tempting to think that disagreements
happen because while I’M being rational,

those who disagree with me are being irrational.

Urgh!

If only people would use reason and logic.

What’s happened to the world!

That’s a fair complaint if you’re arguing
over logic puzzles, but the world is not a

logic puzzle.

this, however, is:

Paul is looking at Mary.

Mary is looking at Peter.

Paul is married.

Peter is unmarried.

Is a married person looking at an unmarried
person?

Yes.

No.

Or not enough information to decide?

think about it.

The answer is YES.

You may have thought there’s no way to know,
because we don’t know if Mary is married.

But she either is or she isn’t.

And if she IS, then she, a married person,
is looking at Peter, an unmarried person.

If she ISN’T then Paul, a married person,
is looking at her, an unmarried person.

No matter what Mary’s deal is, the answer
will be YES.

When people get this puzzle wrong and the
correct answer is explained to them, they

almost always immedaitely see why it’s right
and change their mind.

Life is not usually like that.

Now, take a look at this logical syllogism:

All elephants are awesome.

Michael is an elephant.

Therefore, Michael is awesome.

This conclusion is logically valid.

But it’s not SOUND.

The conclusion follows from these assumptions,
but are these assumptions true?

No.

I am NOT an elephant.

Also, this premise … is subjective.

What does it MEAN to be awesome?

Can you measure it with an awesome-ometer?

So you can see why, when analyzing something
like our impact on the planet, logic can only

be a partial tool.

If some people have more to lose than others,
who gets to decide which are fair?

Still, though, it would seem that reasoning
should be able help out here.

If each of us would just attend to ONLY the
facts, surely we’d all recognize the same,

reasonable approach.

Problem is, that’s not how reasoning works.

Since the scientific study of human reasoning
began about a hundred years ago, it’s been

found again and again that we’re not only
BAD at reasoning, lazy and biased, but almost

seem PROGRAMMED to be bad.

Like the flaws are intentional…

In an episode of Mind Field I once used a
magician to pull off a little experiment.

He asked people to look at two faces and choose
which of the two they would prefer to work

with, placing their preferences in one pile,
and those they rejected into another.

Then, the pile of people they picked were
shown again and each person was asked to provide

a REASON for why they chose that person.

But with a little slight of hand, the magician
managed to sneak in some of the faces they

had just rejected.

Amazingly, the majority of people didn’t
even notice the trick.

Not only that, they were able to effortlessly
explain the reasons behind their choice — a

choice they never actually made.

Remembering faces you’ve only seen briefly
isn’t the easiest thing to do, but other

studies have shown that even if the task involves
answering questions about one’s political

beliefs — things we would seemingly have
a firmer grasp on — still nearly half of

participants will fail to notice that answers
they gave have been reversed when they’re

later asked to explain them.

Point is, we seem practically BUILT to give
reasons for whatever we think we must, and

NOT the reasons we actually used to reach
a conclusion.

What if we don’t even USE reasons to form
our beliefs?

Let’s talk about INTUITIONS.

Our brains have evolved over millions of years
to react to the world around us in brilliant

ways with little to no input from us.

For example, when you notice that someone
is upset, you’ve don’t consciously think,

“ok, so their eyebrows and oriented like
that, their speaking is curt, their posture

… hmmmm … ah ha! those are reasons to
conclude that they are upset!”

Instead, the belief that they may be upset
was just apparent.

You intuited it.

You ‘know’ it without exactly know HOW
you exactly you came to know it.

The mood recognizing parts of your brain operate
in a way that is opaque to your awareness.

BUT if someone asks you, why you think they’re
upset, you can nonetheless produce all sorts

of reasons — some may have been the ones
your brain actually attended to.

But they’re all just guesses.

Instead of using reasoning to COME to conclusions,
we use conclusions to come to reasons.

To be fair, we CAN go the other way.

We love puzzles and when we don’t have a
strong intuition either way, we can sit down

and mull over various reason to think one
thing or another.

Our love of puzzles suggests that reasoning
has a survival value.

Organisms that found it pleasurable would
be more likely to use it.

But when we reason alone, even when we have
no motivation to reach any particular conclusion,

we STILL exhibit deep biases that seem less
like mistakes and more like features.

For example, it’s been shown that between
two otherwise similar products, people will

prefer to buy the one with more features — even
if they don’t want those features, never

plan to use them, and think they’re all
pointless and over complicated.

Why?

Well it might be that we find such decisions
easier to justify … to OTHERS.

We won’t feel embarrassed if someone criticizes
us for getting fewer features.

After decades of findings like this, Hugo
Mercier and Dan Sperber began to hypothesize

that reasoning to help us make better decisions,
but instead, to help us make social decisions.

Humans inhabit a cognitive niche on this planet.

We aren’t strong or sharp or hidden or venomous,
instead, our advantage comes from cognition:

reasoning and cooperation.

We can plan hunt, build traps, and engage
in coordinated strategies that can be tested

and modified on the fly, not by millennia
of evolution.

Reasons allow us to so those things.

It’s hard to convince people that your intuitions
are true.

But if you can give REASONS for them, its
a whole heck of a lot easier to convince other

people that you’re right.

Reason also allows us to justify ourselves
in the eyes of others.

To explain who we are and express the kinds
of reasons we like, what other people can

expect from us, and what we will likely expect
from them.

This social theory of reasoning helps explain
why two people can earnestly and rationally

arrive at different views.

They each have their own unique brain and
values and dispositions and experiences and

THAT’S what drove their thinking.

The reasons they give may or may not be the
REAL reasons they came to their conclusions,

but it’s the best anyone can do.

The social theory also explains why people
tend to give such weak reasons for their beliefs

at first or when their intended audience doesn’t
need much convincing.

It would be a waste of time and cognitive
reasources to construct grand slam reasons

for everything I said and did and thought
when it wasn’t necessary.

Instead, I can off-load some of the work to
other people.

If I say, “I want to have lunch at ABC Burgers”
my friend might say, “ah, no thanks, I had

burgers yesterday” and I might reply back,
“oh well that’s no problem, they also

have hot dogs and great salads”

But if my friend said “ah, no thanks, I’m
trying to spend less money eating out this

month” I might reply, “oh well ABC Burgers
is really cheap and I;ve got a coupon!”

What’s going on there is that I’m providing
reasons only as my interlocutor presses for

them.

If they press harder and harder, my reasons
will become better and better until either

I win them over, or we come to some different,
more harmonious decision.

So when people appear to be lazy reasoners
or to have bad reasons or none at all, it’s

usually just the case that they’re using
reason as it evolved to function; socially.

It starts off weak, improving if others push
it and always tailoring its work to an intended

audience.

the social theory of reasons can even explain
the existence of biases that otherwise make

little sense.

For example, it would seem that in coming
to conclusions about the world, it would behoove

an organism to pay particular attention to
information that went against what it believed.

That way, they would be able to adjust their
beliefs making them truer, more general, and

more complete.

To a certain extent, that IS what happens
… but not always.

When someone “does their own research”
they often come to the very conclusion they

wanted after all.

When a person strongly believes that our impact
on the planet isn’t a problem, they tend

to gravitate towards reasons it might not
be and see such reasons in all kinds of data.

This is called the CONFIRMATION BIAS: our
tendency to look for, prefer, and interpret

information so that it confirms what we already
think.

It frustrates our ability to accept new, inconvienent
data and is a problem for the intellectualist

view of reason.

If reason is for finding truth and making
better decisions, why would it have this major

weakness?

Because, the social theory says, reasoning
is a GROUP ACTIVITY.

If I think that option A is true and the best,
and you think option B is true and the best,

if we both researched BOTH options and sifted
through reasons in support of BOTH options,

we would both have twice the work to do than
we would if, instead, I simply came up with

reason for why I was right, and you attended
to reasons for why YOU were right.

The confirmation bias at least HALVES the
cognitive work that must be done.

Now sometimes a lone reasoner will have a
bad idea.

Or a decent idea with some bad parts.

The reasons they have to justify and argue
for it will be suffiencent for them and those

who intuitively agree but may be weak.

But subjected to deliberation, put forth into
the machine of collective thought, it can

be evaulated and judged not by one mind or
a group of minds thinking alike, but by something

special … the crowd.

Humans have long known of the WISDOM OF THE
CROWDS: the phenomenon by which a collection

of many people can process information into
a conclusion better than any one person could

do alone.

It’s why we don’t trust big decisions
to a single person, no matter how educated

or powerful they are.

Instead, we ask a group of to deliberate.

To reason together.

In this way, the biases and errors of each
is smoothed out and the decision wiser.

In a famous example, it’s been repeatedly
shown that if you ask a bunch of people to

guess how many jelly beans are in a jar, you’ll
find that the average of all of their answers

is CLOSER TO THE REAL NUMBER than any one
individual was alone.

Even the smartest individual.

What happens is that although some people
may guess a number way too big, that mistake

is balanced out by the fact that others will
inevitably guess a number way too small.

All together, their disagreement evens out
into spectacular accuracy.

We have now arrived at the problem.

Reasoning evolved to be used socially where
many different perspectives had to all deliberate

towards a common conclusion.

Such contexts are becoming less and less common.

And it is becoming easier and easier to simply
be a lone reasoner, justifying only a particular

viewpoint without doing the harder work of
deliberating and acting.

The internet gives voices to more perspectives
than ever before in our history, but it also

makes it easy to disengage from accountability
and find places where everyone believes what

you do.

Furthermore, because of technology, we confront
more issues more rapidly than ever before

that we’re expected to have opinions about.

And the growing complexity and specialization
of the modern world makes it difficult for

each of us to have well-informed prepared
reasons for the acceleraeting accretion of

intutions we must form.

in response, we look for lone reasoners who
can defend our intuitions for us.

They reasons they give don’t need to be
good, just good ENOUGH that we can feel like

justification exists.

In the past, unconvincing reasons had to be
painted on sandwich boards.

But now, the democritization of communication
means that even unpopular, unconvincing, nonsensical

ideas can be presented with the same trust-inducing
typefaces and professional look as common

ones.

Those who disagree may challenge the reasons
you’ve been given, show them to be contradictory,

and produce betters ones for THEIR side, but
to what end?

It’s all preparation for a debate that never
comes.

You play a very small role in deciding how
society is run.

Even if a good faith discussion between a
representative slice of America came to a

resolution, if nothing can come of it, why
not just throw shade and sick burns or revel

in the pleasure of reasoning by treating everything
like a big giant puzzle?

It's easy to think that it doesn’t matter,
because after all, those in charge, the brilliant

scientists and powerful billionaires, will
surely come to our rescue.

Some giant TECHNOSALVATION is surely on the
horizon.

Perhaps it is.

But everything we know about reason suggets
that those implementing it should be held

accountable by as many different perspectives
as possible.

Leaders could lead deliberations and be elected
for their ability to moderate social reasoning,

but that’s boring!

Why lead when you could follow: look at what
some people believe and generate reasons for

why they’re right, and they’ll love it!

Of course, the hard work — the REAL work
— the work that truly elevates us on this

planet, is not in telling poeple that they’re
right, but in trying to convince others and

in so doing, use reason as it evolved to be
used.

The future of reason may in fact be the past
of reason.

In practice, what does all this look like?

Some researchers have gone so far as to recommend
national deliberation days where citizens

celebrate by literally joining small groups
and talking through their opinions and comparing

reasons.

Tests of such strategies have shown that a
return to the small, targeted discussions

our reasoning abilities evolved to excel in
leaves all participants with a greater understanding

of not just what they believe and why, but
about decisions that could actually be made

and actions that could be taken.

Others have gone even further, recommending
that the true future of reason at its best

is the construction of a lottocracy.

A form of government where decisions are made
not by elected leaders, but by people literally

chosen at random.

We decide the fate of a person this way, why
not the fate of the people?

What IF decisions were made not by politicians
alone, but at least occasionally by groups

of actual citizens representing differences
in thought, not just geography, who were brought

together and paid for their time to learn
from experts and then deliberate on an assigned

issue until a conclusion was reached or, at
the least, a recommendation?

Instead of being motivated by re-election,
money, attention, and power, individuals chosen

at random would have only their conscious
to guide them.

Special interests and corporations wouldn’t
be able to cozy up to those likely to be elected

— if any one of us could some day serve,
they’d have cozy up to and protect … all

of us.

Instead of the learning and deliberation being
done by people you never meet with offices

in buildings you can’t access, gradually,
over time, more and more of your very own

neighbors would have had the honor.

People chosen at random would obviously lack
the same celebrity status and mandate that

elected leaders cultivate and achieve — and
iconic figures we relate to aren’t bad — but

our understanding of reasoning is making it
more and more clear that we evolved not to

be leave thinking up to a few great minds,
but to the authorty of THE great mind.

The lumbering organ of thought that is everyone
and everything.

This is, in fact, how democracy first worked:
lotteries were used to fill many political

positions in Anceint Athens.

Aristotle explained that

“the appointment of magistrates by lot is
thought to be democratic, and the election

of them is oligrchic”

where an oligrachy is government by only a
small number of people.

Regardless of HOW reason is brought back to
its social roots, if we can build more and

better areanas for deliberation and use them
to apply reason properly to hyperobjects like

the impact of emissions on the planet, we’ll
have taught one heck of a lesson to people

a hundred, a thousand years into the future.

I like to think that although widening participation
will be difficult, it might provide us all

with a kind of existential security.

The impact of emission on our planet is not
going to be the last hyperproblem we face.

If we can do a good job with it, maybe far
in the future, when our civilization has advanced

to the point at which people can be quantumly
re-recreated or something, they’ll look

back at our time and say, hey, let’s bring
them all back to life.

We could use the cooperative abilities they
had then.

Ultimately, the old saying that “history
is the great teacher” isn’t a bad guide.

We will all some day be teachers ourselves
because some day we will all be history, too.

we will some day be the ancients.

And we can choose what that will mean.

Thanks for Reading!!