Psychology – Page 35 – a sibilant intake of breath

Questioning religious beliefs

In The Moral Landscape, Sam Harris repeatedly questions the societal taboo against critically evaluating religious beliefs. For instance, people are hesitant to raise evidence or arguments that contradict religious claims, as well as point out instances in which different claims made by the same religion contradict one another.

This is at least a bit different from evaluating religiously motivated actions, as was discussed here earlier. As in that case, however, I think Harris argues convincingly that it is wrong to put religious beliefs into a special category deserving special respect. Of course, this is a provocative claim, given that many religious beliefs simply cannot stand up in the face of evidence and critical examination, and people find it awkward when important parts of their religious belief structure are shown to be in a state of obvious contradiction with the kind of every-day mechanisms they use to evaluate new information. People tolerate the fact that claims are made in holy publications and from the pulpit which cannot be made with any credibility in a newspaper or political speech.

The idea that religious beliefs deserve special protection often comes from religion itself. Religions are often extremely hostile toward ‘heresy’, which is understandable from a kind of institutional evolutionary perspective. In many circumstances, faiths that maintain theological and ideological coherence are likely to attract more adherents and last longer than those that tolerate a broad variety of views. Faiths of the latter kind are probably more likely to fragment and fracture, and they are also probably less likely to attract extreme devotion, dedication, and efforts to convert the masses. It is no coincidence that the first commandment (though the notion that there are a clear set of ten is disputed) is that you should make sure not to honour the wrong god. It also doesn’t seem to be a coincidence that the more dogmatic forms of Christianity (to choose one example) are winning more converts around the world than the more progressive forms.

Of course, humanity has a whole has an enormous interest in understanding the world well. It is demonstrably the case that our understanding of things like physics and biology allow us to live richer, healthier, and more fulfilling lives. Particularly in cases where scientific claims based on evidence and reason contradict religious claims based on someone’s supposedly divine authority, I think it is bad for humanity when large numbers of people place the religious claim above the scientific one. There are plenty of contemporary examples. Access to contraception and sex education demonstrably improves the kinds of lives people live, and yet one major force preventing those things from being universally available is religious beliefs that oppose them (arguably, with a hidden patriarchal motivation).

Ultimately, people possess a right to understand their own bodies and control their own sexuality and reproduction that is more important than the religious preferences of others who would seek to restrict and control those rights within the general population, especially among women.

If we lived in a world that took the kind of evidence that Harris finds convincing more seriously – things like the psychological consideration of what effect various circumstances have on human flourishing – I think we would ultimately find it preferable to a world where we continue to rely upon the kind of ‘evidence’ that supports substandard education and medical care for women, or the prohibition of promising types of medical research, or the teaching of utterly refuted theories about the history of life on Earth. People often argue that we should give respect to religious beliefs in the name of ‘tolerance’. While that argument might be somewhat convincing when it comes to benign beliefs, like the existence or non-existence of the Easter Bunny, it seems indefensible in the case of beliefs that have large and harmful effects on the lives of a great many people. Those beliefs – whether religiously motivated or not – deserve to be challenged honestly, openly, and vigorously.

Arkeology

One thing I find a bit perplexing is that there are actual archeological expeditions that set out to find Noah’s Ark. The fact that these expeditions are assembled and deployed suggests that there is a very unusual class of people out there: those who (a) have the knowledge and experience required to assemble an archeological expedition and (b) actually believe that there was a physical boat that carried all the world’s terrestrial species to save them from a global flood.

I find it difficult to understand how someone with the knowledge and practicality required for (a) could simultaneously be willing to believe (b). Perhaps there are no such people, but rather there are archeologist who are willing to investigate the fancies of others, in exchange for funding or other benefits.

Local environmentalism

Perhaps it is unwise for me to criticize environmental groups at the moment, given that we are all trying to push a difficult issue forward at a time of considerable political hostility. Reagan’s 11th Commandment is a major reason why the Republicans are so strong in the United States. At the same time, it is disheartening to see people expending their useful energy on the wrong thing, when there is something they would care about a lot more available. Also, given that the environmental movement makes choices based on things that are still at the edge of scientific knowledge, there is a benefit in having public discussions, and making the strongest possible cases to one another. We should not assume ourselves to be infallible, but rather to be in a dialogue with an ever-emerging collection of complex information on how the climate operates.

All that said, I must confess that I am perplexed by how many environmental groups seem to focus their time. It might be a terrible thing that some ugly new development will replace a nice bit of woodland, but I think people need to consider the scale on which humanity is smashing nature. That little plot of forest is threatened along with a whole lot of other forests if catastrophic or runaway climate change occurs.

It reminds me of a person wandering in the middle of a battlefield, looking for their glasses. They realize one problem – that their glasses have been dropped – and they are working diligently at solving it by scrutinizing the ground. At the same time, bullets are flying all around them. They see the small problem, miss the big one, and focus their efforts in the wrong way as a consequence.

Climate change really is the over-riding environmental priority right now. If we warm up the planet five or six ˚C, it will ruin all conservation efforts that have been undertaken in the meanwhile. We need to solve climate change first – taking advantages of co-benefits where possible.

In any case, I think I can see the appeal of being a part of a group dedicated to saving the local bog. It has locavore chic. Also, the area might have a special importance to you personally. Finally, it has the benefit that even if your quest fails, the outcome isn’t so bad. Being part of something friendly and local is a lot more pleasant than confronting a terrifying spectre of global destruction. And yet, that seems to be what we are facing.

Ballet announcers

It occurred to me that one reason why having an announcer is useful when watching a competitive sport being played is because it reduces how much you need to know and think in order to understand what is going on. Announcers describe things like the histories of particular players, the roles of people in each position, and strategies. This lets you enjoy the spectacle without remembering everything about it, and without having to exert excessive effort to understanding what is going on. That is particularly useful in complicated sports with lots of rules, like baseball and football. Sports obsessives may find it surprising, but I think ordinary people tire of remembering a million complicated rules (just as ordinary people probably tire of the numerous and often arbitrary rules of grammar adored by pedants).

It also occurred to me that there are sports that forego announcers, often at least partly because they clash with the sport’s aesthetic. Dancers, figure skaters, and ballet dancers are expected to be silent and make it look easy. Having announcers overlaid on top of them seems crass, and like it would detract from the art.

It could be an interesting performance piece, however, to overlay constant narration onto an athletic performance that usually lacks it. A ballet with hockey-style announcers might be more accessible to people who don’t know much about ballet and who don’t want to spend the whole show puzzling about what is going on (the same reason there are short summaries at the start of Shakespeare’s plays – perhaps modern novels should have those too).

Jordan Peterson on psychology

As a lecturer, the University of Toronto’s Jordan Peterson is quite something. Yesterday, Tristan showed me videos of a couple of his lectures. One of them – The Necessity of Virtue – is available online.

One thing I found striking about the talks (which are mostly about psychology and ethics) is just how much we know about the brain, and how much we can reduce seemingly complex human behaviours and experiences to be predictable operation of certain brain structures. I had not previously realized the full importance of the hypothalamus. In one particularly grim example, Peterson explains that a cat stripped of almost all of its brain, but left with a spinal cord and a hypothalamus, will still behave much like an ordinary cat, except that it will be unusually likely to explore and unable to mate (if male).

What humanity is learning about the brain (which seems to produce the mind) seems likely to have considerable importance both for understanding the world in important ways and for deciding how to act in it. I will be adding Peterson’s Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief to my reading list, and may even be able to finagle a way to audit one of his courses if I do move to Toronto.

How to start a cult

While I am having difficulty finding a reputable source to confirm it, I have been told the following odd thing about human psychology: if a person wears glasses that flip their vision upside down, about three days later their brain will adjust and invert their sight. If they then remove the glasses, their vision will seem to be upside down before it flips again, more quickly.

I don’t think all that many people are aware of this quirk of human psychology. As such, it seems like something you could build a cult around.

You would come up with a long and convincing build-up to a supposedly sacred ritual in which people wear the glasses. You tell them that if their vision eventually flips, it is because your deity has deemed them worthy of being tested. Then, you tell them that when they remove the glasses, one of two things will happen. Either their vision will be inverted forever, or it will flip back. Tell them that if it flips back, it means your deity has found them worthy, and they are on track for some sort of magnificent afterlife.

Because people would think the flipping was supernatural, it would make a gullible subset believe anything else you cared to tell them (like about how they need to sell their home to help fund the crystal statue that will bring about the end of the world). Eventually, people will leave the cult and tell their story, and neurologists will appear on the news to explain that the vision-flipping is normal and being used to scam people. By then, however, you will be long gone with a lot of money.

I think this could work partly because vision is such a key part of a person’s life. Seeing it flip would be a powerful emotional experience, especially if you were prepared in advance to interpret it in a specific metaphysical way. The period between the first and second flip would be full of anxiety – since you already know the flipping is possible, but fear it could be permanent for you. Then, the second flip would really lock at least a few people in. It would feed their narcissism by telling them they are special, and it would seem to be something beyond the power of ordinary science or reasoning to explain.

I think people have probably bought into cults on the basis of less convincing evidence than this. Get a couple of celebrity adherents and the road to wealth and influence would be short and smooth.

Disclaimer: While you might actually be able to start a cult in this way, it wouldn’t be a very nice thing to do.

Social consequences of a real lie detector

In The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values, Sam Harris raises the possibility of an accurate lie detector based on neural imaging: a machine that could accurately determine whether a statement someone makes accurately reflects their belief on the matter at hand.
Harris discusses the social consequences of the existence of such a machine, and generally thinks they would be positive. They would, for instance, reduce the number of false convictions and false acquittals in the criminal justice system.

Personally, I think the social and cultural effects of such a machine would be extremely widespread, if there was general confidence in its accuracy. Inevitably, there would be calls to test how genuinely all sorts of people feel about things. Does this proposed Catholic bishop really believe in key elements of Catholic doctrine? Does this politician honestly intend to fulfill a particular promise? Does the man who just proposed marriage to a woman really think she is the most beautiful woman he has seen? Does he really want children? Does he really intend to stay with her into old age? Has be been entirely faithful during their courtship? Would he have taken the opportunity to sleep with someone else, if it had arisen?

Of course, the machine could then be turned on the other partner.

If it ever became culturally acceptable to subject people to impartial evaluation on these sorts of questions, it would have countless direct and indirect effects. For one thing, I think it would make hapless pawns more important. Rather than having cynical mob lawyers who know all about the family’s murders but exploit the legal system in every possible way regardless, there would need to be a lot more ignorant people defending important individuals and institutions. Similarly, corporate CEOs would no longer be able to hedge strategically to avoid liability, which could significantly affect the safety and availability of many products in the long-term. For instance, people would have a lot more trouble selling placebos as medicine.

To a large extent, I think society is based around the general acceptance of various kinds of lies. If the people who ran or represented the world’s governments, churches, and corporations had to be scrupulously truthful at all times, the public understanding of how the world operates would change radically. I don’t think this is because people are terribly ignorant about reality. More it is because there are many deceptions which we are comfortable with accepting. For instance, that we are already doing an adequate amount to help those who are starving around the world; that our governments do not commit war crimes or contribute to genocides; that our meat doesn’t get produced in exceptionally cruel ways; and so forth.

There would also be small-scale consequences. To me, it seems that politeness is fundamentally bound up with deception. At the very least, ‘being polite’ requires withholding genuinely held beliefs that would be offensive to other parties in a conversation. At most, it requires actively lying to them. The existence of an effective and credible lie detector would strip people of the ability to be polite. It is possible that would be liberating – allowing people to really express themselves without fear, and granting a better perspective into the real thoughts of others. It is also possible it would be devastating: breaking up businesses, families, and long-standing marriages when people learn things that they simply cannot handle – especially with the full knowledge that they are true (or as much confidence as the accuracy of the equipment allows).

All this relates to some of the issues raised by the film The Invention of Lying, which I commented on before. To have any hope of surviving in this world, we need to be able to accept the possibility that a person could be wrong about something. When someone says that the elevator has arrived, we check before stepping through the open doors into the elevator shaft. Even a perfect lie detector would do nothing to protect us from honestly mistaken beliefs. What it would probably do is have profound social and cultural effects, as a huge number of people found themselves in a position where they either had to submit to the test or foster the widespread view that they aren’t genuine in the claims they are making.

The peak-end rule

Some psychological insights have a great deal of practical importance. It seems to me that the ‘peak-end rule’ is among these. Essentially, the idea is that when remembering an experience like a medical procedure or a vacation, our recollection is strongly coloured by the most intense portion of the experience and by the ending. Sam Harris mentions this on p.77 of the hardcover version of The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values. It is also mentioned in Paul Bloom’s free series of psychology lectures.

The insight has practical value when it comes to unpleasant experiences. Harris describes how prolonguing the least painful portion of a colonoscopy (at the end) reduces how much pain patients later recall having experienced. It seems to me that the insight could also be exploited when planning pleasant activities. If you are setting up a concert, art show, or vacation, it seems like a good idea to include something that will serve as a positive and engaging emotional peak and to put some effort into ending things well.

Setting up a strong emotional peak could also benefit those hoping to cultivate romance. As mentioned before, people misattribute excitement unrelated to a person who they are getting to know. While it might be the scary movie or the rollercoaster that is causing your heart to pound, some part of your brain may wrongly attribute the feeling to the person who you are sitting beside.

The identifiable victim effect

In the second chapter of The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values , Sam Harris describes the strange phenomenon in human psychology where we care less about a problem as the number of victims rises. When we see one little girl who is starving, we generally feel more concern and willingness to help than we do when it is her and her brother, or her and her entire village.

This seems deeply irrational. Bigger problems should motivate a larger desire to help. Perhaps it reflects our implicit awareness of our own limitations. Helping one little girl may be within our power in a way that helping a large group is not. Still, this quirk seems likely to be very damaging. If we don’t feel a strong moral impulse in the face of a big problem, we are unlikely to band together and provide a big solution.

That applies directly to climate change. It may also have something to do with our sometimes strange notions about the value of avoiding extinction and our thinking about apocalypse.

Evaluating religiously motivated actions

One interesting claim made by Sam Harris in The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values is that religious values are fundamentally driven by concerns about how circumstances will affect the lives of human beings. For instance, doing what is necessary to get into heaven and avoid hell is ultimately good for you as an individual, even if it involves difficulty and sacrifice during your lifetimes. Similarly, Harris argues that suicide bombers who are partially motivated by the promise of a lavish afterlife are making decisions on the basis of faulty information about how their actions will affect their lives and (possibly) those of others.

Religious believers are arguably trying to maximize human welfare in both this world and the afterlife, which changes their moral calculations:

Religious believers can, therefore, assert the immorality of contraception, masturbation, homosexuality, etc., without ever feeling obliged to argue that these practices actually cause suffering. They can also pursue aims that are flagrantly immoral, in that they needlessly perpetuate human misery, while believing that these actions are morally obligatory. This pious uncoupling of moral concern from the reality of human and animal suffering has caused tremendous harm. (p.66 hardcover)

Harris also argues that when “people riot[ed], burn[ed] embassies, and [sought] to kill innocent people” in response to the Danish Mohammed cartoons, they were demonstrating a “terrifying inversion of priorities” in which the strictures of a particular religious doctrine were held to be of greater importance than the personal security (and expression rights) of other people.

While I don’t necessarily agree with Harris completely, I think he is right about one critical thing: it is important to be able to criticize religion on logical grounds. ‘Because my religious beliefs require me to do so’ is not an adeqaute explanation for human behaviour, and we should not let people justify themselves on such an unsatisfying basis. I think it is perfectly fair to point out when a religious belief seems to cause harmful consequences, or when different elements of the same religious doctrine seem to be contradictory. That isn’t to say all religiously motivated actions are harmful or problematic – just that the fact that they are religiously motivated does not set them in a special category where their consequences cannot be rationally contemplated.