The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday LifeOxford University Press, 01/12/2017 - 288 من الصفحات Human beings are primates, and primates are political animals. Our brains, therefore, are designed not just to hunt and gather, but also to help us get ahead socially, often via deception and self-deception. But while we may be self-interested schemers, we benefit by pretending otherwise. The less we know about our own ugly motives, the better - and thus we don't like to talk or even think about the extent of our selfishness. This is "the elephant in the brain." Such an introspective taboo makes it hard for us to think clearly about our nature and the explanations for our behavior. The aim of this book, then, is to confront our hidden motives directly - to track down the darker, unexamined corners of our psyches and blast them with floodlights. Then, once everything is clearly visible, we can work to better understand ourselves: Why do we laugh? Why are artists sexy? Why do we brag about travel? Why do we prefer to speak rather than listen? Our unconscious motives drive more than just our private behavior; they also infect our venerated social institutions such as Art, School, Charity, Medicine, Politics, and Religion. In fact, these institutions are in many ways designed to accommodate our hidden motives, to serve covert agendas alongside their "official" ones. The existence of big hidden motives can upend the usual political debates, leading one to question the legitimacy of these social institutions, and of standard policies designed to favor or discourage them. You won't see yourself - or the world - the same after confronting the elephant in the brain. |
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الصفحة 1
... spend so much on medical care ? To get healthier : That's their one and only goal , right ? Maybe not . Consider some of the puzzling data points that Robin dis- covered . To start with , people in developed countries consume way too ...
... spend so much on medical care ? To get healthier : That's their one and only goal , right ? Maybe not . Consider some of the puzzling data points that Robin dis- covered . To start with , people in developed countries consume way too ...
الصفحة 2
... spend exorbitantly on heroic end - of - life care even though cheap , palliative care is usually just as effective at prolonging life and even better at preserving quality of life . Altogether , these puzzles cast considerable doubt on ...
... spend exorbitantly on heroic end - of - life care even though cheap , palliative care is usually just as effective at prolonging life and even better at preserving quality of life . Altogether , these puzzles cast considerable doubt on ...
الصفحة 18
... spend a few minutes scratching and picking at it with his fingers , using his opposable thumbs to pull out bits of stray matter . It's a purposeful activity that requires a good deal of attention and focus . If we could somehow ask the ...
... spend a few minutes scratching and picking at it with his fingers , using his opposable thumbs to pull out bits of stray matter . It's a purposeful activity that requires a good deal of attention and focus . If we could somehow ask the ...
الصفحة 19
... spend more time grooming each other . But in fact there's no correlation.7 We might ask ourselves , " What's going on here ? " There must be some other function at play . The primatologist Robin Dunbar has spent much of his career study ...
... spend more time grooming each other . But in fact there's no correlation.7 We might ask ourselves , " What's going on here ? " There must be some other function at play . The primatologist Robin Dunbar has spent much of his career study ...
الصفحة 20
... spend so much time doing it . Gelada baboons , for example , might be able to keep their fur clean with only 30 minutes of social grooming every day , but instead they spend 120 minutes . ( This seems similar to a human showering four ...
... spend so much time doing it . Gelada baboons , for example , might be able to keep their fur clean with only 30 minutes of social grooming every day , but instead they spend 120 minutes . ( This seems similar to a human showering four ...
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actually advertise altruism ancestors animal apparatchik Arabian babbler asked babblers behavior beliefs benefit better body language bowerbird brains Bryan Caplan Chapter charity cheating coalitions competition consider conspicuous conspicuous consumption consumers costs course CRIMESTOP Do-Right donate effect elephant especially evolutionary psychology example explain fact feel forager friends function Geoffrey Miller give going grooming Haidt Hajj hidden motives human Ibid important incentives individual laugh laughter less listeners look loyalty male mates medicine Miller minds norms ourselves patients peers percent person play political Press Secretary prestige primates prosocial puzzles reasons religion religious Robert Trivers Robin Hanson self-deception selfish signal simply social social grooming someone spend split-brain status Steve Jobs there's things tion Trivers typically voters voting we’re what's words Zhao Gao