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 13
... there is a risk to confronting our hidden motives. Human beings are self- deceived because self- deception is useful. It allows us to reap the benefits of selfish behavior while ... There's a very real sense in which we INTRODUCTION 13.
... there is a risk to confronting our hidden motives. Human beings are self- deceived because self- deception is useful. It allows us to reap the benefits of selfish behavior while ... There's a very real sense in which we INTRODUCTION 13.
الصفحة 14
Hidden Motives in Everyday Life Kevin Simler, Robin Hanson. for existing. There's a very real sense in which we might ... there is no turning back. You take the blue pill— the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you ...
Hidden Motives in Everyday Life Kevin Simler, Robin Hanson. for existing. There's a very real sense in which we might ... there is no turning back. You take the blue pill— the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you ...
الصفحة 19
... 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 studying social grooming, and his conclusion has since ...
... 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 studying social grooming, and his conclusion has since ...
الصفحة 20
... there's still some role for hygiene in explaining why primates groom each other. If hygiene were completely irrelevant, primates would simply give each other back massages instead of picking through each other's fur. But even though there's ...
... there's still some role for hygiene in explaining why primates groom each other. If hygiene were completely irrelevant, primates would simply give each other back massages instead of picking through each other's fur. But even though there's ...
الصفحة 23
... there can be an incentive for each party to deceive the other, which may be facilitated by a bit of self- deception ... there's one last crucial point to make. When we study the behavior of other species, we can't help putting ourselves ...
... there can be an incentive for each party to deceive the other, which may be facilitated by a bit of self- deception ... there's one last crucial point to make. When we study the behavior of other species, we can't help putting ourselves ...
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