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 4
... they're there. And yet they make us uncomfortable, so we mentally flinch away. THE CORE IDEA “We are social creatures to the inmost centre of our being.”— Karl Popper1 “Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person ...
... they're there. And yet they make us uncomfortable, so we mentally flinch away. THE CORE IDEA “We are social creatures to the inmost centre of our being.”— Karl Popper1 “Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person ...
الصفحة 6
... They're all part of the same package, subject to the same taboo. Human behavior is rarely what it seems— that's the main lesson here. Of course, we're hardly the first people to make this point. Thinkers across the ages have delighted ...
... They're all part of the same package, subject to the same taboo. Human behavior is rarely what it seems— that's the main lesson here. Of course, we're hardly the first people to make this point. Thinkers across the ages have delighted ...
الصفحة 7
... they're all Roberts— who have written clearly and extensively about self- deception from a Darwinian perspective. The human brain, according to this view, was designed to deceive itself— in Trivers' words, “the better to deceive others ...
... they're all Roberts— who have written clearly and extensively about self- deception from a Darwinian perspective. The human brain, according to this view, was designed to deceive itself— in Trivers' words, “the better to deceive others ...
الصفحة 8
... they're devious. They intentionally hide information from us, helping us fabricate plausible prosocial motives to act as cover stories for our less savory agendas. As Trivers puts it: “At every single stage [of processing information] ...
... they're devious. They intentionally hide information from us, helping us fabricate plausible prosocial motives to act as cover stories for our less savory agendas. As Trivers puts it: “At every single stage [of processing information] ...
الصفحة 9
... they're taught, and most of what they do remember isn't very useful. Furthermore, our best research says that schools are structured in ways that actively interfere with the learning process, such as early wake- up times and frequent ...
... they're taught, and most of what they do remember isn't very useful. Furthermore, our best research says that schools are structured in ways that actively interfere with the learning process, such as early wake- up times and frequent ...
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