This post is a synthesis of ideas from three books - The Elephant in the Brain by Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson, The Case Against Reality by Donald Hoffman and How Emotions are Made by Lisa Feldman Barrett.
The combinations presented here are my interpretations - I encourage you to read both books if you haven’t already - all three are excellent.
The combination of ideas explore control, perception, the subconscious, and our hidden motivations.
Let’s start with a model of the brain as an elephant and a rider.
The rider is the conscious neo-cortex - rational, in control and calling the shots.
The elephant is the unconscious limbic system and body - irrational and subordinate to conscious will.
Our naive human experience is we are the rider. Both modern neuroscience and ancient Buddhism suggest the opposite.
Our naive human understand is that we see reality directly. What we see is what is there.
However, modern neuroscience suggests we do not see the world as it is. We experience a simulation - influenced as much by our predictions of the world as the world itself as the actual sensory input. This is the predictive brain hypothesis, which proposes perception is a simulation.
Our conscious experience is a simulation of what is really out there.
If perception and consciousness are simulations, then what is it simulating, and why?
Donald Hoffman proposes that our perception is designed for fitness payoffs, not truth. The value of our perception is not in it’s accuracy (to see what is really there) but in it’s ability to help us survive and reproduce.
Perception is not about truth, it’s about having kids.
This observation of perception extends deeper than perception. Hoffman proposes that space time itself is not foundational. It is a data structure that we create now to track and capture fitness payoffs.
It’s not just our experience, but the concepts of matter and spacetime that arise from consciousness as a perceptual interface.
Returning to our model of the mind as an elephant and rider.
The rider does not see or know the internals of the elephant, in the same way we do not perceive the mechanics of our subconscious brain. It’s impossible for the rider to know the elephant.
Donald Hoffman proposes that self description of a conscious agent is impossible. Attempting to self described adds experience, which must then be experienced and so on in a vicious loop of incompleteness. A conscious agent must therefore always be unconscious about part of itself. In our model, this unconscious, hidden part is the elephant.
A conscious agent must therefore remain, at least in part, unconscious to itself.
An agent cannot experience itself in its entirety, no matter how large its repertoire of experiences.
Emotion, feelings and perceptions come from the unconscious elephant. Why do they exist?
Emotions are learned. One of the uses of emotion is for control - for the elephant to control the rider.
Emotions + feelings + perceptions are control vectors - the subconscious controls both the body and our conscious experience through perception, feelings, emotions, thoughts
Emotion is not truth - it’s a control vector. Similar to our perception, emotion is a tool built for our survival. What emotion best helps with fitness payoffs?
We have proposed the subconscious elephant is in control of the concious rider. Why would this be so?
The Elephant in the Brain proposes that our unconscious, selfish desires are hidden from our conscious experience, so we can better deceive others.
Our priority is our own fitness payoffs. Our motivations is to survive and reproduce. These motivations can clash with others, who prioritize their own survival over our own (as we do to them).
It’s to our advantages to hide our true motivations from others. What is shocking is that we also hide our true motivations from ourselves. Why?
Because if we are so deluded about our own motives that we can honestly say that we are not selfish, while acting selfish.
We are designed to operate on hidden motives. Self delusion is useful in playing the fitness game.
So far we have seen that:
The selfishness delusion exists for a reason - it’s useful. Sense of self evolved as a fitness-maximizing concept & interface.
Another delusion that is even more useful is the delusion of a separate self.
Fundamentally in the universe, there are no separate selves. It’s all just one big thing. There is no world, and you - just the world, which you are a part of.
Any sense of separation is fiction. Why do we have this delusion? As with the selfishness delusion, the self delusion is useful. They both exist for the same reason - fitness payoffs. There can be no competition for resources without separate selves.
The belief in a separate self only exists because it’s needed to drive evolution. It’s use is powering the evolution game. However our sense of self, while needed for survival, isn’t fundamental reality.
Where does no-self leave us with the elephant and the rider? There is no rider, separate from the elephant. There is no elephant separate from the rider.
Placing control into either the rider or the elephant is a mistake.
Neither is in control, or exist separate from one another - it was only the universe all along.