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The Future Of Reasoning — Transcript

by Vsauce · 4,328 words · 394 segments · language en · Watch on YouTube

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0:01The Future of Reasoning
0:03Hey Vsauce!
0:04Michael here.
0:05Where is your mind?
0:07Is it in your head?
0:10I mean, that’s where your brain is — and your brain remembers, plans, makes judgements,
0:17solves problems … but you also remember and plan with things like these and this.
0:25And you solve problems and make judgements with all sorts of other stuff, too.
0:33The more you think about it, the more you realize that while the brain is a wet lump
0:40of fat and protein, no firmer than a glob of tofu, the MIND is something much larger:
0:48it’s an ever-expanding organ of tissue AND wood and stone and steel.
0:53And people.
0:55Because of communication we can even make OTHER PEOPLE extensions of our minds.
1:02We can access their memories and perceptions and knowledge by simply asking.
1:07Or not.
1:09I don’t need to learn how to fix a car AND practice medicine AND vulcanize rubber OR
1:14remember everything … other people are doing that for me just as I do things for them.
1:20We are a species of individuals that is also one big interdependent lumbering growth.
1:27A frantic blur of flesh and concrete.
1:31A ‘techno sapien’ powered by imaginations and passions made real by a hallowed faculty
1:38we call REASON.
1:39Reason, it is said, guides us to truer knowledge and better decisions.
1:45It’s allowed us to increase life-expectancy, suffer less, work together better, and it’s
1:51bound to take us further and higher until the end of time.
1:56Or is it?
1:58The organ we USE to reason takes millions of years to evolve, but the fruits of reason
2:05grow rapidly and are ever accelerating.
2:08In the next four decades, we’re expected to build the equivalent of another new york
2:13city every month
2:15More concrete was installed in the last two decades outside the US than the US installed
2:22during the entire 20th century.
2:25This growth means that quality of life around the world is rising.
2:29It means that electricity, manufactured goods, food, comfort and transportation are all becoming
2:35more common and accessible.
2:38But there are hints that reason and logic are struggling aginst the complexity of it
2:44all; against our growing dependence on the things we’ve built and their unintended
2:50consequences.
2:52Nearly every part of life as we know it today involves or relies on a process that releases
2:59molecules with lopsided electrical charges.
3:02This property causes them to absorb and re-emit thermal radiation, pinging it around so that
3:08it escapes into space more slowly.
3:11Having more warmer parcels of air means stronger weather events.
3:15They can’t be pinned on any particular extreme storm, but they make extreme storms in general
3:21more extreme and frequent.
3:23What’s a stake isn’t just ‘bad weather’ it’s disaster: it’s more lives lost, more
3:29property lost, it’s more droughts, more hunger, more famine, more people needing refuge,
3:34and a even greater reliance on the very things that caused the problems in the first place.
3:40In total, we release about 51 billion tons of such gases every year and we need to release
3:48zero.
3:50But how do you re-think … everything?
3:56Who gets to direct the costs and tradeoffs?
4:00How do you achieve collaboration between nearly every local and national government when what
4:05works in one place won’t work everywhere, when decisions effect jobs in one place and
4:11food in another.
4:12When not just things need to be re-thought, but also habits and traditions and values.
4:19How do you achieve consensus when a problem isn’t obvious to the senses, is far away
4:25in space and time, requires solutions that affect people in different ways, and as a
4:30product of science, always carries some uncertainty?
4:36The philosopher Timothy Morton calls something so massively distributed in time and space
4:42and so viscous — so STICKY that it adheres to all that touch it, a HYPEROBJECT.
4:50Every civilizations that grows at the speed of reason must at some point face hyperobjects.
4:56In fact, the fact that we still haven’t found evidence of intelligent life beyond
5:02Earth has been brought up as evidence that some sort of GREAT FILTER, might exist that
5:08few civilizations manage to get past.
5:12That a hyperobject like our impact on the planet might be such a great filter is not
5:19a new idea.
5:20What it’ll take to solve it is the topic of Bill Gate’s HOW TO AVOID A CLIMATE DISASTER.
5:26And I decided to do this video in partnership with him and his team because the way we deal
5:31with hyperobjects reveals a lot about the mind.
5:35It’s easy — and common! — to think that we would all be better off if everyone was
5:40just more rational.
5:43But what if reasoning wasn’t built for what we’ve become?
5:48Let’s begin by looking at behavioral inertia.
5:53Behavioral inertia is the tendency to keep doing what you’re already doing.
5:57Status quo bias.
5:59It can be a frustrating bias if you desire change, but its origin isn’t a flaw.
6:04If an organism has managed to survive long enough to reproduce and provide and care for
6:10its offspring, then the state of its world, was sufficient for its genes to spread.
6:16That’s all it takes to persist.
6:18The types of organisms we see around us will naturally be those that managed to persist
6:24and didn’t, after reaching the point at which they could persist, rock the boat too
6:27much.
6:29Behavioral inertia can help slow down the accumulation of unintended consequences and
6:35the loss of ideas that work, but it can also slow down innovation and adaptation.
6:42If the environmental impacts of our society were more immediate and un-ignorable, it wouldn’t
6:49be so tempting to apply this inertial brake.
6:52But emissions are invisible and their consequences aren’t immediate or local.
6:59They impact future people and people far away.
7:02Those who are different from us, poorer than us, people we will never meet.
7:07This may be one of the first challenges advancing civilizations face: weilding not just the
7:13power of technology and distributed cognition, but also the responsibilities.
7:19Extending not just the mind but also EMPATHY could certainly be a great filter.
7:28Our lower instincts may bias us, but surely, REASON can help us navigate towards the future
7:34we want, right?
7:36Well, what IS reason?
7:38It’s a way of making inferences.
7:41An inference is any new information extracted from the information you already have.
7:48We make inferences all the time — every living thing does.
7:54We don’t have measuring-tape tentacles that shoot from our eyes, and what actually enters
7:59our brain is just a 2D image, but our brains nonetheless INFER depth by attending to cues
8:06like stereopsis, occultation, perspective, parallax, size…
8:10When this happens, we accept it as reality.
8:15We aren’t aware of the visual processing that made it possible and don’t have to
8:20be.
8:21If, however, we do consciously consider WHY a certain conclusion was reached, then BOOM
8:27that’s REASONING.
8:28Reasoning is the process of making inferences not automatically and instrinctively, but
8:34by looking at facts and seeing what conclusion they support.
8:39When Eratosthenes calculated the circumference of the Earth to within a percentage or two
8:43of the value accepted today, he didn’t do it by MEASURING the Earth and he didn’t
8:48just percieve it as self-evident, he INFERRED it from what he knew about shadows and how
8:55long it took camels to move.
8:57Stories like that make it easy to believe that reasoning evolved because it supercharged
9:02our abilities; it clearly moves us towards truer conclusions, better decisions, and knowledge
9:09no other species could infer.
9:12Attempts to describe the rules of good, orderly reason, became logic and mathematics, concepts
9:19so general and abstract that while we were still animals, armed with them, we were no
9:26longer beasts.
9:27But that’s the rub, isn’t it?
9:31If reasoning is so great, why are we the only species with such a sophisticated grasp of
9:37it?
9:38And if its purpose is truth and good judgement, why don’t we all agree on everything?
9:44These questions make up what Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber call the Enigma of Reason.
9:46It’s tempting to think that disagreements happen because while I’M being rational,
9:52those who disagree with me are being irrational.
9:54Urgh!
9:55If only people would use reason and logic.
9:58What’s happened to the world!
10:00That’s a fair complaint if you’re arguing over logic puzzles, but the world is not a
10:07logic puzzle.
10:09this, however, is:
10:11Paul is looking at Mary.
10:14Mary is looking at Peter.
10:16Paul is married.
10:18Peter is unmarried.
10:19Is a married person looking at an unmarried person?
10:24Yes.
10:25No.
10:26Or not enough information to decide?
10:29think about it.
10:32The answer is YES.
10:35You may have thought there’s no way to know, because we don’t know if Mary is married.
10:40But she either is or she isn’t.
10:43And if she IS, then she, a married person, is looking at Peter, an unmarried person.
10:49If she ISN’T then Paul, a married person, is looking at her, an unmarried person.
10:56No matter what Mary’s deal is, the answer will be YES.
11:01When people get this puzzle wrong and the correct answer is explained to them, they
11:05almost always immedaitely see why it’s right and change their mind.
11:11Life is not usually like that.
11:13Now, take a look at this logical syllogism:
11:17All elephants are awesome.
11:20Michael is an elephant.
11:23Therefore, Michael is awesome.
11:25This conclusion is logically valid.
11:27But it’s not SOUND.
11:28The conclusion follows from these assumptions, but are these assumptions true?
11:32No.
11:33I am NOT an elephant.
11:37Also, this premise … is subjective.
11:40What does it MEAN to be awesome?
11:42Can you measure it with an awesome-ometer?
11:45So you can see why, when analyzing something like our impact on the planet, logic can only
11:50be a partial tool.
11:53If some people have more to lose than others, who gets to decide which are fair?
11:59Still, though, it would seem that reasoning should be able help out here.
12:04If each of us would just attend to ONLY the facts, surely we’d all recognize the same,
12:12reasonable approach.
12:13Problem is, that’s not how reasoning works.
12:18Since the scientific study of human reasoning began about a hundred years ago, it’s been
12:23found again and again that we’re not only BAD at reasoning, lazy and biased, but almost
12:31seem PROGRAMMED to be bad.
12:34Like the flaws are intentional…
12:36In an episode of Mind Field I once used a magician to pull off a little experiment.
12:42He asked people to look at two faces and choose which of the two they would prefer to work
12:48with, placing their preferences in one pile, and those they rejected into another.
12:53Then, the pile of people they picked were shown again and each person was asked to provide
12:59a REASON for why they chose that person.
13:02But with a little slight of hand, the magician managed to sneak in some of the faces they
13:07had just rejected.
13:08Amazingly, the majority of people didn’t even notice the trick.
13:13Not only that, they were able to effortlessly explain the reasons behind their choice — a
13:19choice they never actually made.
13:23Remembering faces you’ve only seen briefly isn’t the easiest thing to do, but other
13:27studies have shown that even if the task involves answering questions about one’s political
13:32beliefs — things we would seemingly have a firmer grasp on — still nearly half of
13:37participants will fail to notice that answers they gave have been reversed when they’re
13:43later asked to explain them.
13:46Point is, we seem practically BUILT to give reasons for whatever we think we must, and
13:52NOT the reasons we actually used to reach a conclusion.
13:56What if we don’t even USE reasons to form our beliefs?
14:02Let’s talk about INTUITIONS.
14:05Our brains have evolved over millions of years to react to the world around us in brilliant
14:10ways with little to no input from us.
14:12For example, when you notice that someone is upset, you’ve don’t consciously think,
14:18“ok, so their eyebrows and oriented like that, their speaking is curt, their posture
14:24… hmmmm … ah ha! those are reasons to conclude that they are upset!”
14:29Instead, the belief that they may be upset was just apparent.
14:34You intuited it.
14:36You ‘know’ it without exactly know HOW you exactly you came to know it.
14:41The mood recognizing parts of your brain operate in a way that is opaque to your awareness.
14:47BUT if someone asks you, why you think they’re upset, you can nonetheless produce all sorts
14:54of reasons — some may have been the ones your brain actually attended to.
14:58But they’re all just guesses.
15:01Instead of using reasoning to COME to conclusions, we use conclusions to come to reasons.
15:09To be fair, we CAN go the other way.
15:11We love puzzles and when we don’t have a strong intuition either way, we can sit down
15:15and mull over various reason to think one thing or another.
15:19Our love of puzzles suggests that reasoning has a survival value.
15:24Organisms that found it pleasurable would be more likely to use it.
15:27But when we reason alone, even when we have no motivation to reach any particular conclusion,
15:33we STILL exhibit deep biases that seem less like mistakes and more like features.
15:40For example, it’s been shown that between two otherwise similar products, people will
15:45prefer to buy the one with more features — even if they don’t want those features, never
15:50plan to use them, and think they’re all pointless and over complicated.
15:54Why?
15:55Well it might be that we find such decisions easier to justify … to OTHERS.
16:02We won’t feel embarrassed if someone criticizes us for getting fewer features.
16:08After decades of findings like this, Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber began to hypothesize
16:14that reasoning to help us make better decisions, but instead, to help us make social decisions.
16:22Humans inhabit a cognitive niche on this planet.
16:25We aren’t strong or sharp or hidden or venomous, instead, our advantage comes from cognition:
16:32reasoning and cooperation.
16:34We can plan hunt, build traps, and engage in coordinated strategies that can be tested
16:39and modified on the fly, not by millennia of evolution.
16:44Reasons allow us to so those things.
16:47It’s hard to convince people that your intuitions are true.
16:50But if you can give REASONS for them, its a whole heck of a lot easier to convince other
16:54people that you’re right.
16:59Reason also allows us to justify ourselves in the eyes of others.
17:06To explain who we are and express the kinds of reasons we like, what other people can
17:11expect from us, and what we will likely expect from them.
17:15This social theory of reasoning helps explain why two people can earnestly and rationally
17:22arrive at different views.
17:23They each have their own unique brain and values and dispositions and experiences and
17:29THAT’S what drove their thinking.
17:31The reasons they give may or may not be the REAL reasons they came to their conclusions,
17:36but it’s the best anyone can do.
17:39The social theory also explains why people tend to give such weak reasons for their beliefs
17:45at first or when their intended audience doesn’t need much convincing.
17:49It would be a waste of time and cognitive reasources to construct grand slam reasons
17:55for everything I said and did and thought when it wasn’t necessary.
18:00Instead, I can off-load some of the work to other people.
18:04If I say, “I want to have lunch at ABC Burgers” my friend might say, “ah, no thanks, I had
18:12burgers yesterday” and I might reply back, “oh well that’s no problem, they also
18:17have hot dogs and great salads”
18:20But if my friend said “ah, no thanks, I’m trying to spend less money eating out this
18:25month” I might reply, “oh well ABC Burgers is really cheap and I;ve got a coupon!”
18:32What’s going on there is that I’m providing reasons only as my interlocutor presses for
18:37them.
18:38If they press harder and harder, my reasons will become better and better until either
18:42I win them over, or we come to some different, more harmonious decision.
18:47So when people appear to be lazy reasoners or to have bad reasons or none at all, it’s
18:54usually just the case that they’re using reason as it evolved to function; socially.
19:00It starts off weak, improving if others push it and always tailoring its work to an intended
19:06audience.
19:08the social theory of reasons can even explain the existence of biases that otherwise make
19:14little sense.
19:15For example, it would seem that in coming to conclusions about the world, it would behoove
19:20an organism to pay particular attention to information that went against what it believed.
19:25That way, they would be able to adjust their beliefs making them truer, more general, and
19:30more complete.
19:32To a certain extent, that IS what happens … but not always.
19:35When someone “does their own research” they often come to the very conclusion they
19:41wanted after all.
19:42When a person strongly believes that our impact on the planet isn’t a problem, they tend
19:43to gravitate towards reasons it might not be and see such reasons in all kinds of data.
19:44This is called the CONFIRMATION BIAS: our tendency to look for, prefer, and interpret
19:50information so that it confirms what we already think.
19:54It frustrates our ability to accept new, inconvienent data and is a problem for the intellectualist
20:01view of reason.
20:03If reason is for finding truth and making better decisions, why would it have this major
20:08weakness?
20:10Because, the social theory says, reasoning is a GROUP ACTIVITY.
20:16If I think that option A is true and the best, and you think option B is true and the best,
20:24if we both researched BOTH options and sifted through reasons in support of BOTH options,
20:30we would both have twice the work to do than we would if, instead, I simply came up with
20:36reason for why I was right, and you attended to reasons for why YOU were right.
20:41The confirmation bias at least HALVES the cognitive work that must be done.
20:46Now sometimes a lone reasoner will have a bad idea.
20:52Or a decent idea with some bad parts.
20:55The reasons they have to justify and argue for it will be suffiencent for them and those
21:01who intuitively agree but may be weak.
21:04But subjected to deliberation, put forth into the machine of collective thought, it can
21:09be evaulated and judged not by one mind or a group of minds thinking alike, but by something
21:16special … the crowd.
21:20Humans have long known of the WISDOM OF THE CROWDS: the phenomenon by which a collection
21:25of many people can process information into a conclusion better than any one person could
21:30do alone.
21:31It’s why we don’t trust big decisions to a single person, no matter how educated
21:36or powerful they are.
21:38Instead, we ask a group of to deliberate.
21:42To reason together.
21:44In this way, the biases and errors of each is smoothed out and the decision wiser.
21:49In a famous example, it’s been repeatedly shown that if you ask a bunch of people to
21:54guess how many jelly beans are in a jar, you’ll find that the average of all of their answers
22:00is CLOSER TO THE REAL NUMBER than any one individual was alone.
22:04Even the smartest individual.
22:05What happens is that although some people may guess a number way too big, that mistake
22:11is balanced out by the fact that others will inevitably guess a number way too small.
22:17All together, their disagreement evens out into spectacular accuracy.
22:24We have now arrived at the problem.
22:28Reasoning evolved to be used socially where many different perspectives had to all deliberate
22:34towards a common conclusion.
22:37Such contexts are becoming less and less common.
22:40And it is becoming easier and easier to simply be a lone reasoner, justifying only a particular
22:46viewpoint without doing the harder work of deliberating and acting.
22:52The internet gives voices to more perspectives than ever before in our history, but it also
22:57makes it easy to disengage from accountability and find places where everyone believes what
23:03you do.
23:04Furthermore, because of technology, we confront more issues more rapidly than ever before
23:10that we’re expected to have opinions about.
23:13And the growing complexity and specialization of the modern world makes it difficult for
23:18each of us to have well-informed prepared reasons for the acceleraeting accretion of
23:23intutions we must form.
23:24in response, we look for lone reasoners who can defend our intuitions for us.
23:29They reasons they give don’t need to be good, just good ENOUGH that we can feel like
23:34justification exists.
23:36In the past, unconvincing reasons had to be painted on sandwich boards.
23:42But now, the democritization of communication means that even unpopular, unconvincing, nonsensical
23:48ideas can be presented with the same trust-inducing typefaces and professional look as common
23:55ones.
23:56Those who disagree may challenge the reasons you’ve been given, show them to be contradictory,
24:00and produce betters ones for THEIR side, but to what end?
24:04It’s all preparation for a debate that never comes.
24:08You play a very small role in deciding how society is run.
24:13Even if a good faith discussion between a representative slice of America came to a
24:18resolution, if nothing can come of it, why not just throw shade and sick burns or revel
24:24in the pleasure of reasoning by treating everything like a big giant puzzle?
24:29It's easy to think that it doesn’t matter, because after all, those in charge, the brilliant
24:35scientists and powerful billionaires, will surely come to our rescue.
24:40Some giant TECHNOSALVATION is surely on the horizon.
24:46Perhaps it is.
24:48But everything we know about reason suggets that those implementing it should be held
24:53accountable by as many different perspectives as possible.
24:58Leaders could lead deliberations and be elected for their ability to moderate social reasoning,
25:04but that’s boring!
25:05Why lead when you could follow: look at what some people believe and generate reasons for
25:10why they’re right, and they’ll love it!
25:13Of course, the hard work — the REAL work — the work that truly elevates us on this
25:18planet, is not in telling poeple that they’re right, but in trying to convince others and
25:24in so doing, use reason as it evolved to be used.
25:29The future of reason may in fact be the past of reason.
25:35In practice, what does all this look like?
25:38Some researchers have gone so far as to recommend national deliberation days where citizens
25:44celebrate by literally joining small groups and talking through their opinions and comparing
25:49reasons.
25:51Tests of such strategies have shown that a return to the small, targeted discussions
25:56our reasoning abilities evolved to excel in leaves all participants with a greater understanding
26:02of not just what they believe and why, but about decisions that could actually be made
26:07and actions that could be taken.
26:10Others have gone even further, recommending that the true future of reason at its best
26:16is the construction of a lottocracy.
26:19A form of government where decisions are made not by elected leaders, but by people literally
26:26chosen at random.
26:28We decide the fate of a person this way, why not the fate of the people?
26:34What IF decisions were made not by politicians alone, but at least occasionally by groups
26:40of actual citizens representing differences in thought, not just geography, who were brought
26:45together and paid for their time to learn from experts and then deliberate on an assigned
26:51issue until a conclusion was reached or, at the least, a recommendation?
26:56Instead of being motivated by re-election, money, attention, and power, individuals chosen
27:02at random would have only their conscious to guide them.
27:06Special interests and corporations wouldn’t be able to cozy up to those likely to be elected
27:11— if any one of us could some day serve, they’d have cozy up to and protect … all
27:19of us.
27:20Instead of the learning and deliberation being done by people you never meet with offices
27:25in buildings you can’t access, gradually, over time, more and more of your very own
27:30neighbors would have had the honor.
27:33People chosen at random would obviously lack the same celebrity status and mandate that
27:39elected leaders cultivate and achieve — and iconic figures we relate to aren’t bad — but
27:46our understanding of reasoning is making it more and more clear that we evolved not to
27:50be leave thinking up to a few great minds, but to the authorty of THE great mind.
27:57The lumbering organ of thought that is everyone and everything.
28:03This is, in fact, how democracy first worked: lotteries were used to fill many political
28:08positions in Anceint Athens.
28:10Aristotle explained that
28:12“the appointment of magistrates by lot is thought to be democratic, and the election
28:17of them is oligrchic”
28:19where an oligrachy is government by only a small number of people.
28:25Regardless of HOW reason is brought back to its social roots, if we can build more and
28:30better areanas for deliberation and use them to apply reason properly to hyperobjects like
28:36the impact of emissions on the planet, we’ll have taught one heck of a lesson to people
28:41a hundred, a thousand years into the future.
28:44I like to think that although widening participation will be difficult, it might provide us all
28:51with a kind of existential security.
28:54The impact of emission on our planet is not going to be the last hyperproblem we face.
29:00If we can do a good job with it, maybe far in the future, when our civilization has advanced
29:05to the point at which people can be quantumly re-recreated or something, they’ll look
29:09back at our time and say, hey, let’s bring them all back to life.
29:16We could use the cooperative abilities they had then.
29:19Ultimately, the old saying that “history is the great teacher” isn’t a bad guide.
29:26We will all some day be teachers ourselves because some day we will all be history, too.
29:32we will some day be the ancients.
29:37And we can choose what that will mean.
29:40And as always, thanks for watching.

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