we see faces in clouds, not clouds in faces

[Cees Binkhorst]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

In short, we’re brilliantly programmed to act on the risks that
confronted us in the Pleistocene Age.

En sommige mensen zullen daar nooit van af komen ;)

Groet / Cees

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/02/opinion/02kristof.html
July 2, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist
When Our Brains Short-Circuit
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Our political system sometimes produces such skewed results that it’s
difficult not to blame bloviating politicians. But maybe the deeper
problem lies in our brains.

Evidence is accumulating that the human brain systematically misjudges
certain kinds of risks. In effect, evolution has programmed us to be
alert for snakes and enemies with clubs, but we aren’t well prepared to
respond to dangers that require forethought.

If you come across a garter snake, nearly all of your brain will light
up with activity as you process the “threat.” Yet if somebody tells you
that carbon emissions will eventually destroy Earth as we know it, only
the small part of the brain that focuses on the future — a portion of
the prefrontal cortex — will glimmer.

“We humans do strange things, perhaps because vestiges of our ancient
brain still guide us in the modern world,” notes Paul Slovic, a
psychology professor at the University of Oregon and author of a book on
how our minds assess risks.

Consider America’s political response to these two recent challenges:

1. President Obama proposes moving some inmates from Guantánamo Bay,
Cuba, to supermax prisons from which no one has ever escaped. This is
the “enemy with club” threat that we have evolved to be alert to, so
Democrats and Republicans alike erupt in outrage and kill the plan.

2. The climate warms, ice sheets melt and seas rise. The House scrounges
a narrow majority to pass a feeble cap-and-trade system, but Senate
passage is uncertain. The issue is complex, full of trade-offs and more
cerebral than visceral — and so it doesn’t activate our warning systems.

“What’s important is the threats that were dominant in our evolutionary
history,” notes Daniel Gilbert, a professor of psychology at Harvard
University. In contrast, he says, the kinds of dangers that are most
serious today — such as climate change — sneak in under the brain’s radar.

Professor Gilbert argues that the threats that get our attention tend to
have four features. First, they are personalized and intentional. The
human brain is highly evolved for social behavior (“that’s why we see
faces in clouds, not clouds in faces,” says Mr. Gilbert), and, like
gazelles, we are instinctively and obsessively on the lookout for
predators and enemies.

Second, we respond to threats that we deem disgusting or immoral —
characteristics more associated with sex, betrayal or spoiled food than
with atmospheric chemistry.

“That’s why people are incensed about flag burning, or about what kind
of sex people have in private, even though that doesn’t really affect
the rest of us,” Professor Gilbert said. “Yet where we have a real
threat to our well-being, like global warming, it doesn’t ring alarm bells.”

Third, threats get our attention when they are imminent, while our brain
circuitry is often cavalier about the future. That’s why we are so bad
at saving for retirement. Economists tear their hair out at a puzzlingly
irrational behavior called hyperbolic discounting: people’s preference
for money now rather than much larger payments later.

For example, in studies, most Americans prefer $50 now to $100 in six
months, even though that represents a 100 percent return.

Fourth, we’re far more sensitive to changes that are instantaneous than
those that are gradual. We yawn at a slow melting of the glaciers, while
if they shrank overnight we might take to the streets.

In short, we’re brilliantly programmed to act on the risks that
confronted us in the Pleistocene Age. We’re less adept with 21st-century
challenges.

At the University of Virginia, Professor Jonathan Haidt shows his
Psychology 101 students how evolution has prepared us to fear some
things: He asks how many students would be afraid to stand within 10
feet of a friend carrying a pet boa constrictor. Many hands go up,
although almost none of the students have been bitten by a snake.

“The objects of our phobias, and the things that are actually dangerous
to us, are almost unrelated in the modern world, but they were related
in our ancient environment,” Mr. Haidt said. “We have no ‘preparedness’
to fear a gradual rise in the Earth’s temperature.”

This short-circuitry in our brains explains many of our policy
priorities. We Americans spend nearly $700 billion a year on the
military and less than $3 billion on the F.D.A., even though
food-poisoning kills more Americans than foreign armies and terrorists.
We’re just lucky we don’t have a cabinet-level Department of Snake
Extermination.

Still, all is not lost, particularly if we understand and acknowledge
our neurological shortcomings — and try to compensate with rational
analysis. When we work at it, we are indeed capable of foresight: If we
can floss today to prevent tooth decay in later years, then perhaps we
can also drive less to save the planet.

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