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Project by Anne B ·

🛠 The Elephant in the Room

I read The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life, by Kevin Simler & Robin Hanson.

This is an interesting and important topic to me and there seem to be good ideas about it in the book.

From the Introduction:

Here is the thesis we’ll be exploring in this book: We, human beings, are a species that’s not only capable of acting on hidden motives—we’re designed to do it. Our brains are built to act in our self-interest while at the same time trying hard not to appear selfish in front of other people. And in order to throw them off the trail, our brains often keep “us,” our conscious minds, in the dark. The less we know of our own ugly motives, the easier it is to hide them from others.

and

So throughout the book, we’ll be using “the elephant” to refer not just to human selfishness, but to a whole cluster of related concepts: the fact that we’re competitive social animals fighting for power, status, and sex; the fact that we’re sometimes willing to lie and cheat to get ahead; the fact that we hide some of our motives—and that we do so in order to mislead others.

I think they’re right that “we’re competitive social animals fighting for power, status, and sex”, that these motives permeate much of what we do, and that we often hide the motives from ourselves and from others.

(I question “we’re designed to do it” and “Our brains are built to…”, but that seems like a minor point.)

I want to go through the book more carefully. I have some ideas about what to try to do with the book this time through:

  • think and write about what things in the book I agree with and what things in it I don’t agree with
  • think of and write examples and maybe counter-examples to what they say

These might be too vague or too hard for me. I’ll give it a try, though. I’ll also try to think of easier ways I could learn from and interact with this book.

Comments & Events

Anne B Anne B
In the first quote of the previous message, it’s interesting that they used the word “ugly” in “The less we know of our own ugly motives, the easier it is to hide them from others.” Objectively, it doesn’t seem ugly to be self-interested, to want power/status/sex. Our culture and therefore our minds have branded these things as ugly.
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Anne B Anne B
Again, I categorized this thread as a Project, but I didn’t really do any project planning for it.
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Anne B Anne B

Why did I start this thread? 

Yes, the topic interests me. I might learn more about it from others here if they respond to what I write. I might learn from myself through the process of writing things down.

There’s more, though: I also want to heighten my status at FI by posting (about anything), by posting about things that I think are valued here, by showing that I’m learning. This is the kind of hidden motive that’s talked about in the book.
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Elliot, Fallible Ideas Elliot
Robin Hanson was an early leader of the broad Less Wrong community (and still is a leader despite not posting on Less Wrong specifically). He blogged with EY at OB, and I think he's the higher status person (a decently prestigious professor) most responsible for helping EY get some credibility and attention (social status). LW has been talking about the elephant and rider stuff for a long time. Hanson has substantial flaws and didn't respond rationally to my criticism (he responded some; it's not straight silence that I'm criticizing). But he's kinda ok and says some decent stuff.

Firebench was so sure that he wasn't an elephant rider and that his brain (or his memes or whatever) wasn't hiding some of his motives from him. I think LW people who have read about the elephant and the rider, and talked about it, and argued it to others ... still often act similarly and won't apply it to themselves when they get defensive and e.g. want to claim to know that they aren't upset.

Explanations to explain limited introspective abilities, like the elephant and the rider, and many others, are common and well known. Similarly there are lots of explanations about lying to oneself. Many people accept some of this stuff sometimes, but it doesn't seem to do much good with people being able to remember it and take it seriously, about themselves (rather than about Other People – the masses, idiots or sheeple), while in hard circumstances – while they are upset/emotional/defensive/self-lying.

Getting people to focus on self-improvement on a sustained basis while not in hard circumstances – when there is no immediate, current disaster – is also difficult. (I'll give mindfulness meditation credit here as something that has gotten a fair amount of people to make some sort of attempt at self-improvement, in a way that's related to emotions, on an ongoing basis while not currently having a active disaster to motivate change.)
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Anne B Anne B
I see I titled this thread The Elephant in the Room instead of The Elephant in the Brain, as I meant to. I'll leave it. To me, this stuff is like an elephant in the room that people don't acknowledge but that affects everything that happens.
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Anne B Anne B

Thanks for the info.

The book doesn't talk about a rider. A search for "rider" only turns up two places on one page that mention "free-rider problems". But the elephant and its rider idea seems related to the elephant in the brain idea.

It looks like Less Wrong has stuff on both the elephant in the brain and on the elephant and its rider. Maybe I'll read more of it after I read the book more.

I might also search the internet for other stuff about the ideas. That's something that I should consider more often for books I read, but I hadn't thought of it here.
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Anne B Anne B

Elliot wrote:

Many people accept some of this stuff sometimes, but it doesn't seem to do much good with people being able to remember it and take it seriously, about themselves (rather than about Other People – the masses, idiots or sheeple), while in hard circumstances – while they are upset/emotional/defensive/self-lying.

Getting people to focus on self-improvement on a sustained basis while not in hard circumstances – when there is no immediate, current disaster – is also difficult.

The Elephant in the Brain has an attitude of "here's some interesting stuff about how humans act". It's not telling the reader that they can use this information to improve themselves.

I am reading the book and thinking that it's important and it very much applies to me. I don't yet see how to improve myself as a result, but I hope to.
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Anne B Anne B

Elliot wrote:

Explanations to explain limited introspective abilities, like the elephant and the rider, and many others, are common and well known. Similarly there are lots of explanations about lying to oneself. 

This seems like an area I could explore more. I don't know much about these common explanations.
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