原文：
The ultimate motivation is to understand what it is to be human, and understanding the nature of consciousness is a major part of that challenge. In constructing models of the brain that might potentially lead to an understanding of the nature of consciousness, I have more easily found explanations for the ubiquitous irrationality of beliefs.
First of all, evolution acts on different time scales and on different levels of complexity. Evolution of traits leading to individual advantage are layered upon evolution of traits leading to societal (altruistic) advantage and cultural advantage. The most temporally immediate (and therefore the more obvious) of these are the traits leading to individual advantage (e.g. health, sexual attractiveness, hardiness, strength, agility, ruthlessness). Operating over longer time scales are the advantages conferred to societies by the effective presence of intelligence... whatever that is. Much of the focus of my work has been on exploring the nature and mechanisms of intelligence. A tall person who has an advantage in picking fruit from trees also runs more risk of accidentally banging his head against tree branches at night. Similarly, over the short period of time that humanity has managed to survive, the benefits of intelligence to societies and the species has been partially offset by significant disadvantages. What are these disadvantages? They are only apparent when one tries to clearly identify what intelligence actually is and the mechanisms that bring it about (at least those responsible for intelligence in humans).
I have devoted much time and effort to developing brain models, and these models indicate that a irrational polarization of beliefs is inevitable in the majority of people. It is a consequence of the biological mechanisms that make us "smart". I will outline a simplistic, but essentially accurate description of the mechanism.
Think of an over-simplification of the brain as something that takes in raw sensory experience, recognizes patterns and makes predictions based on past experience, performs actions based on that experience, and somewhat vividly remembers those aspects of experience that constitute new patterns and erroneous predictions. For a baby, almost all raw sensory experience is new, and almost no prediction is accurate, so much of raw experience enters (episodic) memory. As learning progresses, predictions become more accurate and fewer surprises occur. More and more of experience is "correctly handled", and less and less of the raw sensory experience is important to remember. What enters episodic memory goes from consisting primarily of colors and shapes and sounds and smells and feelings to consisting more of more semantically significant concepts. (Hypothesis:) A baby is more likely to notice that his mother had changed from a green to a blue shirt, then would an older child. (How one could test this, I do not know.) This is because the raw experience of color is filtered out by the semantic interpretation of the older brain. Perhaps the older child would instead remember that his mother went from being dressed for work to being dressed for bed, and only upon reflection upon his knowledge of what color is associated with those two costumes would he be able to report the nature of the color change.
Normal human intelligence encourages this progression. We interpret our sensory experience based an evolving conceptual framework, and it is the interpretation, rather than the raw experience that is remembered. Now take a closer look at how the conceptual framework evolves. "Raw" sensory information (mostly, but not exclusively) channeled through the thalamus enters the cortex and is relayed through a hierarchy that can potentially lead to the hippocampus and related cortical regions. These structures at the top of the cortical hierarchy provide the mechanism for episodic memory. In a child, raw sensory experience is conveyed upward through the hierarchy and ultimately reaches episodic memory. The processes of learning result in concepts being formed within the cortical hierarchy that capture and interpret the signals arising from lower levels of the hierarchy. As one progresses upward in the hierarchy, the concepts are increasingly abstract. The cortex thus acts as a filter on sensory experience, that is continually refined... at least in the young.
This process of conceptual refinement involves competition between different conceptual interpretations (one can think of this at the global level, but I am here referring to the competition that occurs locally within the hierarchy... between anatomically and contextually local conceptual constructs). Concepts that are experienced to be most effective in their predictive power out-compete and eventually kill off competing (local) concepts.
At this point, I think I have developed enough of the background to jump to the point (skipping over lots of very interesting other things). The result of this cortical filter refinement is a set of concepts and beliefs that have been successful generating predictions and minimizing surprise (and concomitant disappointment). So early education can very much guide the evolution of the filter. Early religious or ideological indoctrination provides a quick head-start into very effective predictive frameworks. Simplistic notions such as "market forces" and "god" provide very effective world views, ESPECIALLY in a social context which is very much shaped by SHARED world views.
These beliefs alter the nature of the information allowed to flow up the cortical hierarchy to the level of episodic memory, and become self-reinforcing. Only overt contradiction has a chance to alter established belief, by generating surprise or cognitive dissonance. However, processes of rationalization, facilitated by social and cultural ideological forces make small explanatory conceptual perturbations to accommodate (eliminate) contradictions between expectation and reality. Since these accommodations are incremental, they can lead to a house of cards world view which is perversely stabilized by social and cultural pressures as well as natural human tendencies to seek complacency and avoid conflicts, especially internal conflicts.
Scientific method is one example of an effort to provide a cultural pressure that can sometimes bring inaccurate world views into closer agreement with reality, but for the most part, not even professional scientists can often (if ever) make use of it. Most other strategies (e.g. various philosophical or meditative approaches) are for the most part worse than ineffective at addressing this short-coming of human intelligence, since they often involve efforts to directly (immediately) decrease cognitive dissonance. However, these strategies do have their social, cultural, and psychological advantages over the practice of scientific reasoning. As they say... ignorance is bliss.
The ultimate motivation is to understand what it is to be human, and understanding the nature of consciousness is a major part of that challenge. In constructing models of the brain that might potentially lead to an understanding of the nature of consciousness, I have more easily found explanations for the ubiquitous irrationality of beliefs.
First of all, evolution acts on different time scales and on different levels of complexity. Evolution of traits leading to individual advantage are layered upon evolution of traits leading to societal (altruistic) advantage and cultural advantage. The most temporally immediate (and therefore the more obvious) of these are the traits leading to individual advantage (e.g. health, sexual attractiveness, hardiness, strength, agility, ruthlessness). Operating over longer time scales are the advantages conferred to societies by the effective presence of intelligence... whatever that is. Much of the focus of my work has been on exploring the nature and mechanisms of intelligence. A tall person who has an advantage in picking fruit from trees also runs more risk of accidentally banging his head against tree branches at night. Similarly, over the short period of time that humanity has managed to survive, the benefits of intelligence to societies and the species has been partially offset by significant disadvantages. What are these disadvantages? They are only apparent when one tries to clearly identify what intelligence actually is and the mechanisms that bring it about (at least those responsible for intelligence in humans).
I have devoted much time and effort to developing brain models, and these models indicate that a irrational polarization of beliefs is inevitable in the majority of people. It is a consequence of the biological mechanisms that make us "smart". I will outline a simplistic, but essentially accurate description of the mechanism.
Think of an over-simplification of the brain as something that takes in raw sensory experience, recognizes patterns and makes predictions based on past experience, performs actions based on that experience, and somewhat vividly remembers those aspects of experience that constitute new patterns and erroneous predictions. For a baby, almost all raw sensory experience is new, and almost no prediction is accurate, so much of raw experience enters (episodic) memory. As learning progresses, predictions become more accurate and fewer surprises occur. More and more of experience is "correctly handled", and less and less of the raw sensory experience is important to remember. What enters episodic memory goes from consisting primarily of colors and shapes and sounds and smells and feelings to consisting more of more semantically significant concepts. (Hypothesis:) A baby is more likely to notice that his mother had changed from a green to a blue shirt, then would an older child. (How one could test this, I do not know.) This is because the raw experience of color is filtered out by the semantic interpretation of the older brain. Perhaps the older child would instead remember that his mother went from being dressed for work to being dressed for bed, and only upon reflection upon his knowledge of what color is associated with those two costumes would he be able to report the nature of the color change.
Normal human intelligence encourages this progression. We interpret our sensory experience based an evolving conceptual framework, and it is the interpretation, rather than the raw experience that is remembered. Now take a closer look at how the conceptual framework evolves. "Raw" sensory information (mostly, but not exclusively) channeled through the thalamus enters the cortex and is relayed through a hierarchy that can potentially lead to the hippocampus and related cortical regions. These structures at the top of the cortical hierarchy provide the mechanism for episodic memory. In a child, raw sensory experience is conveyed upward through the hierarchy and ultimately reaches episodic memory. The processes of learning result in concepts being formed within the cortical hierarchy that capture and interpret the signals arising from lower levels of the hierarchy. As one progresses upward in the hierarchy, the concepts are increasingly abstract. The cortex thus acts as a filter on sensory experience, that is continually refined... at least in the young.
This process of conceptual refinement involves competition between different conceptual interpretations (one can think of this at the global level, but I am here referring to the competition that occurs locally within the hierarchy... between anatomically and contextually local conceptual constructs). Concepts that are experienced to be most effective in their predictive power out-compete and eventually kill off competing (local) concepts.
At this point, I think I have developed enough of the background to jump to the point (skipping over lots of very interesting other things). The result of this cortical filter refinement is a set of concepts and beliefs that have been successful generating predictions and minimizing surprise (and concomitant disappointment). So early education can very much guide the evolution of the filter. Early religious or ideological indoctrination provides a quick head-start into very effective predictive frameworks. Simplistic notions such as "market forces" and "god" provide very effective world views, ESPECIALLY in a social context which is very much shaped by SHARED world views.
These beliefs alter the nature of the information allowed to flow up the cortical hierarchy to the level of episodic memory, and become self-reinforcing. Only overt contradiction has a chance to alter established belief, by generating surprise or cognitive dissonance. However, processes of rationalization, facilitated by social and cultural ideological forces make small explanatory conceptual perturbations to accommodate (eliminate) contradictions between expectation and reality. Since these accommodations are incremental, they can lead to a house of cards world view which is perversely stabilized by social and cultural pressures as well as natural human tendencies to seek complacency and avoid conflicts, especially internal conflicts.
Scientific method is one example of an effort to provide a cultural pressure that can sometimes bring inaccurate world views into closer agreement with reality, but for the most part, not even professional scientists can often (if ever) make use of it. Most other strategies (e.g. various philosophical or meditative approaches) are for the most part worse than ineffective at addressing this short-coming of human intelligence, since they often involve efforts to directly (immediately) decrease cognitive dissonance. However, these strategies do have their social, cultural, and psychological advantages over the practice of scientific reasoning. As they say... ignorance is bliss.
