Book review: The Elephant in the Brain (K. Simler and R. Hanson)
Instead of dividing the brain up into “ego”, “superego”, and “ID”, a more accurate and — why not — fun division would be based on a much larger number of “modules” that resemble characters in a political game, including “The President” and “The Press Secretary”. The former comes up with motives, and the latter with reasonings that fit these motives often without questioning.
But contrary to common belief, this books makes the point that our sense of self stems from the Press Secretary, not the President. No, we aren’t in charge of our own brains. And despite the President hopes that the Secretary will do a great job defending his motives to the Press, he will often conceal critical information from him for his (our) own good, because self-deception is the surefire way to help us deceive others in the political game called “society”. The worst part: as this book shows, the President in your brain may not be very bright.
The title is a parody of “the elephant in the room”, an idiom regarding an incovenient truth which we pretend not to be there. Backed by a huge load of evolutive psychology papers, this book brings up a very incovenient fact: we evolved to believe we are the perfect heros in our own stories. From our altruistic actions to supposedly logical political beliefs, rest assured there’s a hidden agenda underneath which is not so logical.
Will this book tingle your cynicism nerve? Maybe. But would you rather walk away from the inconvenient truth about your own nature? “Know thyself”, more so if it hurts. As the authors put it: “even if many of our motives are not as noble we think, it doesn’t mean we’re unlovable. In fact, to many sensibilities, a creature’s foibles make it even more endearing. The fact that we are self-deceived, and that we’ve built elaborate structures to accommodate our hidden motives, makes us far more interesting than textbook Homo economicus”.