Follow the causal chain from top to bottom.
This page shows the limitations in our mental processes and where they originated.
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Our brain wiring makes us very good at pattern recognition
This comes directly from the stimulus response architecture of our brains
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Subconsciously we pick the things to remember based on their perceived importance, and we try to remember things that improve our self-image (such as reliving moments when we performed well, e.g. day dreaming about one of our jokes that made everyone laugh).
We have to be selective because of our limited overseer capacity, and our limited storage capacity; we cannot remember everything, and selecting the most important events to remember is a logical approach. We are always trying to improve our self-image, to build up our masks, to be successful in the mating world, and this is one way of achieving that.
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We think by linking responses to stimuli (subconsciously), learning to associate one thought with another (e.g. falling linked to fear). There does not need to be a logical connection between the two (e.g. irrational phobias).
Evolution built our minds from the components available: basic stimulus response links (e.g. primitive reflexes). It is not surprising that our brains are just a complex network of these linkages
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We are not born with all of the skills we need to survive; we have to learn them, and learning them takes a long time.
Our world is very complex, demanding many survival skill, too many for each one to have a significant effect on enough people for enough time. The training time is accentuated because we are born so early, long before our brains have fully developed.
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We are not naturally good at judging probabilities. Indeed we are not comfortable thinking in terms of probabilities.
Our thought processes evolved to provide specific responses to specific situations. A definite answer was needed for a given stimulus so that action could be taken (knowing that there is a 55% chance of success is not helpful when the answer needs to be “do” or “don’t do”).
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We use heuristics (rules of thumb) to judge importance and there are natural biases in how we make our assessment (e.g. a bad event seems more devastating if it happens to us than if it happens to someone else).
An ability to prioritize (an ability to judge that a charging rhino is more important than a pretty sunset) is an important survival trait. Our use of heuristics is just a reflection of the limited time, and limited gray matter, that we have available to analyze the world around us – we are forced to look for quick, easy answers.
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We are not naturally good at mathematics
Pleistocene life involved a whole lot of educated guesswork (when to relocate the tribe, where to forage, whether to fight the huge lion), but not many hard mathematical calculations. Our brains evolved into illogical stimulus response networks, not logical computers.
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Our overseer is slow and cannot deal with much information.
Because our brains are so energy hungry, we have evolved to not have much spare capacity (capacity that would take valuable resources to support, but was rarely used), so our Overseer is good at dealing with the typical load that it might encounter, but it can be overloaded, and we can make mistakes if we have too much to think about.
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We analyze and try to make sense of the world by creating rules, heuristics (a fast and easy rule of thumb, such as “all BMW drivers are aggressive” which may not be true, but is a good approximation for the truth), by categorizing (if it has feathers, it is a bird). We are so keen to understand the world that we are desperate to categorize.
Our stimulus-response brain helps us to categorize (several stimuli that create similar responses go into the same category)
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We judge the world by comparisons, not by absolutes (we are better at remembering the pattern that A is more than B, than we are at remembering A = 54.75, B= 45.2)
Click here to go to the same node on Fundamentals 2
Natural selection has to trade off one benefit for another (they cannot all be optimal: birds are either good fliers or good runners, not both)
Natural selection is constrained by limited resources in the body and the environment
We often fail to register events and commit them to memory
The Overseer is an essential link in our memory process; things have to go through our conscious brain to get into our memory. If the limited capacity in our Overseer is used up (we are distracted by doing something else) then it is difficult for us to learn anything. We have a tendency to be absent-minded if we have things on our mind, in other words.
Our memory has gaps that we fill without realizing (just like our internal model of the world). Our memory is partly fabricated, and we cannot tell if a memory is false
When you combine in one brain: a poor memory, a Bias Blind spot and a self-deceptive mask of competence, you get a creature that forgets, but does not realize that it has forgotten.
We spill things when distracted.
Our Overseer, or our consciousness, is limited (because we have to use our brains efficiently, we do not have a lot of spare capacity) so we cannot deal with much information at any one time (if we are focused on a conversation, we have less attention to devote to maneuvering our bodies through the world).
We try to use our brains efficiently, taking analytical shortcuts wherever possible
Our brains use twenty percent of the energy used by the body. Getting that extra energy in our harsh habitat was difficult and dangerous so natural selection had a strong incentive to make the make the best possible use of our energy hungry brains. The old adage that we only use 10% of our brains is simply not true.
Our memories fade slowly with time unless refreshed.
Our poor memory is an inevitable consequence of our limited brain capacity and the consequent need to use our brains efficiently; we cannot remember every experience that we have. We need a mind that forgets, that discards any old data that are no longer useful. In our changing environment, survival information that was relevant yesterday may not be relevant today.