If You're Thinking Rationally, You’re Not Thinking Hard Enough
- Eric Weinstein is a mathematician, economist and managing director of Thiel Capital.
- In a recent interview with Rebel Wisdom, Weinstein spoke about the origins of the Intellectual Dark Web, and his theory of how our institutions are plagued by an "embedded growth obligation."
- Disagreeable people, Weinstein says, could help institutions correct themselves.
We are living in a fever dream from which we cannot wake up, and it is because we cannot figure out whom to trust, says Eric Weinstein, a mathematician and economist who serves as the managing director of Thiel Capital.
This problem stems in part from two generations' worth of dishonesty — both subtle and obvious — from society's accepted experts, many of whom have been corrupted by their institutions' relentless drive to survive and continue growing, no matter the cost. It's from this problem, Weinstein suggests, that the Intellectual Dark Web emerged.
In 2018, Weinstein emerged as a prominent figure of the Intellectual Dark Web (IDW), a term he coined, half in jest, to describe a group of individuals from various fields who hold – or at least are inclined to explore – heterodox ideas, mainly through alternative media like YouTube. The members of the IDW don't all share a political cause, but rather, Weinstein suggests, they share the personality trait of disagreeableness, or a willingness to stick to your beliefs even when it comes at a high cost.
In an interview recently published by Rebel Wisdom, a media group that regularly covers the IDW, Weinstein says this trait isn't just simple contrarianism – it's what many of our institutions need to survive the long term. That's because developed society has long been addicted to "high levels of broadly distributed, stable technology-led growth," Weinstein says, but that kind of growth can't continue forever. So, what happens when you deny people the ability to continue on the path to which they're so addicted?
"That means that you're set up, potentially for war, for civil unrest, for communism if people try to grab what their neighbor has, or fascism if people try to maintain order at all costs."
How did we get here? Weinstein suggests it's largely due to a phenomenon he calls the "embedded growth obligation."
"An embedded growth obligation is how fast a structure has to grow in order to maintain its honest positions," Weinstein says. "If you have a situation in which you have trial lawyers and they're supported by various associates, and the associates all want to become partners and trial lawyers themselves, then what you have is a situation where the law firm has to grow at a very fast clip if all those people are going to be satisfied with their job decisions. Well, very quickly that ability to grow runs out, and then people want to know, "Why am I stuck in a position going nowhere?"
Since the early 1970s, Weinstein says, this phenomenon has occurred in virtually every field, and it's helped produce institutions that are more concerned with growth and self-preservation than holding honest positions. The result is an altered incentive structure within institutions: Experts are rewarded for sustaining the institution, not necessarily for being honest or doing the best work in their field.
Individuals – disagreeable ones, in particular – could help save us from this mess.
"Individuals in very small groups are about the only thing that is free of the disease of the embedded growth obligation," Weinstein says. "And so, the paradox is that the individuals have to save the institutions that are trying to extinguish them, because the institutions don't want to hear this message. But in fact, if they don't make use of the tiny number of people functioning as individuals or in small organizations, all of this is going to collapse because it cannot continue along its current exponential path. It's like Wile E. Coyote running off of the cliff: As soon as he realizes that there's nothing hold him up, down we fall."
What kinds of individuals do institutions need?
Weinstein suggests the kinds of people who can help straighten out our institutions are those who'd pass (or fail, rather) two psychological tests:
- The Asch conformity tests: In the 1950s, psychologist Solomon Asch studied the effects of incorrect majority opinion on individuals. You've probably heard about it: One unwitting test subject is in a room with a handful of people, all of whom are in on the experiment. The experimenter shows the group a set of lines and asks them to say which ones are equal in length. The answer is instantly obvious. But all of the actors report the wrong answer, and, surprisingly, often the unwitting test subject does too, suggesting that most of us desperately want to conform to the group.
- The Milgram experiment: In the 1960s, psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted a series of experiments on obedience to authority figures. A researcher would ask a participant, who was told he was assisting in an unrelated experiment, to administer electric shocks to another participant (who was actually in on the experiment) in another room. Those getting "shocked" would scream and plea for the experiment to stop. But the researchers would tell the participant to keep administering the shocks, saying things like, "The experiment requires that you continue," even though, of course, they were free to stop at any point.
Weinstein says our institutions need people who can stand up to the pressures of conformity and authority.
"You want people who, when asked to push the buzzer to administer an electric shock, tell the experimenter to buzz off rather than the people who go along with it when they're assured that they will not be held personally responsible," he says.
Fixing our institutions is necessary before society can make real progress, Weinstein suggests, and a solution doesn't lie solely with the left or right.
"Nobody knows what to believe, nobody quite knows what's true, nobody knows where to turn. This is not a tenable situation. So, either we're going to descend into some kind of permanent chaos, or there's going to have to be something that we reboot from, and that thing cannot be simply left or simply right. And that's one of the reasons the IDW is hopeful to me."
Don't fit in? Here's why that's a good thing.
Image source: Sereno, et al
Mind & Brain
- A powerful MRI combined with modeling software results in a totally new view of the human cerebellum.
- The so-called 'little brain' is nearly 80% the size of the cerebral cortex when it's unfolded.
- This part of the brain is associated with a lot of things, and a new virtual map is suitably chaotic and complex.
Just under our brain's cortex and close to our brain stem sits the cerebellum, also known as the "little brain." It's an organ many animals have, and we're still learning what it does in humans. It's long been thought to be involved in sensory input and motor control, but recent studies suggests it also plays a role in a lot of other things, including emotion, thought, and pain. After all, about half of the brain's neurons reside there. But it's so small. Except it's not, according to a new study from San Diego State University (SDSU) published in PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences).
A neural crêpe
A new imaging study led by psychology professor and cognitive neuroscientist Martin Sereno of the SDSU MRI Imaging Center reveals that the cerebellum is actually an intricately folded organ that has a surface area equal in size to 78 percent of the cerebral cortex. Sereno, a pioneer in MRI brain imaging, collaborated with other experts from the U.K., Canada, and the Netherlands.
So what does it look like? Unfolded, the cerebellum is reminiscent of a crêpe, according to Sereno, about four inches wide and three feet long.
The team didn't physically unfold a cerebellum in their research. Instead, they worked with brain scans from a 9.4 Tesla MRI machine, and virtually unfolded and mapped the organ. Custom software was developed for the project, based on the open-source FreeSurfer app developed by Sereno and others. Their model allowed the scientists to unpack the virtual cerebellum down to each individual fold, or "folia."
Study's cross-sections of a folded cerebellum
Image source: Sereno, et al.
A complicated map
Sereno tells SDSU NewsCenter that "Until now we only had crude models of what it looked like. We now have a complete map or surface representation of the cerebellum, much like cities, counties, and states."
That map is a bit surprising, too, in that regions associated with different functions are scattered across the organ in peculiar ways, unlike the cortex where it's all pretty orderly. "You get a little chunk of the lip, next to a chunk of the shoulder or face, like jumbled puzzle pieces," says Sereno. This may have to do with the fact that when the cerebellum is folded, its elements line up differently than they do when the organ is unfolded.
It seems the folded structure of the cerebellum is a configuration that facilitates access to information coming from places all over the body. Sereno says, "Now that we have the first high resolution base map of the human cerebellum, there are many possibilities for researchers to start filling in what is certain to be a complex quilt of inputs, from many different parts of the cerebral cortex in more detail than ever before."
This makes sense if the cerebellum is involved in highly complex, advanced cognitive functions, such as handling language or performing abstract reasoning as scientists suspect. "When you think of the cognition required to write a scientific paper or explain a concept," says Sereno, "you have to pull in information from many different sources. And that's just how the cerebellum is set up."
Bigger and bigger
The study also suggests that the large size of their virtual human cerebellum is likely to be related to the sheer number of tasks with which the organ is involved in the complex human brain. The macaque cerebellum that the team analyzed, for example, amounts to just 30 percent the size of the animal's cortex.
"The fact that [the cerebellum] has such a large surface area speaks to the evolution of distinctively human behaviors and cognition," says Sereno. "It has expanded so much that the folding patterns are very complex."
As the study says, "Rather than coordinating sensory signals to execute expert physical movements, parts of the cerebellum may have been extended in humans to help coordinate fictive 'conceptual movements,' such as rapidly mentally rearranging a movement plan — or, in the fullness of time, perhaps even a mathematical equation."
Sereno concludes, "The 'little brain' is quite the jack of all trades. Mapping the cerebellum will be an interesting new frontier for the next decade."
