Tuesday 4 January 2011

The Theory

A long long time ago, humans evolved the ability to form generalisations from small amounts of information. This probably started as a survival trait – tube-like thing that hisses equals “snake”, avoid it! The individuals that were most successful at avoiding hissing things in the grass stayed alive the longest, and now the world is populated with their descendants.

As time went on, this trait has become better and better refined, slowly but surely evolving into the ability to deduce meaningful patterns in the world around us, from very little raw information. I believe that this is the single-most defining facet of our intelligence.

Why? Because from this ability stems almost everything that makes humans human. For example, we see shapes in the clouds (in fact it’s almost impossible for us not to); or show us a curly line, we either see the letter S, or the number 2, or maybe even a swan.

However, just to have evolved this ability isn't the whole story. The animal brain appears to work on a very efficient "reward" mechanism, and humans (being animals) are no exception. The human brain (for all its supposed sophistication) is at heart nothing more than a very complex conglomeration of simple processes. In order for this simple brain to do what is best for it, animals have evolved a very complicated system of chemical reward. That's what dopamine is. You do something good, the brain rewards itself with a burst of dopamine. You get a buzz.

This is a very handy way of ensuring an individual actively seeks out things that do it good (eating food is pleasurable) whilst avoiding things that don't (pain is bad). Of course, now that the human mind is such a complicated beast it deals with far more esoteric and abstract things than mere food & water. Socialization for a start has been a major development in the human species, so much so that our entire mode of communication (including our body language) is geared almost exclusively to social interaction.

However, let's not forget that for all our sophistication, we are still creatures driven by simple animal processes, and as such we need simple animal drives to make us do anything. Learning to be a social animal may well be the best way to ensure our personal survival in human society, but we still need simple rewards to make it work. For example, competitive instinct is very prevalent in human society, and our athletes often describe how much they enjoy the act of winning.

But hang on, isn't that because winning gives you a buzz? Yup, it's our old friend dopamine again. Surely this is the underlying mechanism behind almost every human endeavour, from climbing Mount Everest to reaching down the back of the sofa to retrieve a lost remote. Try it yourself. You're looking for something you’ve mislaid. You don't know where it is, but you have a general idea (gained from using your highly-developed pattern-recognition ability). And you're right! You find what you're looking for. Now didn't that make you feel good?

Let's take it a step further and really see this mechanism in action. Listen to some music. Something popular and repetitive. You're tapping your foot. Why? Because music exercises your pattern-recognition system wonderfully. In the space of 2 or 3 seconds you listen to the beat, extrapolate what's coming next...BLAM! you're right! Buzz! Listen, tap foot, Buzz!

Welcome to music - the ultimate quick dopamine fix!

As an aside, this would probably explain why Relax by Frankie Goes to Hollywood (he says, showing his age) is much more popular with the general Public than anything by Chopin or Mozart. You can listen to Relax and start mainlining dopamine within a few seconds. But Mozart? Well you have to listen to it a few times before you can start anticipating what comes next. This is possibly why it takes a while for most people to “get into” classical music.

Now then. Here's where it gets amusing. This wonderful brain reward system probably works for everything we do. Hand in hand with Pattern Recognition, we have a very powerful tool for manipulating our personal world, and it can even be used for more abstract endeavours, like thought, or scientific theory. In fact, let's have a look at scientific theory...or even just Theory (notice I’m capitalizing here)..

What is a Theory? At its simplest it is an invented explanation that fits all the observable facts in a particular situation. It may not be right, but that's not what our brains are interested in. All our brains care about is whether it fits the facts, and that there are no loopholes. Because if our Theory works...Buzz!!

Put your hands together once more for dopamine, rewarding us yet again for successfully extrapolating a scenario from a jumble of evidence.

So we've got our Theory, and it makes us buzz every time we think about it. So we tell other people our Theory. They listen, but they don't get the same kick as we do, because they didn't come up with the theory themselves (we don’t care. Just the fact of telling them is enough).

However they want that buzz too, so what do they do? They take the facts and concoct a different theory, giving them their own dopamine hit.

Now there's a downside to this as well. Ever been unable to reach that lost pencil down the sofa? Came second in the race? Had your theory blown away? Not a nice feeling is it? Nope, it's not. It's an anti-buzz. It makes us feel bad, and takes away our dopamine flush. This drives us to a) look for the pencil harder b) run faster next time c) defend our Theory.

Maybe it even results in us distorting the facts to fit our Theory. Who can honestly say they haven't lied to protect themselves? The News is full of scientists and politicians who have been caught-out hiding the facts, or distorting (even fabricating) the evidence.

I believe the human brain's reward system is that powerful that it drives more than the will to succeed. It can drive the will to succeed at all costs.

The bottom line is that because of my brain's chemistry I will fight to the death to defend my Theory from all who seek to disprove, deride, or undermine it. Not only that, but I will also endeavour to persuade others of the validity of my Theory, including searching for further evidence to back it up...even discarding or altering evidence that contradicts my Theory.

And you know the beauty of this Theory? It perfectly explains the reasons behind the Theory itself. This little piece of puff that you are reading now is a Self-Validating Theory. The fact that I am working so hard to explain and defend this Theory...proves the Theory itself!

And nothing you can say will ever disprove this.

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