The brain on autopilot

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Everyone would probably agree that attention is too scarce. If we can do something well enough without paying attention, then that's how we do it. We do not have enough attention to micro-manage our lives. But although our limited attention can cause problems, it is not necessarily a design flaw. Perhaps, given biological limitations, evolution has found the perfect balance between attention and habitual behavior. Marcus, on the other hand, seems to think habitual behavior -- human "autopilot" -- is a design flaw. But just as auto-pilot is useful for commercial airliners, auto-pilot is useful -- even indispensable -- for humans. Habits typically are good policies. The ability to form habits is one of the most crucial things a brain does. Just about anybody who is really good at something -- an athlete, a musician, a physician -- depends on a lot of habits. We shouldn't conclude that, just because so-called lower life forms develop habits, habits must be bad for us. Of course, sometimes a habit can lead us to do something bad. But let's not throw the baby out with the bath water.

Marcus uses the following example: Someone plans to get groceries on the way home. As he drives, he answers a cellphone call, which makes him forget to buy groceries. This is supposed to show how deleterious our habitual mind is, but driving is actually a great example of why we have to depend on habits.

When you drive, you don't pay much attention to the mechanics of driving. If you drive a familiar route, you don't think about how to get there. You use this time deciding what to have for dinner, where to go to college, who to vote for. If driving weren't habitual, there's no way Joe Example could talk on the phone while he drives. In fact, if the mechanics of driving required attention, it could be dangerous if some hazard on the road also required attention. One could go on and on listing habits that make life easier.

No system, including our deliberative mind and our primitive faculties, can perform flawlessly in an uncertain environment. In the Stanford marshmallow example, preschoolers are given one marshmallow and told that if they wait to eat until the researcher returns, they will get another. Half the kids eat their marshmallow too soon. To Marcus, this is as an example of flawed decision-making. However, when a bet (eating your marshmallow early) doesn't pay off, it doesn't necessarily make it a bad bet. To the children, there is no guarantee that the mysterious marshmallow man will return and no guarantee that one of their classmates won't steal their first marshmallow while they wait. In other words, it wasn't necessarily flawed decision-making.

Strangely, Marcus implies that the selfish gene theory cannot explain unsafe sex. Unsafe sex is a textbook example of the selfish-gene theory, in which the survival of the organism is secondary to the survival of the genes. Unsafe sex makes babies who have the genes of the parents who had the unsafe sex -- presumably on an airport luggage carousel. Society may frown on this, but the survival mechanism is transparent. Referring to the way primitive faculties influence us, Marcus says that "no sensible engineer would have designed things this way." No engineer, sensible or not, has designed anything that could replace the human brain, even if they would.

And if a sensible engineer wouldn't design a brain this way, how would he do it?

Russell Beckley is a musician, writer and part-time stay-at-home dad in Ely, Nev.

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