Why Smart People Hurt. Eric Maisel

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      OUR EXPERIMENTAL MODEL

      Human beings are products of nature, and nature neither does nor can aim for perfection. Perfection is not a word that makes sense in the context of evolution. Nature merely tries things out—that is all it can do. It allows life to evolve, which is a lovely, process-oriented way to produce not perfection but endless variety. It tries out this fly and that fly, this virus and that virus. Some endure, some vanish, and each in its own way is merely yet another of nature's experiments.

      We are not designed.

      Nature creates a creature like us, gives us a super-sized, experimental brain, and tries out thinking. What a fascinating capacity with which to aid or burden a creature! Since the goal of nature is not to create perfection but rather to create functionality within a context, you would naturally expect an immense, wild, and flawed capacity like thinking to come with a set of profound repercussions and challenges. That is indeed what we see—and it's a sort of proof that we are not designed but rather have evolved into existence.

      If you suppose that you are created by design and created well, then, like any good machine, each of your parts would have a clear design purpose and would function admirably. If, by contrast, you believe that you are a member of a species that has evolved and that you have been made by the forces of nature and not by a designer's hand, then you have much less reason to be sanguine about the excellent functionality of your brain. It is simply another experiment among nature's billions—and how many experiments actually pan out?

      Complicated experiments like us are bound to produce countless unintended consequences and functional shortfalls. It is one thing to evolve a spoon—you will likely do a pretty good job of it and might even succeed on the first try. It is another thing to evolve a blender/mixer that can turn fruit into smoothies and also knead bread dough. Experimentation will naturally produce many excellent spoons and also produce many blenders that don't mix well as well as many mixers that don't blend well. In one, the motor will prove powerful enough to blend but not powerful enough to knead; in another, the bread hook will prove the wrong shape to create a dough ball; and so on.

      This is likewise true of the experiment that is our species. Our apposite thumb perhaps works nicely, like any good spoon might, but our brain? As fancy and complicated as it is, does it work that well? We have the brainpower and the brain style that we have, running across a spectrum of capacities and embedded in a spectrum of personalities. For each individual, his or her experimental brain may work beautifully in some circumstances and in some applications and less well in other circumstances and in other applications. This is exactly what we see.

      Because it is maybe the most complicated component of the most complicated experiment nature has yet tried, our brain will naturally produce many artifacts and inadvertent consequences. It may, for example, produce a desire to do certain intellectual work that in fact it isn't capable of doing. That is, it may produce a smart gap. It may, for the sake of ease and survival, reduce its understanding of the world to slogans that do not match up with the complexity of reality. It may spin out of control or find itself held hostage to some unimportant worry that can't be shaken.

      Perhaps the next model will do better.

      But perhaps no model can effectively do what a brain is supposed to do. Once you let a brain think and allow it to try to predict its future and its place in the universe, once you give it meaning needs and identity needs and relational needs and ego needs—once, that is, you put it in what may be an untenable relationship to the facts of existence, what bit of organic matter can really do much with such implausible demands? It is not just that our brain is an experimental model. It has also been given impossible tasks. To take just one example, predicting the future is a necessary part of its game, and the best model imaginable still wouldn't be equal to that impossible challenge.

      We have gotten it into our heads that our species is both the final model and equal to its tasks. Neither is necessarily or logically true, and the evidence of our eyes suggests the opposite. Of course, we can't wait for the next model; nor in many important senses can we change our tasks. But we can take a kinder view of our species, as one not built well enough to handle what it has been tasked to handle, and also a tougher view, demanding of our species that it look at its shortfalls and do what it can to rise above them.

      Can we do this? Can we take this tougher view and actually do a better job? How good a job should we expect our experimental brain to do as it tries to distinguish between genuine appetites and psychological cravings or between concern and overconcern? Maybe we can expect it to master basic literacy, if it is given a chance at learning, but should we expect it to see through a sophisticated advertising campaign designed to send it to war? Why do we suppose that our brain can look into the future and pick a profession that it will actually love and enjoy for decades—or, perhaps more poignantly, even know what to do with itself for the next fifteen minutes? How well can brains do these things?

      We have taken for granted the idea that our brain is equal to life's challenges. But on the one hand the challenges may be too great, and on the other hand our brain may not be designed adequately. As it presently stands, nature has created a brain that thinks it can perform frankly impossible tasks. We have evolved with the ability to tax our brain with questions and challenges that it can't be expected to handle—and then to stand surprised when we see phenomena like, to name two that we'll investigate shortly, mania and insomnia.

      What might we like to see in the next model?

      Maybe that we come built with an off switch? That would be useful.

      Maybe more brain capacity across the board? That might be nice.

      Maybe that we think best under pressure—as opposed to what is currently true, namely the exact opposite? That would certainly help at test time.

      Maybe that intelligence is not distributed so widely, so that we might all be in it together, thinking the same way?

      There is no harm at playing imaginary evolutionary futurist. But if we had the job for real, we would have to ask and try to answer some very hard questions. We'd start with: What goals do we have in mind? Are we thinking of what would improve the life of a given individual (whatever we might mean by improve), or are we contemplating what would be most likely to ensure that our species survives? For example, a worldwide tyranny might guarantee that the species would never wipe itself out through nuclear war, since all the weapons would be in the hands of one tyrant. So you might have limited freedom and tremendous terror but also a very robust, vibrant species from an evolutionary point of view. The