Our Social History
Will Storr: The Brain Is a Status-Seeking Storyteller (Email from Rebel Wisdom)
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwcjVwT-bc0&t=1s
“Connection isn’t enough for humans. We’re not happy to just connect and be likeable but useless. We want to feel of value. We want to rise up a status hierarchy.”
Will Storr is a journalist and author who has been on a long search to understand why we do what we do, the stories we tell ourselves and the reality of our motivations. Heretics, Selfie, The Science of Storytelling, and most recently The Status Game.Status: It’s our self- and other-perceived feeling of being valued – usually some kind of shared hierarchy. Like meaning, connection and purpose, status is a deep psychosocial need, and it arises from a dynamical tension that’s churned throughout our evolutionary process: we’re programmed to seek co-operative living – we can’t make it on our own – but also to jockey for higher positions, to seize our share of the best resources.
There’s a few key ways of generating status, Storr suggests: dominance (sheer aggression to show superior strength), virtue and collaboration with ‘the rules’, and success, which is defined differently across cultures. Things are often a mixture of all three, like boxing: we need to dominate our opponent, demonstrate willingness to follow the rules and not defect, and to win.
The ‘secret sauce’ of status, though, is how it relates to gossip. “Language evolved in the first place to swap gossip, because gossip is what kept our groups cooperating”, he told Rebel Wisdom. “And so, gossip networks are just big religions – that is a gossip network – but you’ve got God as the referee rather than the tribal elders. The media is a gossip network, and today the internet is a gossip network.”
“Gossip once kept our tribes together. Gossip, moral outrage, punishment, rewards for selflessness. We’re a community. When our communities became too big, we invented moralistic religions – and God took over. God was party to all the gossip and you’d get your punishment and rewards.
“After God died, the media took over. The media became our gossip network. And the media’s obsessed with high status people doing bad things and fomenting moral outrage”, he says.
“And now that’s collapsed, the internet is our gossip network. I think the internet is a terrible gossip network. It’s a disaster. You only understand how disastrous it is when you understand the desire for status across its network, and that gossip networks are essential to human society and human function. And they always have been.”
The internet has corrupted the status game for two key reasons. Thanks to much-covered and specific problems with its algorithms, the status game online has become one largely of partisan division and dunking. A healthy status game may reward the currency for kindness, consideration of others’ views and open-mindedness, but the ‘wild west’ tribalism of social media means the opposite: the Internet of Beefs, described eloquently by Venkatesh Rao. Intriguingly, Storr uncovered that even the internet’s first social media platform in the 1980s rapidly lapsed into the same problems of back-biting we see today.
All this is made worse by how we feel status on a competitive level: lower-status individuals, research shows, resent higher-status counterparts we stand a chance of competing against directly, and the internet has made the contest more immediate than ever.
Second, and more importantly, the internet – like mass media altogether – operates at a far-larger scale than we evolved to process. Those at the peaks of internet status hierarchies command so much status that they trigger another impulse: the human drive for imitation, which takes hold when we feel we can’t compete. Here, we see again both the mechanics of Venkatesh Rao’s Internet of Beefs – how the ‘mooks’ follow and quest for attention from the influencer ‘knights’ – and also the deep-seated and epidemic sense that society doesn’t value us for who we are. Compared to those at the top, what we have is so little, and it amounts perhaps to a ‘status crisis’ along the lines of the ‘meaning crisis’ described by John Vervaeke and others on Rebel Wisdom.
Status doesn’t just make its way into our behaviours, but also our beliefs. Storr relates how conspiracy thinking, vaccine-skepticism and hardline ivermectin advocacy may really be stand-ins for a deep need to feel valued. Beneath the surface, that need also relates to a more fundamental way we navigate the world as sensemakers: our sense of being first-person operators in the world on an almost-heroic journey.
“[T]he brain is the storyteller. The healthy brain tells a heroic story about the world. That’s what it wants to do. He wants to get you out of bed in the morning, get you believing that you’re morally better, that you’re right about things and turn you into the hero at the centre of the universe. And that’s what a healthy brain does. It’s slightly delusional.
“And what that means is that the brain is just very good, at uncritically accepting any fact it might come across, that flatters that heroic story and batting away any fact it might come across that threatens that.”
This has a shadow side, though. If we’re always heroes – and held in a way that we’re not conscious of – then others are always villains.
“We’re very good at blaming. We’re always very good at blaming baddies because of our stories and implying villains for the bad things that happen. You know, it was Hitler’s fault, the Second World War, and it was Mark Zuckerberg’s fault and Jack Dorsey’s fault about social media. And of course, those things are partly true, but they’re really reductionist.”
Deep History Notes
Neuro-Bauplan Vertebrata
The canonical vertebrate nervous system consists of a central and peripheral nervous system. CNS is brain and spinal cord and they interact with the PNS. The vertebrate brain is responsible for peripheral sensory and motor function of the opposite side of the body. Each half brain has a hindbrain, midbrain, and forebrain.
Hindbrain is vegetative function like respiratory, circulatory, and digestive with smooth and cardiac muscle. Midbrain and their neurons control primitive sensory-motor behavioral reflexes expressed through skeletal muscles. Neurons in the forebrain are responsible for more complex skeletal-motor behaviors, including those based on innate programming and learning, as well as those that depend on cognitive deliberation and decision making, and in some species consciousness, including conscious emotions. Functions are not, strictly speaking, carried out by areas. They consist of circuits of ensembles of neurons in one area that are connected by nerve fibers or axons to ensemble in other areas, forming functional networks. No area is sufficient by itself. Necessary but not sufficient.
Cognition
Cognition is used in relation to thinking, reasoning, planning, deciding, etc. Cognition will refer to processes that underlie the acquisition of knowledge by creating internal representations of external events and storing them as memories that can later be used in thinking, reminiscing, and musing, and when behaving. Its dependence on internal representations of things and events, in the absence of the external referent of the representation, is what makes cognition different from noncognitive forms of information processing.
Pavlovian conditioning is present in all classes of vertebrates, as well as in many bilateral invertebrates, including deuterostomes and protostomes, and even radial cnidarians. Some evidence also exists that it is a capability of plants, protozoa, and even bacteria. They use molecular changes within their cells instead of synaptic plasticity.
Habits work well when the environment and resources are stable. When it is volatile and resources are unpredictable, it is useful to respond flexibly on the basis of opportunities available to satisfy current needs, depending on what worked recently in similar situations. The capacity to use internal representations of goals to flexibly respond to changing environmental situations is far more limited, only clearly having been shown in mammals, and to some extent, birds.
Behavioral Flexibility
Trial and error learning enhances fitness by selecting adaptive behaviors in a single animal, much like natural selection enhances the fitness of the species through the genetic selection of adaptive body traits. Behaviors can be learned in novel situations when they have beneficial outcomes, such as obtaining food or drink when energy or fluid supplies are low, or preventing pain or other harm in the face of danger.
Hedonic states are tied to sensory receptors that detect particular kinds of stimuli. While pleasure and pain are often treated as emotions, they are actually different. There are no sensory receptors for fear, anger, sadness, joy, or other emotions – the content is determined by the brain. The stimulus suggests but does not determine an emotional experience.
The conscious feeling of pain or pleasure when receptors are active is one of many consequences of the sensory signals that reach the brain. They also elicit reflexes or other innate reactions, increase brain arousal, motivate instrumental behaviors, and reinforce learning. Distraction can cause less pain in chronic pain patients even though the nociceptors are still responding. Only subjective pain changes. Addictive drugs are causing compulsive use because they are hijacking the habit circuits, not because of the pleasure they feel. If the responses depend on the unconditioned stimulus being a valuable outcome at the moment, then the response is goal directed; otherwise, it is a habit.
Learning by consequence only requires that the learning agent has a way to create a representation of its last action, its state when it chose that action, and the payoff received (value of outcome). Value in this context is not an emotion or feeling, but simply a quantitative representation of the payoff. Dopamine strengthens connections in the brain during these situations.
Deliberation
A new experience requires a new round of trial and error learning. However, when life and wellbeing is on the line, random, untested options may pay off or produce potentially fatal consequences. This led to the capacity of inner deliberation in mammals.
Deliberation allows one to envision possible response options and to use practical knowledge stored in memory to evaluate and choose the one that seems most likely to produce a useful outcome. Using disparate pieces of information they can rapidly reach a decision through many repetitions of trial and error simulated internally. If you were trapped by a bear and had never been before, you could draw upon practical reasoning based on general knowledge about a similar situation. Deliberative action is effortful rather than automatic. It is related o outcome-dependent actions, in that they are flexible and goal-orientated, but responses are not based on historical relation between firsthand experience. Instead it mentally simulates possible future outcomes when planning and strategizing about how to accomplish a goal. Some previous habits and actions may have to be suppressed if a novel action is to be taken.
Deliberation is said to utilize mental models. Spatial map models are useful for most animals when accumulating knowledge in relation to landmarks. In deliberate cognition, these maps are not passively followed. They can be used to generate and compare options. Humans get a cognitive boost to their deliberative cognition via language.
Executive functions are prospective – they make deliberative predictions about possible future states of the world in the process of achieving goals. The cognitive activities used to achieve goals often involved many steps, over time. This is done by selecting and integrating information, dynamically updating what is being processed depending on progress toward the goal, and making adjustments when unforeseen obstacles occur.
Two key features of working memory are its ability to temporarily maintain representations and to integrate diverse kinds of representations into new unified representations. The limit of items is low so you can bundle information to store greater quantities. Bundles of stored information (memories) about related items are called schema. Updating a schema to become more elaborate is a process called assimilation. If subsequent experience contradicts the theme of a schema, the schema will often change, or the contradictory event will be reinterpreted to be consistent with the schema; this is called schema accommodation.
Schema are closely related to mental models. People use schema to generate expectations about a given situation. They facilitate thought, reasoning, and decision making, enabling the assessment of opportunities and risks of different options. Aaron Beck proposed that in mental disorders, such as depression, one develops a mental model of being a sad or excessively worried person, and becomes focused on negative self-thoughts.
Schema take advantage of the ability of the brain to complete patterns from partial information, a process called pattern completion. Pattern separation is complementary to completion – knowing what something is not. We can also group broader subjects that are in relation to each other, like what a bird is to a nest.
Language
Oliver Sacks in Seeing Voices, “It is through inner speech that the child develops his own concepts and meanings; it is through inner speech, finally, that he constructs his own world.” Language does more than simply name and categorize objects and events and organize their underlying conceptions. With language also comes syntax, or grammar, which structures our mental processes and guides their operation when we are thinking, planning, and deciding. Syntax enables humans to plan actions and evaluate their consequences by anticipating many steps ahead, without performing them (a form of hierarchal reasoning). Without bringing language into deliberation, thoughts remain static and crude.
Mark Mattson described language as the quintessential example of the superior capacity of the human brain for pattern processing: “Language involves the use of patterns (symbols, words, and sounds) to code for objects and events encountered either via direct experience or communication from other individuals.” Language is the cultural tool. Early language made it possible to share knowledge about food and foes, and also other humans. Who is trustworthy and who is not or what traits made a good mate. It also allows us to transcend competition and allow cooperation, to reason about the intentions and desires of others of our kind, and to communicate with one another linguistically. Incremental learning across generations (culture).
Oren Kolodny and Shimon Edelman recently proposed that language arose by being cobbled together in early humans by way of synaptic plasticity that coupled together neural mechanisms underlying existing traits, such as nonverbal communication, serial cognition, and tool use. Once these systems were coupled it could have resulted in enhanced pattern processing, conceptual thinking, and hierarchal deliberation; communication about internal states; mind reading; gossip; and culture. If a lion could speak we wouldn’t understand it because of its frame of reference.
Human Perception
Human cognitive deliberation, mental models, schemas, pattern processing, conceptualization, hierarchical relational reasoning, language, and the like are products of the kind of brain we have. To visually recognize something, its features have to match stored templates within our brain acquired by experiences with objects of that type. Meaning, the visual system partners with memory systems (which also include systems from all other sensations).
Multimodal cortical convergence areas help to form abstract conceptual memories, including aspects of schema, that enhance and supplement processing by unimodal areas. Language also involves multimodal areas. Wernicke’s, in the parieto-temporal junction, and Broca’s in the frontal lobe.
The various unimodal and multimodal areas involved in perceptual processing, memory, conception, and language all connect with the prefrontal cortex, which is a major locus of information convergence in the brain. Because it receives input from the more posterior-located unimodal and multimodal areas, its executive functions can control behavior on the basis of sensory-specific information, stored memories, or highly abstract conceptual representations.
Executive control guides the construction of temporary unimodal and multimodal representations, and maintains them in an active state that can be used in thinking, reasoning, and behavioral control. Different subsets of circuits can be recruited, via the prefrontal cortex, to solve problems on a case-by-case basis.
The top-down loops allow executive attention to temporarily maintain selected representations in an active state in the secondary visual cortex while the object is being constructed via bottom-up processing. The prefrontal cortex also receives inputs from multimodal areas that store conceptual representations, and can use them to anticipate what the object identity is likely to be, and thereby facilitate pattern completion of that identity in the secondary areas faster than would be possible by bottom-up alone.
It is worth mentioning that the prefrontal cortex is not a unified mass. Within the lateral prefrontal areas, a gradient of processing from the posterior to anterior exists, with processing becoming less stimulus-specific and more abstract in progressively more anterior regions. The gradient is defined by bottom-up processes. The more posterior areas primarily receive inputs from unimodal secondary sensory areas. Intermediate regions, like the dorsal lateral and ventral lateral PFC, receive a combination of unimodal and multi inputs; these areas exert top-down control over their posterior inputs. The frontal area only receives inputs from multimodal convergence zones, and creates the most abstract conceptual representations in the brain; it allows maintenance of long-term goals for future planning, and contributes to reasoning and problem solving. It interacts with dorsal and ventral lateral PF regions, and these together allow executive control over both unimodal (sensory) and multimodal (conceptual) processing in posterior areas, as well as control of deliberative behavior by way of connections to the motor cortex.
On the medial side, the anterior cingulate cortex, orbital, ventromedial, and dorsal medial cortical areas receive inputs from medial temporal lobe memory circuits and also from subcortical areas that process body signals, such as the amygdala and hypothalamus. The insula also has similar inputs. The medially located anterior cingulate cortex also contributes to executive functions, especially attention and monitoring of information processing itself.
Neocortex
Neocortical tissue consists of 6 layers. Paleocortical is missing layer 4 – granule cells. Key areas involved in working memory, and thus deliberative cognition, including the dorsal and ventral lateral prefrontal cortex and the frontal pole (areas containing granule cells). The frontal pole is believed to be the area that distinguishes humans from apes. Etienne Koechlin “It enables cognitive branching; the ability to put on hold an alternative course of action… requiring simultaneous engagement in multiple options that are not organized into a pre-established superordinate plan, such as reasoning, problem-solving and multitasking.” Related to hierarchal relational reasoning. Goals set in the frontal pole can then influence the dorsal lateral region, which connects to the motor cortex in the control of deliberative behavior.
Only primates have granule cells in layer 4 of the prefrontal neocortex. Earl Miller – between-layer interactions in the granule PFC are important in coordinating top-down and bottom-up processing. Humans have unique spatial arrangements of cells and unique patterns of connectivity within and between cell layers. Neurons in human PFC are more strongly interconnected with neurons in other cortical areas. Greater connectivity between PFC and parietal and temporal, and also within the PFC itself. Also, novel patterns of gene expression in the PFC, especially in relation to energy metabolism and synapse formation. Todd Preuss, “Rewired and running hot.”
Some of the novel aspects of human cognition are prone to malfunction in conditions such as autism and schizophrenia. They have not fully been tested by natural selection for their fitness, and may be more susceptible to genetic perturbation than older, more established traits.
Broca’s and Wernicke’s are in apes but ours have the pattern and strength of connectivity between them. They are interconnected with multimodal areas in the parietal, temporal, and frontal lobes. As mentioned before, the ability to use language in hierarchal relational reasoning (cognitive branching) depends on working memory executive functions of the PFC. Language would have evolved in steps but required mammalian cognitive processes like being able to focus attention on external stimuli, form memories about them, and to use the memories as internal representations to guide behavior in the absence of the actual stimulus. Working memory gives a power boost to holding more info while deliberating.
In the end, we aren’t that different. We may prefer the way we live but in the end there is no scale, other than survivability. If species longevity is the measure, we will never do better than ancient unicellular organisms.
The frontal pole is well suited for high-level conceptual processing and is, in fact, generally considered to have the greatest capacity of any brain area for conceptual processing. Thus, dorsal lateral and ventral lateral PFC areas are higher-order anatomically with respect to posterior unimodal and multimodal processing areas, and the frontal pole is higher order with respect to all of these. Task specific goals are thought to be related to DLPFC and FP to long-term goals and in cognitive multitasking and hierarchal reasoning.
The author proposes that emotions are human specializations made possible by unique capacities of our brains. Our early hominid ancestors required evolved language, hierarchal relational reasoning, noetic consciousness, and reflective autonoetic consciousness. These made it possible to integrate ancient survival circuits into self-awareness, framed in terms of semantic, conceptual, and episodic memories, interpreted in terms of personalized self and emotion schema, and used to guide behavior in the present and also to plan for future emotional experiences. Making emotions the mental center of gravity for the human brain, fodder for narratives and folktales, and the basis of culture, religion, art, literature, and relations with others and our world.
Rather than being an inherited vestige of our primate or mammalian past, it may be an exaptation. Exaptations are useful traits that arise as a by-product of other traits, and because of their value, come under genetic control through natural selection. Emotions might be the result of two other exaptations:
Language – Kolodny and Edelman suggested it arose from synaptic plasticity that coupled neural mechanisms underlying nonverbal communication, serial cognition, and tool use.
Language may have enabled autonoesis (awareness of “self as subject,” as opposed to “self as object”). Emotions, being a form of autonoesis, were then inevitable as conscious experiences of one’s self in biologically or psychologically significant situations in life. Biological are tied to survival circuits and psych lack a fundamental connection.
This doesn’t mean there are no connections to our animal history, since the most fundamental emotions are those to which ancient survival circuits contribute. But, they do not define the content of emotional experience.
Humans can attribute value to things. Meaning they can ask, “How dangerous is this threat to me?” Other animals can represent value but only humans can make it personal. In this sense, an emotion is the experience that something of value is happening to you.
Just because emotions and self-awareness are unique to humans, it doesn’t make animals primitive reflex machines. Even humans undergo nonconscious cognitive and behavioral routines. Thinking pets have the mental capacity we do is fun in normal life, but not in science.