Kluge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind

INDEX

accountability, 170 adaptation, 137-38 ADD (attention deficit disorder), 147 addictions, 126-27, 130-155 advertising, 81-83 agoraphobia, 151 Ali, Muhammad, 141 Allen, Woody, 118, 139 Allman, John, 12-14 alternative hypotheses, 165 ambiguity, 96,98 context and, 100-101, 164-65 sentence structure and, 118-21 types of, i2on ancestral (reflexive) system. See reflexive vs. deliberative systems anchoring belief and, 46-48 choice and, 80-81 anecdotal evidence, 171 anxiety, 154

Apollo 13, 2

Aristotle, 6, 124, 175

articulation, 106, 107-9 auto accidents, 147 awareness of origins of beliefs, 40-43 of stupid choices, 86-87

Bargh, John, 25 Bayes, Rev. Thomas, 6n Bayesian optimality, 6-7 belief awareness of origins of, 40-43 biased reasoning and, 53-57 components of, 65 contextual memory and, 43-46 hearing and, 65-67 irrationality and, 57-60, 64-65 logic and, 60-62 mental contamination and, 43-51 perception and, 65-67 reflexive vs. deliberative systems and, 51-53 Berra, Yogi, 67 bipolar disorder, 157-58 brain. See neural substrates “brain farts,” 144

Brown, Derren, 2on Brown, James Cooke, 104-5 Buridan’s Ass, 171-72 Bush, George W., 58, 87 Buss, David, 8

Cage, John, i34n Candid Camera (TV show), 69-70 Carr, Harvey, 22, 24 Carter, Jimmy, 91 categorization, and memory, 27-29 center embeddings, 116-18 Cheever, John, 127 children education of, 172-76 happiness of parents and, i36n temptations and, 69-70,143 choice. See decision making Chomsky, Noam, 102, 114-16 Christmas Club accounts, 76 Christmas truce anecdote, 90-91 Cialdini, Robert, 80 co-articulation, 109-10,122 cognitive dissonance, 141-42 cognitive load, 145-46 computers errors and, 145, 147 languages of, 103-4, 113 memory stacks in, 31-32, ii9n postal-code memory and, 20-21 confirmation bias belief and, 53-55 mental illness and, 155-60 contextual memory belief and, 43-46 benefits of, 21-22, 36-39 choice and, 81-84 confirmation bias and, 54-55

frequency and, 31-32, 37 gist vs. detail and, 28-29, 37 interference and, 25-27 liabilities of, 23-34,36 mental illness and, 156-58 priming and, 24-26 recency and, 31-34, 37, 45-46 recursion in language and, 116-18 refraining and, 165-66 revision and, 29-30 tricks for coping with, 34-36 contingency plans, 168 control, quest for happiness and, 131-33 correlation vs. causation, 166 Cosmides, Leda, 7 cost-benefit analysis, 169 counterfactual thinking, 165 creationism, 59n, 162-63. See also intelligent design credit cards, 85 Crick, Francis, ii5n Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly, 123

Dallaire, Roméo, 32n Daly, Martin, 8 Darwin, Charles, 12, 162 Dawkins, Richard, 8, 9-10 daydreaming, 146-47 decision making. See also rational choice theory contextual memory and, 81-84 expected utility and, 70-71, 73-75, 78 moral choices and, 90-92 reaching and, 70-73 strategies for improving, 165,16872

sunk costs and, 77-78 temptation and, 69-70, 76-77, 87-90 defense mechanisms, 139. See also motivated reasoning deliberative system, 51-53. See also reflexive vs. deliberative systems belief and, 60 decision making and, 87-94 language and, 113 Dennett, Dan, 16 depression failures of reasoning and, 157-60 hidden benefits and, 151-52,153 ruminative cycle and, 157-58 detail, memory for, 27-29 Dijksterhuis, Ap, 94 disconfirming evidence, 54 DNA, 6, 59n

education system, 172-76 elegance, 11,114-15 emotions decision making and, 87-90 neural substrates of, 143 Esperanto, 101-2 evolution belief and, 65-67, 68 decision making and, 72, 75-76, 84 kluge as product of, 12-14 language and, 111 mental malfunction and, 151-55 of mind, 14-17 perfection and, 9-11, 162-64 evolutionary inertia, 12-15, 84-87 evolutionary psychology, 7-9,15

mental disorders and, 151-55 explanation, human need for, 159 eye, 5,10 eyewitness testimony, 2,28-29

false memory, 26-27 familiarity, 48-51,134-35. See also recency Ferreira, Fernanda, 121 Festinger, Leon, 141-42 Fischer, Ernst, 164 Fitzgerald, F. Scott, 137 flashbulb memories, 27 focusing illusion, 44,51 Fogerty, John, 110 food choices about, 83, 84-85 familiarity and, 49 pleasure and, 125,128 thinking about money and, 75-76 forebrain, 13 Forer, Bertram, 40 framing. See also anchoring choice and, 81-83 personalized, 82n reframing and, 165-66 free association, 38 Freud, Sigmund, 37,38,124,140 Fromkin, Vicki, 95n “full matching,” logic of, 111 future discounting, 84-87,149

Gage, Phineas, 92 generics, 112-13 Get Smart (TV show), 115 Gilbert, Daniel, 65-66,135-36 Gladwell, Malcolm, 94 Glass, Ira, 66

goals anxiety and, 154 contingency plans and, 168 distraction from, 146-47 memory and, 31-32 procrastination and, 147-49 short- vs. long-term, 170-71 Gollwitzer, Peter, 168 Gould, Stephen Jay, 17,162 grammar. See also language ambiguity and, 118-21 recursion and, 115-18 Granholm, Jackson, 4 Groopman, Jerome, 15

The Hacker’s Dictionary of Computer Jargon, 3 Haidt, Jonathan, 91-92 halo effect, 42-43,51 happiness. See also pleasure definitions of, 123-24,126 prediction of, 135-38 pursuit of, 138-39 Harding, Tonya, 32n Harris, Sam, 58 Haselton, Martie, 8 Heimlich maneuver, i07n Hemingway, Ernest, 137-38 hemoglobin, 10 Hildegard of Bingen, 101 hindbrain, 13 Hitler, Adolf, 60 Hobbes, Thomas, 84 Holmes, Sherlock, 131 Homo economicus, 70 homosexuality, 129-30,150 human body, as imperfect, 5-6 human genome, 14

hyperbolic discounting curve, 84 hypernormal stimuli, 132

imperfections. See also memory, common quirks of; mental contamination; mental errors in evolution, 10-11 in human body, 5-6 in language, 95-101 value of, 163-64 infanticide, 8 inference belief and, 62-64, 65 logic and, 60-62 memory errors and, 37-39 reconstruction and, 33 information belief and, 65-67 pleasure and, 130-31 reasoning skills and, 173-74 intelligent design, 1, 162-63. See also creationism interference, and memory, 25-27. See also mental contamination Internet, 82n, 130, 173-74 iPod, 105, 107

Jackendoff, Ray, 116 Jacob, François, 12 Jost, John, 51

Kahneman, Daniel, 46,93 Kasun, Bob, 5on Keillor, Garrison, 141 kluge, concept of in engineering, 2-3, 4-5, 13-14 mind and, 6-7, 13, 14-17 in nature, 5-6,16-17

origin of term, 3-4 value of imperfections and, 163

64 Kuhn, Deanna, 173 Kunda, Ziva, 55-57

l’Académie française, 100 language ambiguity in, 96, 98, 100-101, 118-21, 164-65 attempts to systematize, 101-3,

104-5 change and, 110-12 formal structure of, 113-21 irregularities in, 1,15,95-101,121

22 neural substrates of, 13 as perfect, 114-16 as source of truth, 65-67 sources of idiosyncrasy in, 105 speech sounds and, 105-10,122 word meanings and, 110-13, 114

Lappin, Shalom, 114 larynx, 106-7 law of large numbers, 167 Lederer, Richard, 1 Lerner, Melvyn, 142 Leslie, Sarah-Jane, 113 Levine, Linda, 30 Loewenstein, George, 89 Loftus, Elizabeth, 28-29 logical reasoning, 60-62. See also

decision making

belief and, 62-64

decision making and, 87-90

language and, 111

sorites paradox and, 99-100 Loglan (language), 104-5

losing touch with reality, 155-58.See also mental illness Lovell, Jim, 2 Luria, Alexander, 63

machine translation, ii9n manic depression. See bipolar disor

der Mann, Merlin, 24 Marx, Chico, 65 memorization, 35,173 memory, 18-39. See also contextual

memory common quirks of, 18-20,31-34 in people vs. computers, 19-24 as unconscious, 24-25

mental contamination, 43-51 mental errors, 144-49 mental illness, 149-60

context and, 15m evolutionary psychology and, 151 55 recurring patterns in, 149-51 mere familiarity effect. See familiarity metacognition, 176 method of loci, 34 midbrain, 13 Mies van der Rohe, Ludwig, 71 Mill, John Stuart, 6 Miller, Geoffrey, 133 Miller, George, 130 mind. See also neural substrates; reflexive vs. deliberative systems improvement of reasoning skills and, 165-72 as kluge, 6-7,13,14-17

mind (cont.) as optimal, 6-9 reflexive vs. deliberative systems in, 51-53 Mischel, Walter, 69-70 mnemonic devices, 34-36 money evolution and, 75-76 induced lust for, 76n relative thinking about, 73-75,78 moral choice, 90-92, rjon moral dumbfounding, 91-92 mortality salience, 50,172 motivated reasoning belief and, 55-57 mental illness and, 155-60 pleasure and, 139-43 music, 133-34

Nash, Ogden, 110 naturalistic fallacy, 164 natural selection. See evolution Nesse, Randolph, 124,127 neural substrates ancestral vs. deliberative system and, 13,51,142-43 logical reasoning and, 63 moral choices and, 92 pleasure and, 142-43 Nilsson, Harry, 56 Nisbett, Richard, 167 nonhuman primates, 14,116 nucleus accumbens, 143

objectivity confirmation bias and, 53-55 motivated reasoning and, 55-57 subjective impressions and, 45

onomatopoeia, 108 opportunity costs, 169 optimization, 6-9 Orgel, Leslie, 16 Orwell, George, 29-30 others, attitudes toward familiarity and, 50 happiness and, 125,142 overgeneralization, 159-60

paralinguistic information, 114, 119-21 paranoia, 156 parentheses, 120n “partial matching,” logic of, 111-12 perception belief and, 65-67 choice and, 89 perfection evolutionary history and, 9-11, 16-17, 162-63 human language and, 96-101, 113-16 value of imperfections and, 16364 Perkins, David, i74n Perot, Ross, 30 personalization, 159-60 Pew Research Center, 2007 survey, 58 “Philosophy for Children” curriculum, 175-76 phonation, 106 phonemes, 109-10 physical disorders, beneficial, 152 Pinker, Steven, 7, 36, 116, 135 Piraha (Amazonian language), 113 “pitchfork effect,” 42

Plato, 101 pleasure context and, 138-39 duration of, 135-38 evolution of, 124-27,128-35 mental illness and, 158-59 self-deception and, 139-43 “pleasure technologies,” 135 poetry, 38, 97n, 164 pointing-at-circles task, 71-72 Pollyanna (Porter), 55 Porter, Eleanor, 55 positive priming effect, 124 “postal-code memory” in computers, 20-21 human cognition and, 31-34,36 prefrontal cortex, 142-43 Premack, David, 116 The Price Is Right (TV show), 78n priming. See also framing belief and, 43-44 contextual memory and, 23,24, 25 decision making and, 88-89 pleasure and, 124 for rationality, 172 prioritization, 22 prisoner’s dilemma, 88-89 procrastination, 147-49 Proust, Marcel, 24,25 Pullum, Geoff, 121

quantifiers, 112-13

Rachlin, Howard, 85-86 rational choice theory evolution and, 72, 75-76, 84 reaching and, 70-71

relative sense of value and, 73-75, 78-80 sunk costs and, 77-78 weakness of the will and, 76-77 reaching, 71-73 reasoning power, improvement of, 165-72 recency belief and, 45-46 contextual memory and, 31-34, 37,45-46 reconstruction techniques, 33 recursion, 115-18 redundancy, 97, 98-99 reflexive vs. deliberative systems, 51-53 addiction and, 155 contingency plans and, 168 decision making and, 86-88, 92-94 language and, 113 mental disorders and, 155-60 mental errors and, 145-46 pleasure and, 123-24, 128, 134, 142-43 religion, 58-59 remnants of history, notion of, 1,162 respiration, 106 Roediger, Henry, 37 Rommel, Erwin, 60 Rubin, Robert, 165 ruminative cycle, 157-58 Russell, Bertrand, 97

sample size, 167 satisficing, 11 Schacter, Dan, 37 schizophrenia, 151,158

scientific thinking bias and, 55 education in, 175-76 self-control addictions and, 126-27,130,155 future discounting and, 85-86 precommitment and, 167-68 visceral feelings and, 89-90 weakness of the will and, 69-70, 76-77, 85n self-deception. See confirmation bias; motivated reasoning self-improvement suggestions for, 165-72 sex daydreaming about, 146-47 evolution of pleasure and, 127, 129-30 lust and, 89-90 men vs. women and, 8 moral intuitions and, 91-92 music and, 133~34 reasons for having, i24n sickle cell anemia, 152 Simon, Herb, 11 Simpson, O. J., 33,54 Smith, Adam, 6 smoking, and beliefs, 57 Smylie, Ed, 2 social approval, need for, 154-55 sociopathy, 152-53 sorites paradox, 99-100 source memory, 33-34 spacing out, 146-47 speech errors, 95 speech sounds, 105-10,122 Spinoza, Baruch de, 65-66 Spooner, Rev. William Archibald, 95

statistics, 167 Stevenson, Robert Louis, 121 Stewart, Potter, 123 sunk costs, 77-78 syllogism, 1-2, 60-62 syntactic trees, 111,116-18

television watching, 126 temptation. See self-control Thaler, Richard, 78n time complex decisions and, 170-71 memory for, 32-33 procrastination and, 1 tongue-twisters and, 108-9 tongue-twisters, 95, 108-9 Tooby, John, 7 tradeoffs, 7-9 trolley problem, 90, 91 truth, and belief, 64-67 Tuchman, Barbara, 15 Tversky, Amos, 46

uncertainty. See future discounting

vagueness, 99-100,121. See also language video games, 132 visceral feelings, and choice, 89-92 Von Rundstedt, Gerd, 60

Wason, Peter, 53-54 Wasow, Tom, 114 weakness of the will, 70,76. See also self-control Weinrich, Max, 102 Wikipedia, 70,174 Wilkins, John, 101

Wilson, Margo, 8 for quantification, 112-13 Wilson, Timothy, 135-36,171 as unsystematic, 95-96,101-3, windshield wipers, 4,144 121-22 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 111 words Zamenhof, Ludovic Lazarus, 102 logic of partial matching and, 110-12