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<\/a><\/p>\nFor the majority of\u00a0our experiences, what we feel about our interactions with the world is massively out of step with what’s actually going on. As we talked about last time, most of our actions are actually guided by automatic systems, without any real conscious override or control. Nevertheless, we ascribe conscious control (or choice) to these actions post hoc, assuming that if we did it we must have been in control, by\u00a0creating a fake narrative (rationalisation) that backs up the\u00a0assumption. We go to great lengths to maintain this fiction; even when we’re caught out and questioned about our actions, we’ll usually make up some sort of reason that we’re perfectly happy to believe, but that is actually 100% BS.<\/p>\n
In other words, most of what you (and I) think, feel, say, and do, aren’t generated by you (or me). They are\u00a0actually the result of automated, nonconscious systems, the majority of which evolved for the purpose of keeping you alive in dangerous situations. They act independently of conscious control for several reasons. First, there’s no need for consciousness to get involved in a lot of survival decisions; consciousness is slow and neurologically expensive to run (both potential problems for short-term survival which relies on fast, efficient processing). Second, whilst consciousness can get hung up on the “right” decision, when it comes to\u00a0survival a “good enough” approach is good enough. These heuristical approaches work well enough in the short term (it’s better to make minor errors than to die trying to figure out a plan) – consciousness can then kick in and analyse the outcome (once we’re safe). For modern humans who retain the same brains as our ancestors, these processes still occur for most\u00a0our experiences. Just because our environment has changed doesn’t mean that the system acts differently.<\/p>\n
So, if most of our actions really are guided by automatic systems, why are we so desperate to create a narrative of personal control?\u00a0Why do we insist that we’re in control of the automatic systems, when they’re actually in control of us? There are probably several reasons – let’s take a look at the candidates.<\/p>\n
First up, we all suffer from what psychologists like to call the “integrated-self illusion”. For you (and me), it feels like there’s just “you” in your head. Put another way, when you have a thought, a feeling, or a sensation, or when you find yourself acting in a particular way, our natural assumption is that we generated that thought, feeling, or action. We say things like “I think that” or “I feel that”. We then follow up with narratives like “when she said X, and I felt Y, I chose to say Z”. But in reality it’s more like “when she said X, several\u00a0automatic systems interpreted the incoming information and responded with output Y, resulting in action Z (which I had nothing to do with)”. So, despite the fact that we have little or no agency over the majority of our brain activity, we simply assume that we do – meaning that it never occurs to us to question this assumption.<\/p>\n
Following on from the integrated-self illusion, is our inherent need to ascribe a conscious motive to our actions, even though\u00a0unconscious systems provide the impetus for most of our behaviours. Like you, I want to know why I do things, especially those things that I’m driven to. Humans feel a deep need to ascribe meaning both to the world and to their interactions with it.\u00a0Why, for example, do I choose to mountain bike? Is it because of my supposedly deeply human “values” like challenge and mastery (read here<\/a>), or is it because of primitive drives (run by automatic systems) to attract a mate through competition with other males? I’d like to think that it’s the former, but I’ll probably never really know. Either way, humans love to ascribe a conscious, noble narrative to drives that are probably much more base (a huge factor in religion – read here<\/a> and here<\/a>).<\/p>\n When we ascribe meaning to action\u00a0it makes us feel better. The belief that we were the agents of choice and change\u00a0increases our perception of freedom (and vice versa). We feel so much better when we believe\u00a0that\u00a0we have the ability to choose (emphasis on belief – remember that belief has no relationship whatsoever to reality). Unfortunately, our desire to believe makes us terribly easy to manipulate. If we encourage the belief that a person chose a particular stance, made a certain decision, or took a certain action of their own volition, that person will experience\u00a0increased feelings of control (despite having no actual control). This makes us feel comfortable and safe.<\/p>\n We interact with social media largely because it makes us feel good (feedback loops – read here<\/a>) when people “like” our posts. In doing so, we voluntarily give huge amounts of information to predictive algorithms. There’s increasing evidence that this\u00a0information can be used to predict our behaviour with scary accuracy. With as little as several hundred Facebook “likes”, these systems can predict your behaviour substantially better than you, your best friend, or even your spouse can. With several thousand points of data, we’re\u00a0close to 100% predictable – no matter how special, unique, or random we like to believe we are. This also makes it disturbingly\u00a0easy to manipulate our\u00a0behaviour, by feeding us\u00a0with the information that we\u00a0prefer and rewarding certain types of resultant actions that correspond with the desired outcome. Remember that your preferences aren’t really yours, they’re the result of automatic systems – but because of\u00a0your personalised narrative of control, you’ll assume that you chose to like something, and that any subsequent actions were your considered choice.<\/p>\n This belief that we’re in control makes us a type of philosophical zombie<\/a>.\u00a0Our shambling zombie unconscious makes us all scarily similar: eating, shitting, procreating machines, which default to short-term survival over long-term analysis. This means that free will is probably an illusion, and that it’s unlikely that we can ever truly be in control of our actions. There is some good news in this morass of meaninglessness, however. We can, at least, develop some awareness of the automatic systems, even if we can’t control them. In other words, we can learn “meta-awareness”: the ability to observe both our internal qualia and our external actions. In doing so, we can learn to (potentially) intervene, both in some of our decision making, and in our resultant actions.<\/p>\n