Ergo, our present heads are crammed full of systemic error, bias, and delusion because for most of the time in our past, it he lped.
So where does all this lead? Modular mind, interpreter module, mental rules of thumb, etc. Why does it all matter? It matters because we are making (or rather, not seeing and avoiding) major decisions that will have major impacts on our future and that of other species. We're doing this while being subject to a very long list of nontrivial cognitive biases; There are hundreds of major ones, thousands of minor ones, with new ones being frequently uncovered 48 . Mostly we don’t know that these departure s from truth and rationality exist, much less correct for them. In the following sections, we’ll highlight some prominent human brain biases relevant to our future. TaaL: The problem is, all those savannah-evolved systemic errors, biases, and delusions are still in your brains, constantly churning away in the modules that evolved to execute them. Your core brain doesn’t know it, but you are no longer on the savannah, existing in small tribes: you now grasp in your species’ hands all of earth’s ecosystems a nd are shaking them. This new context makes formerly useful delusions counterproductive. And, at larger scales, the fact that you’re all wired for the very same biases and delusions means that you tend to agree with one another about your incorrect opinions and conclusions . This makes much of the current risks to the real world effectively invisible to you and makes imaginary threats seem real. As a species you are mostly self-blind. The Bottom Line: Our thought processes are deeply affected by a list of cognitive biases as long as your arm.
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