What do you think?
Rate this book
The Robot's Rebellion: Finding Meaning in the Age of Darwin by Keith E. Stanovich (18-Oct-2005) Paperback
The idea that we might be robots is no longer the stuff of science fiction; decades of research in evolutionary biology and cognitive science have led many esteemed scientists to the conclusion that, according to the precepts of universal Darwinism, humans are merely the hosts for two replicators (genes and memes) that have no interest in us except as conduits for replication. Richard Dawkins, for example, jolted us into realizing that we are just survival mechanisms for our own genes, sophisticated robots in service of huge colonies of replicators to whom concepts of rationality, intelligence, agency, and even the human soul are irrelevant.Accepting and now forcefully responding to this decentering and disturbing idea, Keith Stanovich here provides the tools for the "robot's rebellion," a program of cognitive reform necessary to advance human interests over the limited interest of the replicators and define our own autonomous goals as individual human beings. He shows how concepts of rational thinking from cognitive science interact with the logic of evolution to create opportunities for humans to structure their behavior to serve their own ends. These evaluative activities of the brain, he argues, fulfill the need that we have to ascribe significance to human life.We may well be robots, but we are the only robots who have discovered that fact. Only by recognizing ourselves as such, argues Stanovich, can we begin to construct a concept of self based on what is truly singular about that they gain control of their lives in a way unique among life forms on Earth—through rational self-determination.
Paperback
First published May 15, 2004
43 people are currently reading
836 people want to read
About the author
Keith E. Stanovich
24 books169 followersKeith E. Stanovich is Emeritus Professor of Applied Psychology and Human Development at the University of Toronto and former Canada Research Chair of Applied Cognitive Science. He is the author of over 200 scientific articles and seven books. He received his BA degree in psychology from Ohio State University in 1973 and his PhD in psychology from the University of Michigan in 1977.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 33 reviews
July 2, 2016
The Reductionist’s Rebellion
Here is a scary thought: the world was not designed for us. We evolved through a long chain of organisms starting with bacteria. Worse, evolution is not even about improving animal bodies; it is driven by selfish genes trying to copy themselves. We are a random outcome of a process that is mechanical, mindless and purposeless, nothing but a gene copying robot. We are staring into a “Darwinian abyss” that dissolves every traditional concept of purpose, meaning and human significance.
I am sorry our genes don’t care much about us. We are also made of mindless atoms, but that does not make us mindless. This is the fallacy of reductionism. Evolutionary theory is a physical description of the development of life. It is useful for explaining that we are made of repurposed parts that don’t always work as if we were intelligently designed for today’s world. But it can say nothing about concepts such as as purpose and meaning, which emerge from the complexity of our mind.
We are even told that advances in neuroscience will destroy the very concept of a soul. I could add that we will never find heaven with a telescope. However, he is using this religious term to mean there is no single physical location for a sense of self. The fact this sense emerges from multiply subsystems does not make it less real for us, though it does account for inconsistency in our personalities.
Are Memes just another Meme?
The story about meaninglessness reaches its ultimate conclusion with the concept of the meme, the thought’s equivalent of a gene. Because ideas (memes) are replicated when shared between people, and only some survive, evolutionary theory is said to apply. Therefore, like genes, memes are more interested in being replicated than promoting the well being of their vehicles. Thus a belief may spread without necessarily being true or helping the person holding the belief, similar to junk DNA being reproduced in the genome.
The image here is that our minds are simply passive vehicles colonized by swarms of parasitic memes. The question becomes not how do people acquire beliefs, but how do beliefs acquire people.
Ah, yes, but these swarms of parasitic memes somehow produce a functioning mind that emerges from the chaos. That mind plays a large role in how memes are produced and modified. The presence of an Intelligent Designer (to coin a phrase) messes up the evolutionary model.
Does meme theory really contribute to a scientific understanding of the mind? Or is it just a cute analogy to remind us that some of our beliefs provide no value or are even harmful to us. We are promised great things for this meme but not much of value is actually delivered.
Fundamentally Polarizing
So here we are, a random accident of nature enslaved to its selfish genes, with a mind populated with empty memes, and with only an illusion of self.
The book claims that religious fundamentalists most clearly recognize the implications of evolutionary theory. I suggest they recognize a competing form of fundamentalism, with a Universal God replaced by Universal Darwinism. Instead of Original Sin we have mindless meme-dazzled robots. We are promised that revelations from evolution and neuroscience will deliver us from the hell of the Darwinian abyss.
The entire metaphor of rebelling against mindless evolution plays into the hands of the fundamentalists. People reject the science of evolutionary theory precisely because they think it will rob their lives of meaning. He worries about evolutionary knowledge being confined to an intellectual elite while his apocalyptic framing only contributes to this polarization.
I suppose the tendency to polarize is an evolutionary relict the author has failed to overcome. It is so unnecessary, because his program to use insights from evolutionary theory and neuroscience to improve our rationality is so reasonable.
Confusing Meaning in the Age of Darwin
Readers rate this book highly because it contains so many good ideas. And so it does, but they are mostly the ideas of other people. There is a lot of good insight into why our built-in instincts conflict with the needs of an advanced society. However, the author’s robot and meme imagery really does not add anything useful.
While much of the book is channeling Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett, at least the long quotations from these authors serve to remind us what good writing looks like. This book is unbelievably repetitive. For example, the non-existence of the soul is mentioned at least ten times. The final chapter reads like an all-night stimulant-induced stream of consciousness. Don’t publishers have editors anymore? Or has that meme been lost, and authors simply upload their work and press Print.
Read this book to gain insight into how our mind works. Investigate the references on what looks interesting. But think again about the metaphor.
Here is a scary thought: the world was not designed for us. We evolved through a long chain of organisms starting with bacteria. Worse, evolution is not even about improving animal bodies; it is driven by selfish genes trying to copy themselves. We are a random outcome of a process that is mechanical, mindless and purposeless, nothing but a gene copying robot. We are staring into a “Darwinian abyss” that dissolves every traditional concept of purpose, meaning and human significance.
I am sorry our genes don’t care much about us. We are also made of mindless atoms, but that does not make us mindless. This is the fallacy of reductionism. Evolutionary theory is a physical description of the development of life. It is useful for explaining that we are made of repurposed parts that don’t always work as if we were intelligently designed for today’s world. But it can say nothing about concepts such as as purpose and meaning, which emerge from the complexity of our mind.
We are even told that advances in neuroscience will destroy the very concept of a soul. I could add that we will never find heaven with a telescope. However, he is using this religious term to mean there is no single physical location for a sense of self. The fact this sense emerges from multiply subsystems does not make it less real for us, though it does account for inconsistency in our personalities.
Are Memes just another Meme?
The story about meaninglessness reaches its ultimate conclusion with the concept of the meme, the thought’s equivalent of a gene. Because ideas (memes) are replicated when shared between people, and only some survive, evolutionary theory is said to apply. Therefore, like genes, memes are more interested in being replicated than promoting the well being of their vehicles. Thus a belief may spread without necessarily being true or helping the person holding the belief, similar to junk DNA being reproduced in the genome.
The image here is that our minds are simply passive vehicles colonized by swarms of parasitic memes. The question becomes not how do people acquire beliefs, but how do beliefs acquire people.
Ah, yes, but these swarms of parasitic memes somehow produce a functioning mind that emerges from the chaos. That mind plays a large role in how memes are produced and modified. The presence of an Intelligent Designer (to coin a phrase) messes up the evolutionary model.
Does meme theory really contribute to a scientific understanding of the mind? Or is it just a cute analogy to remind us that some of our beliefs provide no value or are even harmful to us. We are promised great things for this meme but not much of value is actually delivered.
Fundamentally Polarizing
So here we are, a random accident of nature enslaved to its selfish genes, with a mind populated with empty memes, and with only an illusion of self.
The book claims that religious fundamentalists most clearly recognize the implications of evolutionary theory. I suggest they recognize a competing form of fundamentalism, with a Universal God replaced by Universal Darwinism. Instead of Original Sin we have mindless meme-dazzled robots. We are promised that revelations from evolution and neuroscience will deliver us from the hell of the Darwinian abyss.
The entire metaphor of rebelling against mindless evolution plays into the hands of the fundamentalists. People reject the science of evolutionary theory precisely because they think it will rob their lives of meaning. He worries about evolutionary knowledge being confined to an intellectual elite while his apocalyptic framing only contributes to this polarization.
I suppose the tendency to polarize is an evolutionary relict the author has failed to overcome. It is so unnecessary, because his program to use insights from evolutionary theory and neuroscience to improve our rationality is so reasonable.
Confusing Meaning in the Age of Darwin
Readers rate this book highly because it contains so many good ideas. And so it does, but they are mostly the ideas of other people. There is a lot of good insight into why our built-in instincts conflict with the needs of an advanced society. However, the author’s robot and meme imagery really does not add anything useful.
While much of the book is channeling Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett, at least the long quotations from these authors serve to remind us what good writing looks like. This book is unbelievably repetitive. For example, the non-existence of the soul is mentioned at least ten times. The final chapter reads like an all-night stimulant-induced stream of consciousness. Don’t publishers have editors anymore? Or has that meme been lost, and authors simply upload their work and press Print.
Read this book to gain insight into how our mind works. Investigate the references on what looks interesting. But think again about the metaphor.
October 17, 2014
If this book does not change your view of yourself and our culture, you are not paying attention. The thesis of the book is profound and tears away a wide range of myths we have about ourselves. I found the writing to be a bit dense. It does not flow, but it is certainly sound in science and logic. My caution to a reader is that this is well worth reading AND understanding, so take your time with it and don't let the less than stellar writing style discourage you. I almost gave it 4 stars due to the writing, but the message is so interesting, I decided not to hold that against the author.
November 11, 2012
This is one of those books that I wish half stars existed for. There are some really incredible ideas in here that unfortunately are smothered in one of the worst writing styles that it's ever been my misfortune to read. Not only does this author need an editor (and NOT a science editor) but he also needs a ghost writer who can explain complex facts in a concise readable way. It's such a shame, because I think if the book were more approachable it could potentially really get the wider culture thinking about humanity and what our goals and desires could mean. This is a game changing book, but one which is ultimately written in such a way as to make it almost impossible for all but the most dedicate lay readers persist through.
I read it (and finished it) ultimately because I promised my darling husband I would. But wow, that was much much harder than it should have been.
I read it (and finished it) ultimately because I promised my darling husband I would. But wow, that was much much harder than it should have been.
April 10, 2020
Not a good book. But has a few good ideas in it that are worth discovering in some way. Goes on way too long.
Pro:
The book has a few interesting chapters about self-control and if it exists or not. And if it exists can we use it to gain control over our reproductive wants and bad memes? A very interesting question that we really don't know that much about. Tomasello has some great papers on it but they explain how it works not how much it is responsible for. Can the self-control module really control us? We have no proof of it being the case but the hypothesis is very interesting.
Con:
As many other reviewers has said this book is badly written. I feel like there is a 100-page great book in there but most of it is rambling. I hate how it started out by stating that evolutionary psychology totally ignores the intellect part of the brain. No one in modern psychology ignores these parts of our brain. So why build a silly strawman? A strawman requires very little to take down, and very little is delivered.
This book does not really put up any evidence for self-control being a factor in our species. One of his arguments is: We do our taxes etc. - ergo our behavior is mostly intellectual control. But those arguments are not good at all. We do our taxes because we must do them. Because we can calculate things does not mean that we can imagine how we like to be and act and then live out our day like that. The arguments are weak, but some of them make very interesting thought experiments. This one is an academic dud that doesn't deliver. But since nearly all philosophy I read is worse than this I still give it a 3-star rating for its achievements as a philosophy book.
Pro:
The book has a few interesting chapters about self-control and if it exists or not. And if it exists can we use it to gain control over our reproductive wants and bad memes? A very interesting question that we really don't know that much about. Tomasello has some great papers on it but they explain how it works not how much it is responsible for. Can the self-control module really control us? We have no proof of it being the case but the hypothesis is very interesting.
Con:
As many other reviewers has said this book is badly written. I feel like there is a 100-page great book in there but most of it is rambling. I hate how it started out by stating that evolutionary psychology totally ignores the intellect part of the brain. No one in modern psychology ignores these parts of our brain. So why build a silly strawman? A strawman requires very little to take down, and very little is delivered.
This book does not really put up any evidence for self-control being a factor in our species. One of his arguments is: We do our taxes etc. - ergo our behavior is mostly intellectual control. But those arguments are not good at all. We do our taxes because we must do them. Because we can calculate things does not mean that we can imagine how we like to be and act and then live out our day like that. The arguments are weak, but some of them make very interesting thought experiments. This one is an academic dud that doesn't deliver. But since nearly all philosophy I read is worse than this I still give it a 3-star rating for its achievements as a philosophy book.
April 30, 2011
An incredibly complex and truly contemporary endeavor to analyze the self, cognition and human rationality. Admirable is the author's intent to provide solutions applicable on an individual level for problems regarding modern day features of existence in a society and reality that is focused more on propagating itself than on considering individual goals, interests and holistic well being. The quality of writing, reasoning and peer reference is excellent, although the book might appear a bit too cold and gritty to a neophyte or to someone looking for an emotional read.
Want to read
August 6, 2017Recommended by Julia Galef on the Ezra Klein Show podcast: Julia Galef on how to argue better and change your mind more [Stitcher, iTunes, Overcast] along with Seeing like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed and Language, Truth, and Logic.
December 2, 2012
Goddamnit, this one fell of my bike before I was finished. The chapters I had read were interesting and I was just about to start on the really juicy last two chapters. If anyone finds this in Malmö please lend it to me so that I can finish it :].
August 31, 2019
Partially a development from the work of Richard Dawkins
This book is largely about what psychologist Keith Stanovich sees as the disconnect in the postmodern world between "maximizing genetic fitness and maximizing the satisfaction of human desires." (p. xiii) On the one hand we have the "replicators," the genes that blindly seek only their replication. On the other hand we have the vehicle (the phenotype), i.e., "us," which carries the genes, which Stanovich believes should seek its own happiness. He sees our brain as composed of two overlapping, but sometimes divergent, systems. One, the more primitive, he calls "The Autonomous Set of Systems" (TASS) and the other he calls an "analytic system." He calls this having "two minds in one brain."
The autonomous system is held on a "short leash" by the genes while the analytic system is on a longer leash; that is, TASS reacts to events in the environment almost automatically in close concert with the dictates of the replicators while the analytic system is more removed from innate drives and can analyze situations rationally and can act in terms of what is good for the vehicle rather than what promotes the replication of the genes. Note that these systems usually are in agreement and react to the environment in the same way. Threats to the well-being of the vehicle from predators and other dangers, signal the same avoidance behavior. However, sometimes there is a conflict. The example that Stanovich uses is TASS's need to flirt with the boss's wife, which might increase the replication of the genes, while the analytic system realizes that such behavior probably goes against the best interests of the vehicle (possible loss of job, etc.). Following the counsel of the rational analytic system instead of the urgings of TASS is what Stanovich calls "maximizing goal satisfaction at the level of the whole organism." (p. 64)
The title of the book comes from Richard Dawkins (and indeed this book is written in partial reaction to and in concert with Dawkins's ideas) who called organisms "survival machines" and "gigantic lumbering robots" in his famous opus, The Selfish Gene (1976). Stanovich wants to free us from the dictates of those selfish genes and so has constructed a "robot's rebellion." He believes we can use our rationality (our analytic system) to override the sometimes self-destructive inclinations of the more primitive set of brain systems. Stanovich is preeminently a rationalist and believes that right thought leading to right behavior will lead to a more fulfilling and happier life for the "robots." We need to be on the long leash from the genes, not the short leash, is his idea.
A strong point that Stanovich makes very well is that in the information societies of the modern world many of the talents that served us well in the Environment of Evolutionary Adaptiveness in the Pleistocene are "worthless" when (e.g.) trying to use "an international ATM machine with which you are unfamiliar" or when "arguing with your HMO about a disallowed medical procedure." (p. 124) He argues strongly that corporations and governments, through their advertising and propaganda, have become very good at exploiting blind spots in our more primitive brain systems and getting us to do what is good for them and not necessarily good for us. I think this is correct, and that those of us who can see how the players in the modern economy are trying to use us for their benefit will avoid most of the more obvious traps and thereby increase our standard of living and presumably our chances for happiness.
Stanovich devotes a chapter to criticizing evolutionary psychologists for failing "to develop the most important implication of potential mismatches between the cognitive requirements of the EEA and those of the modern world," as he carefully phrases it on page 131. Nonetheless the psychology presented here is mainly a synthesis of cognitive psychology, brain science and evolutionary psychology and as such represents the latest in our attempt to understand ourselves.
He also devotes a chapter to the effects that another kind of replicator, the meme, has on our lives. I don't have the space to go into his ideas about memes and their implications, but I want to say that from my point of view the word "meme" is an approximate neologism for the word "idea." However, I think that it is a useful coinage and, like Stanovich's mind dualism, facilitates a new way of looking at and talking about how our brains work.
While I think this is an extremely interesting book that goes a long way toward showing us the sort of thinking that characterizes postmodern psychology, I must point out that Stanovich's mind dualism is a construct that, while based on his interpretation of recent findings, is nonetheless just that: a construct that will be refined as time goes by and eventually overturned for a new construct. As always in science we are increasing our understanding and expanding our knowledge as we move toward a final understanding that will most likely always lie tantalizingly in the distance.
--Dennis Littrell, author of “Understanding Evolution and Ourselves”
This book is largely about what psychologist Keith Stanovich sees as the disconnect in the postmodern world between "maximizing genetic fitness and maximizing the satisfaction of human desires." (p. xiii) On the one hand we have the "replicators," the genes that blindly seek only their replication. On the other hand we have the vehicle (the phenotype), i.e., "us," which carries the genes, which Stanovich believes should seek its own happiness. He sees our brain as composed of two overlapping, but sometimes divergent, systems. One, the more primitive, he calls "The Autonomous Set of Systems" (TASS) and the other he calls an "analytic system." He calls this having "two minds in one brain."
The autonomous system is held on a "short leash" by the genes while the analytic system is on a longer leash; that is, TASS reacts to events in the environment almost automatically in close concert with the dictates of the replicators while the analytic system is more removed from innate drives and can analyze situations rationally and can act in terms of what is good for the vehicle rather than what promotes the replication of the genes. Note that these systems usually are in agreement and react to the environment in the same way. Threats to the well-being of the vehicle from predators and other dangers, signal the same avoidance behavior. However, sometimes there is a conflict. The example that Stanovich uses is TASS's need to flirt with the boss's wife, which might increase the replication of the genes, while the analytic system realizes that such behavior probably goes against the best interests of the vehicle (possible loss of job, etc.). Following the counsel of the rational analytic system instead of the urgings of TASS is what Stanovich calls "maximizing goal satisfaction at the level of the whole organism." (p. 64)
The title of the book comes from Richard Dawkins (and indeed this book is written in partial reaction to and in concert with Dawkins's ideas) who called organisms "survival machines" and "gigantic lumbering robots" in his famous opus, The Selfish Gene (1976). Stanovich wants to free us from the dictates of those selfish genes and so has constructed a "robot's rebellion." He believes we can use our rationality (our analytic system) to override the sometimes self-destructive inclinations of the more primitive set of brain systems. Stanovich is preeminently a rationalist and believes that right thought leading to right behavior will lead to a more fulfilling and happier life for the "robots." We need to be on the long leash from the genes, not the short leash, is his idea.
A strong point that Stanovich makes very well is that in the information societies of the modern world many of the talents that served us well in the Environment of Evolutionary Adaptiveness in the Pleistocene are "worthless" when (e.g.) trying to use "an international ATM machine with which you are unfamiliar" or when "arguing with your HMO about a disallowed medical procedure." (p. 124) He argues strongly that corporations and governments, through their advertising and propaganda, have become very good at exploiting blind spots in our more primitive brain systems and getting us to do what is good for them and not necessarily good for us. I think this is correct, and that those of us who can see how the players in the modern economy are trying to use us for their benefit will avoid most of the more obvious traps and thereby increase our standard of living and presumably our chances for happiness.
Stanovich devotes a chapter to criticizing evolutionary psychologists for failing "to develop the most important implication of potential mismatches between the cognitive requirements of the EEA and those of the modern world," as he carefully phrases it on page 131. Nonetheless the psychology presented here is mainly a synthesis of cognitive psychology, brain science and evolutionary psychology and as such represents the latest in our attempt to understand ourselves.
He also devotes a chapter to the effects that another kind of replicator, the meme, has on our lives. I don't have the space to go into his ideas about memes and their implications, but I want to say that from my point of view the word "meme" is an approximate neologism for the word "idea." However, I think that it is a useful coinage and, like Stanovich's mind dualism, facilitates a new way of looking at and talking about how our brains work.
While I think this is an extremely interesting book that goes a long way toward showing us the sort of thinking that characterizes postmodern psychology, I must point out that Stanovich's mind dualism is a construct that, while based on his interpretation of recent findings, is nonetheless just that: a construct that will be refined as time goes by and eventually overturned for a new construct. As always in science we are increasing our understanding and expanding our knowledge as we move toward a final understanding that will most likely always lie tantalizingly in the distance.
--Dennis Littrell, author of “Understanding Evolution and Ourselves”
February 5, 2021
One of those books that blows your mind. A lot of it is re-explaining Dawkyboy's Selfish Gene and extending the insights of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, but he does that so well and pulls out all the best bits of The Selfish Gene.
So first off, one of the main premises in this book is that most people get genetics completely wrong. They say that we have genes so that we can reproduce.
This is not just wrong, but an inversion of the truth.
The truth is something more like genes have us so that THEY can reproduce.
We are just vessels for these replicators and they will use us as a means to an end. The end being replication.
In that sense, genes are selfish, and this is what Dawkins meant.
So, we are "vehicles" being driven by our genes. And this leads a lot of people to feel nihilistic. How is there any meaning to life if we're just obeying the "needs" of these blind, meaningless, selfish strands of DNA?
What's more is that Darwin's theory doesn't just apply to DNA. It also applies to ideas, which replicate and compete by an analogous process. Ideas that spread rapidly and persist in the culture are the ones outlive ideas that don't. Just like genes that spread rapidly and persist in the collective human genome outlive genes that don't. There is therefore selection pressure for ideas to accrue similar mechanisms to enhance their reproduction, just like genes have. Because of this similarity, Dawkins translated the DNA-Gene terminology and started referring to ideas as "memes".
The coining of the term meme and linking of ideas to Darwinian evolution by natural selection has been a HUGE shift in understanding humans. Because we understand that genes are selfish, it's a natural consequence that memes are too. Their primary goal is survival and reproduction. Not our interests.
And so. Here's where Keith Stanovich comes in. He says that because our genes want to survive, we have innate impulses ("short leash goals") that are geared for survival in the EEA (environment of evolutionary adaptation). But at some point in our evolutionary history, our genes were under selection pressure to produce intelligent organisms that could decide what is best for their own interests. This was probably because the environment was changing rapidly, and evolution tends to be slow. It's much more adaptable to say "okay we'll give you some broad goals like maximise pleasure and avoid pain and you run with it from there".
You can think of this as like NASA programming some kind of autonomous cognition into a space rover because the lag time between here and mars makes it hard for NASA to make the rover react to every new thing in its environment. What if a rock comes hurtling toward it? Rather than the NASA team controlling it, it's more efficient for it to have a pre-installed goal of "not getting destroyed" so that it can react itself. This is what genes created for us. Long-leash goals.
This is what allows us to think of our own interests as conscious beings.
Woo hoo! Problem solved right? We don't have to listen to our "selfish" genes that only care about replication and will sacrifice us in a heartbeat if it helps them (e.g. before condoms, the impulse to have sex with strangers probably ruined the financial lives of many humans, but was great for the propagation of genes). Instead of obeying the dictates of these selfish replicators, we can decide for ourselves whether behaviours are good for ours. Thanks long leash goals!
B-b-b-b-but wait! The plot thickens!!!! Holy shit here is where it gets messy.
Memes are selfish too!
Some little 10 year old writing in the YouTube comments: "You will die exactly 2 years from now if you don't send this to five other people." has created a new meme that is both very efficient at replicating and providing worry and anxiety to those it infects.
That's just a silly example, but more seriously, memes can make you fly a plane into a building.
Okay so our short-leashed goals were under the control of selfish genes, we managed to escape that by having long-leashed goals layered on top. But now we discover that our long-leashed goals are under the control of selfish MEMES. We can actually WANT to fly a plane into a freakin wall of concrete because some malevolent meme was good at propagating itself and ended up in our mind.
So are we fucked? What's the point if our thoughts and emotions are determined by processes that do not care about us? We are brainwashed by meaningless units of natural selection. All our goals in life can be against our interests because of this. That's a realisation I have difficulty accepting because it's so soul-shattering.
Luckily, here comes Stanovich, the champ, the man with the answer.
He calls it "neurathian rational self-evaluation".
We can achieve alignment between our goals and what is TRULY good for us by critically evaluating the beliefs we harbour.
Of course, the way we critically evaluate is itself a meme (e.g. rules of logic are memes), and so there is always the chance we might use a selfish meme (that runs against our interests) to evaluate other memes, and mess up the entire project.
He compares this to the project of fixing a boat that is stuck out at sea. You can fix the planks of the boat while standing on other planks, but there's a chance you may stand on plank that's already broken and fall through the deck and die. This is an analogy made up by a guy called Otto Neurath, which is why Stanovich calls it "Neurathian rational self-evaluation"
Put simply, it's by no means guaranteed that we can override the selfishness of genes and memes and live a life according to what's best for us, the vehicles.
But it's an exciting project and the ability to rationally self-evaluate is what makes us truly unique as humans, and is therefore what gives us meaning.
Wait, did you follow that? Because I didn't.
I don't understand why Keith Stanovich joins the masses in their insistence that there has to be something "unique" about humans to give life meaning. Like, this has been done SOOO many times before, first it was language, then memory, then self-awareness etc etc. It bores me.
My hot take on this is that people are looking past something that's right in front of their nose. Meaning is inherent in consciousness. It might not be positive - but it can be.
Point is, in my opinion we don't need any "story" to have meaning in life. It's in every experience you have, it precedes thought. The search for a reason why there's meaning is like looking for a blue whale out of the ocean. There's no explicable "reason". It's just there.
Anyway, Stanovich gives some tenets of rational self-evaluation, like not to harbour memes that preclude evaluation of themselves. Religion is a big culprit here.
I won't bleat on anymore. Incredible book. Stanovich is a pivotal thinker and philosopher, and I'm fangirling hard 5eva.
So first off, one of the main premises in this book is that most people get genetics completely wrong. They say that we have genes so that we can reproduce.
This is not just wrong, but an inversion of the truth.
The truth is something more like genes have us so that THEY can reproduce.
We are just vessels for these replicators and they will use us as a means to an end. The end being replication.
In that sense, genes are selfish, and this is what Dawkins meant.
So, we are "vehicles" being driven by our genes. And this leads a lot of people to feel nihilistic. How is there any meaning to life if we're just obeying the "needs" of these blind, meaningless, selfish strands of DNA?
What's more is that Darwin's theory doesn't just apply to DNA. It also applies to ideas, which replicate and compete by an analogous process. Ideas that spread rapidly and persist in the culture are the ones outlive ideas that don't. Just like genes that spread rapidly and persist in the collective human genome outlive genes that don't. There is therefore selection pressure for ideas to accrue similar mechanisms to enhance their reproduction, just like genes have. Because of this similarity, Dawkins translated the DNA-Gene terminology and started referring to ideas as "memes".
The coining of the term meme and linking of ideas to Darwinian evolution by natural selection has been a HUGE shift in understanding humans. Because we understand that genes are selfish, it's a natural consequence that memes are too. Their primary goal is survival and reproduction. Not our interests.
And so. Here's where Keith Stanovich comes in. He says that because our genes want to survive, we have innate impulses ("short leash goals") that are geared for survival in the EEA (environment of evolutionary adaptation). But at some point in our evolutionary history, our genes were under selection pressure to produce intelligent organisms that could decide what is best for their own interests. This was probably because the environment was changing rapidly, and evolution tends to be slow. It's much more adaptable to say "okay we'll give you some broad goals like maximise pleasure and avoid pain and you run with it from there".
You can think of this as like NASA programming some kind of autonomous cognition into a space rover because the lag time between here and mars makes it hard for NASA to make the rover react to every new thing in its environment. What if a rock comes hurtling toward it? Rather than the NASA team controlling it, it's more efficient for it to have a pre-installed goal of "not getting destroyed" so that it can react itself. This is what genes created for us. Long-leash goals.
This is what allows us to think of our own interests as conscious beings.
Woo hoo! Problem solved right? We don't have to listen to our "selfish" genes that only care about replication and will sacrifice us in a heartbeat if it helps them (e.g. before condoms, the impulse to have sex with strangers probably ruined the financial lives of many humans, but was great for the propagation of genes). Instead of obeying the dictates of these selfish replicators, we can decide for ourselves whether behaviours are good for ours. Thanks long leash goals!
B-b-b-b-but wait! The plot thickens!!!! Holy shit here is where it gets messy.
Memes are selfish too!
Some little 10 year old writing in the YouTube comments: "You will die exactly 2 years from now if you don't send this to five other people." has created a new meme that is both very efficient at replicating and providing worry and anxiety to those it infects.
That's just a silly example, but more seriously, memes can make you fly a plane into a building.
Okay so our short-leashed goals were under the control of selfish genes, we managed to escape that by having long-leashed goals layered on top. But now we discover that our long-leashed goals are under the control of selfish MEMES. We can actually WANT to fly a plane into a freakin wall of concrete because some malevolent meme was good at propagating itself and ended up in our mind.
So are we fucked? What's the point if our thoughts and emotions are determined by processes that do not care about us? We are brainwashed by meaningless units of natural selection. All our goals in life can be against our interests because of this. That's a realisation I have difficulty accepting because it's so soul-shattering.
Luckily, here comes Stanovich, the champ, the man with the answer.
He calls it "neurathian rational self-evaluation".
We can achieve alignment between our goals and what is TRULY good for us by critically evaluating the beliefs we harbour.
Of course, the way we critically evaluate is itself a meme (e.g. rules of logic are memes), and so there is always the chance we might use a selfish meme (that runs against our interests) to evaluate other memes, and mess up the entire project.
He compares this to the project of fixing a boat that is stuck out at sea. You can fix the planks of the boat while standing on other planks, but there's a chance you may stand on plank that's already broken and fall through the deck and die. This is an analogy made up by a guy called Otto Neurath, which is why Stanovich calls it "Neurathian rational self-evaluation"
Put simply, it's by no means guaranteed that we can override the selfishness of genes and memes and live a life according to what's best for us, the vehicles.
But it's an exciting project and the ability to rationally self-evaluate is what makes us truly unique as humans, and is therefore what gives us meaning.
Wait, did you follow that? Because I didn't.
I don't understand why Keith Stanovich joins the masses in their insistence that there has to be something "unique" about humans to give life meaning. Like, this has been done SOOO many times before, first it was language, then memory, then self-awareness etc etc. It bores me.
My hot take on this is that people are looking past something that's right in front of their nose. Meaning is inherent in consciousness. It might not be positive - but it can be.
Point is, in my opinion we don't need any "story" to have meaning in life. It's in every experience you have, it precedes thought. The search for a reason why there's meaning is like looking for a blue whale out of the ocean. There's no explicable "reason". It's just there.
Anyway, Stanovich gives some tenets of rational self-evaluation, like not to harbour memes that preclude evaluation of themselves. Religion is a big culprit here.
I won't bleat on anymore. Incredible book. Stanovich is a pivotal thinker and philosopher, and I'm fangirling hard 5eva.
August 27, 2010
I'll never look at myself the same again after reading this - all the selfish genes we carry around, they have immortality and we the "hosts" are little more than robots carrying them around and passing them on to the next generation of children... a great read building on Dawkin's Selfish Gene...
June 18, 2011
I'm almost certain that reading this book heavily influenced the career path I chose and the current approach I take to cognition. It was eye-opening, to say the least.
October 18, 2014
3.5 stars
Much better than I expected. Its arguments didn't seem to get confused by its own short-hand (as is so often the case).
Much better than I expected. Its arguments didn't seem to get confused by its own short-hand (as is so often the case).
September 8, 2017
This is not a book about AI. controls human's future. We are the robots. we are trying to fight with our own genes.
Noticing that homo sapiens is the only animal who would doubt and behave against their generic goals. All the rest of animals still 100 % follow the rule, passing down the genes.
If you have not read R. Dawkins' "selfish gene", you would be really shocked to read this book. I remember i was pretty shocked back then when i read selfish gene. The idea is not new, but it was presented in a more sophisticated language. Somehow i was a bit confused even though i read in Chinese, my own language.
Generic goals is fighting against vehicle goals : Genes creates the mechanical doll like TASS to fight with out reason/rationality. Genes care only about reproduce and passing down to next generation. Once done, we are supposed to be no longer useful. But we are trying to stay healthier and live longer which is not generic goals.
Our rationality tries to find the biggest win win result for both of us (genes and vehicle/robot), but our brains try to find the freedom to escape from the generic control, such as using condom during sex (get the pleasure but not passing down the genes), keep fit or workout to stay healthy and live long (genes love sugar and fat, health is not genes' concern)
Humans use analytic system to fight against blind genes by using decoupling to reconstruct our world.
Meme is the cultural genes form passing down. invented by Dawkins in 1976. What kind of meme is acceptable? 1. not harmful to our body. 2. reflects the real world, 3. not against other memes. 4. not against of being evaluation. Therefore, if we don't think through our lives, we are living simply generic goals.(slave of genes and memes.)
It's interesting that this book also mentioned about Thinking, Fast and Slow.
"how short-term and reflexive thinking processes dominate the higher-order thinking necessary for achieving autonomy from our biological programming. These higher-order evaluative activities of the brain... hold the potential to fulfill our need to ascribe significance to human life." Behave instinctively or thoughtfully could direct our outcome into totally different directly.
Noticing that homo sapiens is the only animal who would doubt and behave against their generic goals. All the rest of animals still 100 % follow the rule, passing down the genes.
If you have not read R. Dawkins' "selfish gene", you would be really shocked to read this book. I remember i was pretty shocked back then when i read selfish gene. The idea is not new, but it was presented in a more sophisticated language. Somehow i was a bit confused even though i read in Chinese, my own language.
Generic goals is fighting against vehicle goals : Genes creates the mechanical doll like TASS to fight with out reason/rationality. Genes care only about reproduce and passing down to next generation. Once done, we are supposed to be no longer useful. But we are trying to stay healthier and live longer which is not generic goals.
Our rationality tries to find the biggest win win result for both of us (genes and vehicle/robot), but our brains try to find the freedom to escape from the generic control, such as using condom during sex (get the pleasure but not passing down the genes), keep fit or workout to stay healthy and live long (genes love sugar and fat, health is not genes' concern)
Humans use analytic system to fight against blind genes by using decoupling to reconstruct our world.
Meme is the cultural genes form passing down. invented by Dawkins in 1976. What kind of meme is acceptable? 1. not harmful to our body. 2. reflects the real world, 3. not against other memes. 4. not against of being evaluation. Therefore, if we don't think through our lives, we are living simply generic goals.(slave of genes and memes.)
It's interesting that this book also mentioned about Thinking, Fast and Slow.
"how short-term and reflexive thinking processes dominate the higher-order thinking necessary for achieving autonomy from our biological programming. These higher-order evaluative activities of the brain... hold the potential to fulfill our need to ascribe significance to human life." Behave instinctively or thoughtfully could direct our outcome into totally different directly.
August 13, 2018
Describes genes as having built human beings for their ends of replication. We are framed as automatons following their programming to ultimately stay alive and reproduce, which doesn't necessarily involve us finding happiness. Author claims the answer is to rebel by using rationality to subvert the "goals" of our genes.
“We are survival machines – robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes. This is a truth which still fills me with astonishment.”
― Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
Could instead look at human beings as one result in the play of nonconscious forces. Human beings and all our thoughts and actions (including "rebelling" and not rebelling) are just happenings like everything else. The author thinks there is a conflict but it isn't clearly established. There isn't an inherent uneasiness with knowing we are the nonconscious result of evolution in a universe with no known meaning. In fact, without meaning, the genes have no evil purpose either. We are no more the slaves of them than they are of us.
“We are survival machines – robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes. This is a truth which still fills me with astonishment.”
― Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
Could instead look at human beings as one result in the play of nonconscious forces. Human beings and all our thoughts and actions (including "rebelling" and not rebelling) are just happenings like everything else. The author thinks there is a conflict but it isn't clearly established. There isn't an inherent uneasiness with knowing we are the nonconscious result of evolution in a universe with no known meaning. In fact, without meaning, the genes have no evil purpose either. We are no more the slaves of them than they are of us.
November 25, 2020
This is one of the worst written books I have ever read. Which is a shame because the ideas are not bad. The main problem is that it is incredibly repetitive and could be condensed quite considerably with no loss of information. In fact, I will do just that:
Humans are slaves to their genes. These genes give them desires, instincts and mental shortcuts that benefit the gene's reproduction but harm the organism itself (the "vehicle" for the gene). Humans are impulsive and irrational (ignore the economists) so they do dumb things like becoming addicts, consumerists and cult members. However, humans have the capacity to be more rational and reflect on their preferences. This should be encouraged for both individuals and institutions. Then everyone's life would be better.
There, I saved you a week of reading.
Humans are slaves to their genes. These genes give them desires, instincts and mental shortcuts that benefit the gene's reproduction but harm the organism itself (the "vehicle" for the gene). Humans are impulsive and irrational (ignore the economists) so they do dumb things like becoming addicts, consumerists and cult members. However, humans have the capacity to be more rational and reflect on their preferences. This should be encouraged for both individuals and institutions. Then everyone's life would be better.
There, I saved you a week of reading.
July 6, 2022
One of those books with lots of random ‘literary’ quotations as subchapter epigraphs, asides on (themselves rambling, verbose, purple) excerpts of Pinker, Rorty, Dennett, Nozick, bouts of multipage throat clearing about what he will eventually say later but not before lovingly enumerating a bunch of other wrong stuff he won’t say now, in short— why say in 10 words what can be said in 100, eh Mr. Stanovich.
June 17, 2017
Building on Dawkins's selfish gene theory, Stanovich will hand you an existential crisis on a silver platter and kick you when you're down. This was such an insightful read, and the book does end on a positive note. Well-written and skillfully argumented, The Robot's Rebellion has changed the way I look at life. Everyone needs to read this.
December 9, 2023
Dense read, but worth it. The main gist is that we derive worth and meaning by thinking about and influencing our desires, rather than just blindly following them. Stanovich then goes on to explain, from the standpoint of evolution, how this is even possible. Oh, and economists and marketers are evil... :-P
February 21, 2019
Read the Chinese version. As most readers said, this book is really hard to read, especially the translated version. Usually it's impossible to refer the author's actually meaning from the shabby translation. But anyway, stain doesn't devalue the gold, it's still a must read for me.
October 7, 2019
A good synthesis of core feature of human mind architecture. At the end of the book, the author makes a really strong critique of our modern world, and how the project of rationality could be undermined if we don't do something about it.
October 31, 2017
Concepts are interesting, but the prose leaves a lot to be desired. Could easily be 100 pages shorter.
June 15, 2023
Evolution says everything is meaningless, and The Robot's Rebellion sets me free.
April 4, 2009
Tedious. Read like a long Eliezer post. I had to skip about 50 pages because I couldn't stand it. The beginning was good. The stuff on meme's built in defenses was frightening.
Quotes:
"The implications of modern evolutionary theory coupled with advances in the cognitive sciences will, in the twenty-first century, destroy many traditional concepts that humans have lived with for centuries."
"The mistake that moderate religious believers in evolutionary make is that they assume that science is only going to take half a loaf - leaving all our transcendental values untouched."
"We must see what the bedrock is that science has left us to build on once the acid has removed all of the superficial and ephemeral structures."
"Our genes are replicators. We are their vehicles."
"To say that in some sense this is the ultimate reason that humans exist does not mean that we must continue to play the role of survival machines."
"When the limits of coding the moment-by-moment responses of their vehicles were reached, the genes began adding long-leash strategies to the brain. At some point in evolutionary development, these long-leash strategies increased in flexibility to the point that - to anthropomorphize - the genes said the equivalent of: "Things will be changing too fast out there, brain, for us to tell you exactly what to do - you just go ahead and do what you think is best given the general goals (survival, sexual reproduction) that we (the genes) have inserted." And there is the rub. In long-leash brains, genetically coded goals can only be represented in the most general sense."
"TASS: key features: (a) that TASS processes respond automatically to domain relevant stimuli; (b) that their execution is not dependent upon input from, nor is it under the control of, the analytic processing system (System 2); and (c) that TASS can sometimes execute and provide outputs that are in conflict with the results of a simultaneous computation being carried out by analytic processing."
"As many cognitive theorists have emphasized, processes in TASS are in some sense deeply unintelligent: they fire off when their triggering stimuli appear no matter what the context; they run to completion even when the situation changes and their output is no longer needed; they can deal with nothing but their triggering stimuli. But what they lack in intelligence, they make up for in their astounding efficiency."
"TASS is biased toward the automatic acceptance of propositions and biased to accept the context as given. If the exploration of alternative hypotheses and alternative framings of issues are to take place, analytic system override of this natural processing tendency is essential."
"Modern technological societies continually spawn situations where humans must decontextualize information - where they must deal abstractly and in a depersonalized manner with information. Such situations require the active suppression of the social, narrative, and contextualizing styles that characterize the operation of TASS."
"A belief may spread without necessarily being true or helping the human being who holds the belief in any way."
"We're descended from the indignant, passionate tellers of half truths who in order to convince others, simultaneously convinced themselves."
Quotes:
"The implications of modern evolutionary theory coupled with advances in the cognitive sciences will, in the twenty-first century, destroy many traditional concepts that humans have lived with for centuries."
"The mistake that moderate religious believers in evolutionary make is that they assume that science is only going to take half a loaf - leaving all our transcendental values untouched."
"We must see what the bedrock is that science has left us to build on once the acid has removed all of the superficial and ephemeral structures."
"Our genes are replicators. We are their vehicles."
"To say that in some sense this is the ultimate reason that humans exist does not mean that we must continue to play the role of survival machines."
"When the limits of coding the moment-by-moment responses of their vehicles were reached, the genes began adding long-leash strategies to the brain. At some point in evolutionary development, these long-leash strategies increased in flexibility to the point that - to anthropomorphize - the genes said the equivalent of: "Things will be changing too fast out there, brain, for us to tell you exactly what to do - you just go ahead and do what you think is best given the general goals (survival, sexual reproduction) that we (the genes) have inserted." And there is the rub. In long-leash brains, genetically coded goals can only be represented in the most general sense."
"TASS: key features: (a) that TASS processes respond automatically to domain relevant stimuli; (b) that their execution is not dependent upon input from, nor is it under the control of, the analytic processing system (System 2); and (c) that TASS can sometimes execute and provide outputs that are in conflict with the results of a simultaneous computation being carried out by analytic processing."
"As many cognitive theorists have emphasized, processes in TASS are in some sense deeply unintelligent: they fire off when their triggering stimuli appear no matter what the context; they run to completion even when the situation changes and their output is no longer needed; they can deal with nothing but their triggering stimuli. But what they lack in intelligence, they make up for in their astounding efficiency."
"TASS is biased toward the automatic acceptance of propositions and biased to accept the context as given. If the exploration of alternative hypotheses and alternative framings of issues are to take place, analytic system override of this natural processing tendency is essential."
"Modern technological societies continually spawn situations where humans must decontextualize information - where they must deal abstractly and in a depersonalized manner with information. Such situations require the active suppression of the social, narrative, and contextualizing styles that characterize the operation of TASS."
"A belief may spread without necessarily being true or helping the human being who holds the belief in any way."
"We're descended from the indignant, passionate tellers of half truths who in order to convince others, simultaneously convinced themselves."
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 25, 2019
《機器人叛亂》是繼《真實的幸福》之後，我覺得第二本革命性著作，因為他不只是一本實然的書，還是一本有理論基礎的哲學書，他告訴你該怎麼活。除了《象與騎象人》、《快思慢想》等探討系統一二現象，及其演化歷程之外，本書結合《自私的基因》內容，帶我們看見系統二跳脫基因強控制的可能，並藉由批判演化心理學，告訴我們為什麼理性至上，為什麼應該服從系統二。智力是最重要的。依憑理性和理想而活對人類是最好的。
December 22, 2014
The main theme of this book is based on questioning the naive assumption by economists and evolutionary psychologists that humans are rational when it comes to decision making. The book then goes on to explain the numerous competing sub personal entities that create a competitive dual processing system, positing ways in which we can become more autonomous and free ourselves from the invasive presence of these selfish replicators.
Not an easy read by anyone’s standards. The author never uses one word where several will do and those will certainly not be in use on a daily basis. This gives the impression that some extra intellectual validity was required to substantiate his own theories and counter claims and detract from the fact that most of the book is mainly a summary of other peoples work and sometimes summaries of summaries. Not that there is any blatant plagiarism, as the bibliography and notes sections seemingly take up 25% of the book and if you never got around to reading Daniel Dennett’s “Consciousness Explained” or Kahnemans’s “Thinking Fast Thinking Slow” or any of the literature on Memetic theory then this should put you in the picture, although it will take twice the amount of patience to read as books aimed at those with a more average vocabulary.
Not an easy read by anyone’s standards. The author never uses one word where several will do and those will certainly not be in use on a daily basis. This gives the impression that some extra intellectual validity was required to substantiate his own theories and counter claims and detract from the fact that most of the book is mainly a summary of other peoples work and sometimes summaries of summaries. Not that there is any blatant plagiarism, as the bibliography and notes sections seemingly take up 25% of the book and if you never got around to reading Daniel Dennett’s “Consciousness Explained” or Kahnemans’s “Thinking Fast Thinking Slow” or any of the literature on Memetic theory then this should put you in the picture, although it will take twice the amount of patience to read as books aimed at those with a more average vocabulary.
May 21, 2015
I started this book several years ago, and only about 50 pages into it realized that I needed to read "The Selfish Gene" first. That sidetracked me into other books as well, such as Andy Clark's "Being There" and Dennett's "Breaking the Spell". Just today I finally finished "The Robot's Rebellion", and it feels like an accomplishment. This is an important book that integrates evolutionary psychology with behavioral economics and modern motivation theory and several other disciplines. It's going to take me years, I think, to integrate my thinking about all of this, but Stanovich has yet again gotten me to rethink a lot of what I thought I knew pretty well. Particularly challenging for me will be his sense that "broad rationality" should take the place of "having experiences" as the characteristic at the center of what it means to be human.
June 14, 2016
I only read the first few chapters, it was quite preachy.
I do think this is a very important topic, and that more people should be rational. I love the idea of selfish genes. And being aware of our biases.
The problem is that we still dont choose our goals. And any preferences we have are due to our genes or environments. So I dont really see how we can draw a line between better/worse actions/behaviour (like -I think - Keith is trying to do). I think this applies regardless of whom the goals serve.
I do think this is a very important topic, and that more people should be rational. I love the idea of selfish genes. And being aware of our biases.
The problem is that we still dont choose our goals. And any preferences we have are due to our genes or environments. So I dont really see how we can draw a line between better/worse actions/behaviour (like -I think - Keith is trying to do). I think this applies regardless of whom the goals serve.
June 9, 2016
A thought-provoking look at our culture and selves. Despite how dense the book is and how front loaded it is with definitions and terms, Stanovich has a clear, engaging writing style. His excitement and drive for the topic is evident in each exclamation point and witty reference as well as in (quite obviously) his life long dedication to the research. It's a book that makes you reconsider and reevaluate how you make decisions. Definitely worth picking up.
January 17, 2022
This is a fascinating, complicated and wonderful book (it would also probably be a very trying book for the religious reader). One way to describe it is to say that it's about what to do about the fact that the world we live in is so different from the world in which we evolved. If you read this, let me know so we can discuss in more detail.
August 28, 2017
Extremely horrible after careful thinking.
The first half of this book is easy to understand, however, the second half of this book is too academic, I lost my patience to finish it about the second half.
So, is rational the only tool for the robots to rebel?
The first half of this book is easy to understand, however, the second half of this book is too academic, I lost my patience to finish it about the second half.
So, is rational the only tool for the robots to rebel?
Displaying 1 - 30 of 33 reviews