The Elephant in the Brain_Hidden Motives in Everyday Life

by Robin Hanson

  These technological and aesthetic trends continue well into the present day. Every year, new technology forces artists and consumers to choose between the difficult “old-fashioned” techniques and the easier, but more precise, new techniques. Photographers have to decide whether to use digital cameras and photo-editing software. Musicians have to decide whether to use electronic synthesizers and pitch correction. Couples have to decide which jewels should adorn their engagement rings: mined diamonds, synthetic diamonds, moissanite, or cubic zirconia.40

  As both artists and consumers, we’re often eager to jump in and explore the expressive and aesthetic possibilities of each new medium and manufacturing technique. But just as often, we hold out. Whenever we prefer things made “the old-fashioned way”—handwritten instead of printed, homemade instead of store-bought, live instead of prerecorded—we’re choosing to celebrate the skill and effort of an artist over the intrinsically superior results of a more mechanical process.

  Our standards for art also evolve in response to what we know about the extrinsic factors involved in a given art form. Roman Mars explores this idea at length in his design podcast 99% Invisible. In one episode, for example, he focuses on brutalism, an architectural movement characterized by its use of concrete. Popular during the 1950s and 1960s, brutalism is now notorious for having produced some of the world’s most reviled buildings. Among the lay public, brutalist architecture is considered intrinsically cold, inhuman, and even hideous. And yet, says Mars, “as with any art form—whether opera or painting or literature—the more you know about it, the more you appreciate it.” Not surprisingly, then, brutalism has plenty of admirers among architects and students of architecture. “They know that concrete requires a great deal of skill and finesse to work with. Every little detail has to be calculated out in advance, because once the concrete is poured, there’s no going back to make adjustments.”41

  * * * * *

  Hopefully by now we’ve demonstrated that art is valued for more than its intrinsic beauty and expressive content. It’s also fundamentally a statement about the artist, that is, a fitness display.

  In the following sections, we briefly explore some of the more interesting consequences of this idea.

  WHY ART IS IMPRACTICAL

  The fitness-display theory helps us understand why art needs to be impractical in order to succeed as “art.”

  Consider a well-made kitchen knife: sturdy, solid, and sharp. As many commentators have pointed out, there’s something delightful, even beautiful, about an object perfectly suited to its purpose. And yet, however exquisite the knife’s craftsmanship, however pleasing it is to the senses, it doesn’t qualify as “art” unless it has decorative, non-functional elements.

  The fitness-display theory explains why. Art originally evolved to help us advertise our survival surplus and, from the consumer’s perspective, to gauge the survival surplus of others. By distilling time and effort into something non-functional, an artist effectively says, “I’m so confident in my survival that I can afford to waste time and energy.”

  The waste is important. It’s only by doing something that serves no concrete survival function that artists are able to advertise their survival surplus. An underground bunker stocked with food, guns, and ammo may have been expensive and difficult to build (especially if it was built by hand), and it may well reflect the skills and resources of its maker. But it’s not attractive in the same way art is. The bunker reflects a kind of desperation of an animal worried about its survival, rather than the easy assurance of an animal with more resources than it knows what to do with.

  Thus impracticality is a feature of all art forms. But we can see it with special clarity in those art forms that need to distinguish themselves from closely related practical endeavors. Consider the difference between clothing, which is a necessity, and fashion, which is a luxury. Fashion often distinguishes itself from mere clothing by being conspicuously impractical, non-functional, and sometimes even uncomfortable. “The history of European costume,” writes Alison Lurie, “is rich in styles in which it was literally impossible to perform any useful function: sleeves that trailed on the floor, . . . powdered wigs the size, color and texture of a large white poodle, . . . and corsets so tight that it was impossible to bend at the waist or take a normal breath.”42 Even today we encumber ourselves in the name of style. High heels, for example, are awkward for walking and brutal on the feet—which is precisely how they’re able to convey the message, “I care about fashion.” Neckties are utterly superfluous, of course, as are dangly earrings and elaborate updos. Meanwhile, durable, low-maintenance fabrics, like cotton or denim, don’t have nearly the same cachet as fabrics that are delicate and hard to clean, like silk, lace, or wool. And polyester? Please.43

  Food—as an art form—also needs to distinguish itself as something more than mere nourishment and a source of gustatory pleasure. Cakes, for example, are easy to make and almost always taste great. But however delicious, no one will pay $1,000 for a wedding cake unless it’s exquisitely decorated. Haute cuisine also differentiates itself from takeout by virtue of its artful arrangement (a sprig of fresh rosemary), elaborate preparations (tableside flambé), and specially sourced ingredients (not just any lemons, but Meyer lemons). None of these especially improves the taste, but we appreciate them nonetheless.

  DISCERNMENT

  The fitness-display theory also helps us understand why artistic discernment—the skill of the savvy consumer or critic—is an important adaptive skill.

  Discernment helps us answer a question we’re often asking ourselves as we navigate the world: “Which way is high status?” Like the female bowerbird, we use art as one of our criteria for choosing mates (and teammates). But without the ability to distinguish “good” art from “bad” art, we run the risk of admiring less fit, lower-status artists. So just as the female bowerbird needs to inspect all the local bowers to improve her discernment, humans also need to consume a lot of art in order to calibrate our judgments, to learn which things are high status.

  It’s only by shopping around and sampling a wide variety of art that we learn to appreciate which skills are common (banging two rocks together) and which are rare (elaborate rhythms). An unrefined palate won’t appreciate a Michelin-starred restaurant. An untrained ear can’t appreciate the genius of Bach. Only the princess, accustomed as she’d become to royal fineries, could feel the pea beneath 20 mattresses and 20 featherbeds. In this way, discernment becomes important not only for differentiating high quality from low quality (and good artists from mediocre ones), but also as a fitness display unto itself. The fact that the princess could feel the pea, even under the mattresses (i.e., when handicapped), is itself an impressive feat, a mark of her high birth.

  We spend an incredible amount of our leisure time refining our critical faculties in this way. Rarely are we satisfied simply to sit back and passively enjoy art (or any other type of human achievement for that matter). Instead we lean forward and take an active role in our experiences. We’re eager to evaluate art, reflect on it, criticize it, calibrate our criticisms with others, and push ourselves to new frontiers of discernment. And we do this even in art forms we have no intention of practicing ourselves. For every novelist, there are 100 readers who care passionately about fiction, but have no plans ever to write a novel.

  Thus discernment, artistic or otherwise, is a critical skill, and yet it can be something we take for granted, in part because we do it so effortlessly. Think about how rarely we’re impressed by truly unimpressive people. When it happens, we feel as though we’ve been taken in by a charlatan. It can even be embarrassing to demonstrate poor aesthetic judgment. We don’t want others to know that we’re inept at telling good art from bad, skilled artists from amateurs. This suggests that we evaluate each other not only for our first-order skills, but for our skills at evaluating the skills of others.

  Human social life is many layered indeed.

  12

  Cha
rity

  In 1972, Peter Singer—a man the New York Times would describe decades later as “perhaps the world’s most controversial ethicist”1—made a splash among moral philosophers with an essay titled, “Famine, Affluence, and Morality.” His argument began with a simple premise: If you notice a boy drowning in a shallow pond right in front of you, you have a moral obligation to try to rescue him. To do otherwise—to stand by and let him drown—would be unconscionable.

  So far, this isn’t particularly controversial. But Singer went on to argue that you have the exact same moral obligation to rescue children in developing countries who are dying of starvation, even though they’re thousands of miles away. The fact that they aren’t dying right in your backyard isn’t justification enough to ignore their plight.2

  Singer’s conclusion tends to make people uncomfortable, especially since most of us don’t help starving children in far-off places with the same urgency we would help a boy drowning in the local pond. (Your two coauthors certainly don’t.) The argument implies that every time we take a vacation, buy an expensive car, or remodel the house, it’s morally equivalent to letting people die right in front of us. According to one calculation, for the cost of sending a kid through college in America, you could instead save the lives of more than 50 children (who happen to live in sub-Saharan Africa).3 Yes, many of us do try to help people in extreme need, but we also spend a lot on personal indulgences.

  What Singer has highlighted with this argument is nothing more than simple, everyday human hypocrisy—the gap between our stated ideals (wanting to help those who need it most) and our actual behavior (spending money on ourselves). By doing this, he’s hoping to change his readers’ minds about what’s considered “ethical” behavior. In other words, he’s trying to moralize.

  Our goal, in contrast, is simply to investigate what makes human beings tick. But we will still find it useful to document this kind of hypocrisy, if only to call attention to the elephant. In particular, what we’ll see in this chapter is that even when we’re trying to be charitable, we betray some of our uglier, less altruistic motives.

  EFFECTIVE ALTRUISM

  To appreciate the contrast between our ideals and our actual behavior, it helps to portray what ideal charitable behavior looks like. Luckily, others have done this job for us.

  In 2006, Holden Karnofsky and Elie Hassenfeld were working as hedge fund analysts in Connecticut. After making a comfortable living for a few years, they decided to donate a good portion of their earnings to charity. But they wanted to make sure their donations would be used effectively, so they began researching charities the same way they’d been trained to research investment opportunities, namely, by asking for data.

  Along with a few friends, Karnofsky and Hassenfeld drafted up a list of promising charities and began reaching out for information. For each charity, they wanted to know how their donations would be spent, and more importantly, how the outcomes would be measured. They wanted to gauge how efficient the whole process was, in order to get the best bang for their charity buck. In financial terms, they were looking to maximize their return on investment (ROI)—or in this case, return on donation (ROD)—and were simply doing due diligence.4

  The response from the charities they contacted was disheartening. Some simply sent glossy brochures with photos of smiling children and a few pat assurances that good work was being done. Other charities were hostile. One accused Karnofsky and Hassenfeld of attempting to steal confidential information on behalf of a competitor. (Take a moment to consider why a philanthropist might want to keep a “trade secret.”) Almost none of the charities responded with the kind of hard, outcome-oriented data that would satisfy a financial analyst.5

  Eventually they realized that they weren’t getting the information they wanted “because the charities themselves didn’t have it.”6 But still Karnofsky and Hassenfeld thought the data was important, and they thought other donors would want it too. So in 2007, they decided to leave their jobs and start GiveWell, an organization dedicated to doing (and publicizing) quantitative research on different charities in order to determine which are the most effective, that is, have the highest ROD. This is similar in spirit to the approach taken by Consumer Reports or the Motley Fool, but instead of researching cars and cameras or stocks and bonds, GiveWell researches charities.

  GiveWell now sits at the center of a growing social movement called effective altruism. Inspired by the work of Singer (along with Karnofsky, Hassenfeld, and others), effective altruists hope to change how people donate their time, effort, and money to good causes. And they’re using reason and evidence where others have relied mostly on emotion and gut instinct. This is a hard-nosed, data-driven approach that looks above all for results. In deciding how to give, effective altruists follow their heads, not their hearts.

  This approach sounds sensible enough, but it can lead to some strange conclusions. In 2015, for example, GiveWell listed these as its three most effective charities:

  1.The Against Malaria Foundation, which brings mosquito nets to sub-Saharan Africa.

  2.GiveDirectly, an organization that distributes cash directly to people in need, no strings attached(!).

  3.The Schistosomiasis Control Initiative, which helps treat people infected with a particular parasitic worm.

  These are hardly the most popular or paradigmatic charities. They aren’t nearly as high-profile as the United Way, Salvation Army, or Make-A-Wish Foundation, for example. But they get results. According to GiveWell’s estimates, the Against Malaria Foundation can save a life for about $3,500.7

  Now, you may or may not agree that effective altruism is the ideal approach to charity. Among other things, the movement has been criticized for taking an overly narrow view of what makes a given charity “effective.”8 GiveWell, in particular, focuses almost exclusively on charities whose impact can be reliably measured, which causes it to ignore charities that try to effect more nebulous (political or cultural) changes. Still, by taking a rigorously results-oriented approach, effective altruism highlights how traditional charities have not been taking this kind of approach.

  If we’re going to give money to charity, don’t we want our donations to be as useful as possible? Isn’t that the whole point? Unfortunately, when we start to look at real-world altruism, helping people efficiently doesn’t seem to be our top priority.

  REAL-WORLD ALTRUISM

  Taken at face value, Americans are a fairly generous people. Nine out of 10 of us donate to charity every year.9 In 2014, these donations amounted to more than $359 billion—roughly 2 percent of the country’s GDP.10 Some of this comes from corporations or charitable foundations, but more than 70 percent is donated by individuals—men and women who tithe at church, sponsor public radio, support children’s hospitals, and give back to their alma maters (see Table 2). Of course, it’s not just Americans; citizens of other developed countries are similarly generous, give or take.

  Table 2. U.S. Charitable Donations, 2014

  ($ billions)

  Where the money comes from Where the money goes

  Individuals $259 72% Religion $115 32%

  Foundations $54 15% Education $55 15%

  Bequests $28 8% Human services $42 12%

  Corporations $18 5% Foundations $42 12%

  Total $359 billion Health $30 8%

  Society-benefit organizations $26 7%

  Arts and culture $17 5%

  International affairs $15 4%

  Animals and the environment $11 3%

  Individuals $6 2%

  Total $359 billion

  SOURCE: Giving USA 2015

  In this chapter we’re focusing on monetary donations. People also donate their time (e.g., by volunteering at soup kitchens), professional expertise (pro bono work), and even body parts like blood, kidneys, and bone marrow—not to mention all the small daily kindnesses that go largely undocumented. We’re limiting our scope to financial donations only because they’re well studied and easy to meas
ure, but we expect that similar arguments apply to all forms of charity.

  The striking thing about real-world altruism is how sharply it deviates from effective altruism. The main recipients of American charity are religious groups and educational institutions. Yes, some of what we give to religious groups ends up helping those who desperately need it, but much of it goes toward worship services, Sunday school, and other ends that aren’t particularly charitable. Giving to educational institutions is arguably even less impactful (as we’ll argue in Chapter 13 when we take a closer look at schools). Overall, no more than 13 percent11 of private American charity goes to helping those who seem to need it most: the global poor.

  In addition to inefficient allocation at the national level, we also show puzzling behavior when making individual choices. For example, one recent survey found that12

  •The majority of Americans (85 percent) say that they care about nonprofit performance, but only 35 percent do research on any charitable gift in the course of a calendar year.

  •Of those that research, most (63 percent) do so to validate the nonprofit they’re seeking to give to.

  •Only 3 percent of donors do comparative research to find the best nonprofit to give to.

  Occasionally, we’re even happy to donate without knowing the most basic facts about a charity, like what its purpose is or how donations will be spent. “Within two weeks of Princess Diana’s death in 1997,” writes Geoffrey Miller, “British people had donated over £1 billion to the Princess of Wales charity, long before the newly established charity had any idea what the donations would be used for, or what its administrative overheads would be.”