Explaining Humans by Camilla Pang

I have not heard of this book until now, so it is a pleasant surprise that it was awarded the Science Book Prize for 2020 by the Royal Society.

I think this is going to be a book that tries to explain why humans do what they do, act the way they act, and behave the way they behave.

Machines learn in two ways: Supervised and unsupervised. Similarly, humans learn in two ways boxes and trees.

When we know what a good answer looks like is when we will use “box thinking”. It is a top down approach. You already know what is good/right/correct/ideal/appropriate and then take decisions that fit with that.

Choices are obvious, we know good from bad and try to choose the most good the most number of times. Neat, tidy and most importantly a structured and logical way of thinking.

Unfortunately, it leaves no room do nuance, no room for exploring alternative solution that we do not know beforehand are good.

And that is why, over the long term strictly box thinking is a suboptimal approach even though it tries to optimise at each decision point, one of the many ironies of life.

“Unless you truly believe you know the answer to every question in life before you have reviewed the evidence, then box thinking is going to limit your ability to make good decisions.“.

You may think that box thinking is the natural way of thinking – logical, structured, directed.

But look around you and you will see that trees are part of nature while boxes are not (they are man made) – same goes with thinking.

Unstructured thinking, like the tree and its branches that spread out in all areas, is more natural and in fact the way you learnt to think as a child.

“We are all wading through inconsistency, unpredictability and randomness – the things that make life real. In this context, the choices we have to make aren’t often binary, and the evidence we have to consider doesn’t stack up in neat piles. The clear-cut edges of the box are a reassuring illusion, because nothing is that straightforward.“.

Yep, the choices we have to make aren’t binary and it is never a 100% certain clear what is right and what is wrong.

That is why tree thinking is valuable: it is more resilient to life as it truly is.

So, over the long term and for the harder, greyer questions of life – try tree thinking.

You will need to make a decision tree where you will map out all possibilities that you can reasonable conceive for the adventure you are considering (without overly exhausting yourself).

Start with the master question – As an example I will use “What should I wear for the alumni meeting?”.

Then think of all the things you need to decide about before taking a call on the master question.

Like in my case I can ask the following questions:

• Who else will join me?
• Who else is going to be there?
• What do I have ready with me?
• and so on …

Then expand each of these decision points with respective options – at this point it will seat looking like a smorgasbord. For me it looks like this:

Once we have thought about all the lesser questions we’ll have to answer to answer the master question we need to start giving the entire thing some structure:

Start modifying your smorgasbord in a “bottom to top” way i.e. the more important decisions (whatever way you define them) should be at the bottom and the subsequent ones at the top.

Important, whatever decision you take one level below should only directly impact a decision point one level above (and not more), if you find a decision impacting levels higher than the one immediately above it then bring the decision points on the higher levels down to the next immediate level.

You will start to see that the bottom decisions will negate (or make more relevant) the paths higher up, for example, I can’t wear shorts to the alumni event if my objective is to network for new job opportunities which itself is not possible if the event is going to have mostly friends (since I don’t need to an event to ask them for help finding a job).

But, it is not necessary that all decisions higher up be connected to something below, you can add decision points higher up just on the basis of their perceived lesser importance even if they might not have connection with anything below.

You can see that this requires quite A LOT of moving and rearranging as you debate with yourself which decisions are truly bottom of tree level and which are not, but after some time this will naturally start becoming a tree.

Plus the good thing is, once you’ve made it you do not need to worry about wasting time next time a similar situation comes along.

Of course, Pareto principle will help you here are the first 20% of decision points will cover 80% of real life scenarios. “We can’t predict the future, of course, but for most situations we can cluster enough data points and plot enough possibilities to give ourselves a decent map.“.

The good thing about the tree approach is that it allows us to backtrack when we encounter an error.

This is not the case with box thinking because when you encounter a bad outcome there you have to re-do the entire thing from the very beginning until all the outcomes are favourable end to end.

For example, if I my wife tells me that she prefers going by public transport then I can back track to that decision point and draw out a fresh path that takes the bus, realises it cannot control ambient temperature, then understands that the evening is going to be hot and humid and finally decides that an airy 3/4th with a tee shirt would be appropriate than polo shirt and jeans.

The author talks about how “The protein model of teamwork – one that makes the most of differences rather than suppressing them – is so much more powerful than the human urge towards homogeneity in social situations: the desire to fit in.“.

She talks about the four stages of a protein: primary, secondary, tertiary and quaternary. I am not sure why she brings this in other than for increasing the reader’s general knowledge, I suppose.

Then she goes on to talk about how different proteins have different roles: receptors are the journalists (they observe and report on what is going on in the body), adapters are the messengers (they decide which kinase proteins to activate), kinases are the cheerleaders/activists/influencers (they rally the nuclear proteins to do something), nuclear proteins are the lawmakers (they decide what action needs to be taken).

Then she links the protein’s proclivity of behave in a certain way (identify, report, communicate, act) to humans in how they act an behave according to their MBTI personality type. just like we have our receptors we have our ENFPs and INTJs are more like the nuclear proteins.

Using this heuristic framework she has been able to comprehend, predict and then direct behaviour of the people she interacts with. Basically what she is saying is: learn how to quickly assess people’s (dominant) personality types (using a framework like MBTI or others) and use that to your advantage or at least predict behaviour so that you’re not surprised.

Entropy increases in a closed system.

The author uses that concept to invite readers to be careful about what they spend energy on because entropy will eventually undo it. That is why one should expend energy on the things that “really matter”.

You do not have unlimited energy and that is why you can’t create everything to your perfect liking.

So, learn how to accept compromises in life and make effort in areas (in descending order of importance) that you’d rather not compromise a lot in.

Don’t get too flustered when disorder sets in your life, it is, after all, literally in the source code of the universe.

Plus “To embrace and toy with disorder defines what it is to be alive.“.

“Unless we understand our fears, untangle their root causes and examine those issues rationally, we risk being controlled by the things that make us afraid, rather than taking control of them.“.

Just like we can divide light into different kinds based on frequency and wavelength we need to understand that our big fears are made of up of many smaller fears each with unique properties.

The most powerful, insistent emotions are like high-frequency violets – intense and choppy – while the nagging feelings are more laid-back, low-frequency and long-lasting reds.

When you feel fear coming on, face it, be honest about the fact that you are afraid, don’t lie to yourself, be afraid, its okay but don’t let that stop you from analysing it, being curious about it, detailing how exactly it makes you feel (beyond the general dread), breaking it up into its smaller components and then (this is the secret) use it.

Use your fears to propel yourself forward – Afraid that you’ll fail the exam, study harder; afraid people will call you fat, work out; afraid you’ll never be able to make it in life, break down what “making it” means into smaller manageable problems and start tackling them.

And in the ultimate form, transcend your fears. Indeed one can say life is about challenging your fears till the time you realise that there is nothing to be afraid of.

As the author rightly says “If something is giving us anxiety, it will continue to do so until we understand why that is, and what we can do about it. Denial is not an option, even if it is our instinctive first recourse.“.

The author likens our personalities to waves and uses the concepts of amplitude, frequency, interference and resonance to explain.

There are “low amplitude” people (poker face, don’t give in readily to emotions, steady in joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain) and there are “high amplitude” people (excitable, show and experience emotion deeply, more prone to “highs” and “lows”).

When the “wave of our personality” interacts with that of others there can either be constructive interference or destructive interference.

“If someone else’s natural level is so much more relaxed and easygoing than mine, then they are going to frustrate me, while I almost always end up feeling a thread of guilt, since I can often freak them out by being too intense.“.

The key thing about this is timing, we need to time our waves to be in sync with that of others. And avoid cases where it is not.

The frequencies between two people need not be a perfect match and instead need to be in some sort of “goldilocks zone” – “not so different that the gap becomes too difficult to bridge, but not so similar either that you don’t provide an effective check and balance on each other.“.

You’ll know em when you see em – Basically what the author says about finding such people. Of course, knowing your own personality type is helpful.

Because maths (Ergodic theory) will tell you that your behavior is more typical than atypical when you place it in the right context, that is, view it over a large enough sample set (the entire human race) and a long enough time period (your entire life).

The author applies the Heisenberg uncertainty principle to our lives and posits that we can either live in the present or plan for the future but no both at the same time.

She calls living in the present moment “position thinking” and planning for the future “momentum thinking”. We need to do more of the former.

So, it is smart to rewrite them in a way that helps us live our most fulfilling lives.

Our minds are making memories each moment even if we are unaware of it.

And the what parts of an experience they make a memory out of and, among other things, how do they decide if its a memory that uplifts us or brings us down is determined by the subconscious biases we have accumulated over a lifetime.

We know how two people can take the same literal experience and view it in completely different lights basis how they’ve been brought up.

Good news is, we have control on this. And if you do not like the default way your mind processes experiences and converts them into memories then you have the power to change it, slowly but surely.

When you challenge your limiting beliefs consistently you realise that they were really imaginary shackles you’d put on yourself all this while. And that growth is on the other side of fear.

Gradual adjustment is the name of the game – if through years of conditioning your memory has associated a benign sensation or event with something bad that should be avoided, or on the contrary, a particular activity that you know is bad but through memory has become associated with pleasure (like drinking alcohol) – in both these cases, challenging your memory (its okay if you’re scared but growth will come) by slowly dipping your toes into the experience that you fear or avoiding the experience that you desire (but in your mind, you know is bad for you) is the way to go.

Replace your to do list with network diagram: Put yours goals in there as nodes, put the people that can help as nodes too. Then draw connections between them. Goals and people that are related should be closer together.

Learn from gradient descent and instead of obsessing over the most perfect solution, do the best you can now with the information and the resources you have. Once you find yourself in a good place, then you can repeat this process to make it better.

Initially relationships are like pluripotent stem cells – undifferentiated but full of potential. “Just like the stem cell, our relationships keep on specializing and differentiating over time – undergoing more mitosis (division) to meet newly encountered needs.“.

Learn from fuzzy logic that for the vast majority of questions in life the answer is not black or white but grey. “… you can either engage in a shouting match and door-slamming competition, or you can allow your thinking to become fuzzier. You can accept that there is no binary right and wrong in the issue at stake.”.

Agent based modelling tells us that we should interpret a situation and the expected behaviour of people in various settings by the observing actual behaviour of agents without carrying preconceived notions. This is useful in situations that are new to us.

• It [box thinking] leaves no room for nuance, grey areas or things we haven’t yet considered or found out: things we might actually enjoy, or be good at.
• Crucially, the tree is ideally equipped to support our decision making because it is scalable. As a fractal, which looks the same from a distance as it does up close, it can serve its purpose however large and complex the question.
• Science teaches us to embrace complex realities, not to try and smooth over them in the hope that they go away.
• … pursue one branch of the tree that seems most favourable, but don’t saw off all the others
• … we have been taught to consider mistakes through an emotional, not a scientific, lens.

• understand that thermodynamics sets the terms of how we can organize our lives. You can have order, but only through expending energy on it. And the order you create will, however carefully you plan, be reversed over time.
• Compromise isn’t giving up, it’s adjusting to reality according to physics.
• Being more open is the first step to managing our fears, and is the route to feeling alive again.
• What we should be listening out for is the resonance: the people, working environments and places to live that will uplift us almost by definition – just by being themselves, because they are aligned with our resonant frequency.

• We need to be iterative in how we choose and adapt our pathways, changing course whenever we feel as though we are moving away from our goals and happiness rather than towards them.
• If ignorance was bliss, then knowledge means responsibility. The demands on your empathy rise fast as the evidence you collect about each other starts to accumulate.
• Bonds remind us that you can be both too distant and too close to someone to form an effective, stable relationship.

Okay, so first of all the author is clinically diagnosed with ASD, ADHD and a few others that she mentions throughout the book.

So she brings in the perspective of someone who has to live and navigate life where these conditions are a reality.

And this book is about the tools from science that she uses to make that living a little easier and predictable.

So, less “explaining humans” and more “here’s a bunch of systems/science concepts that can be analogous to humans to predict what’s going to happen and make better decisions”.

That said, it was somewhat of a struggle for me to get through the book.

1. First because the concepts mentioned are like, obvious, and do not need the linkage with a science. Perhaps it is easy for me to say this being a “neurotypical” person.
2. Second, the science analogies are only used as very basic entry point into the concept while the rest of it is, well, I want to say common sense.
3. Third, I found the frequent repetition of her various neurological conditions (ASD, ADHD, OCD, GSD etc.) excessive to the point the book almost felt a rant about having to live life as a “neurodivergent” person.

There are so many “ideas” talked about in this book, but scarcely any of them have more than surface relationship with the scientific concepts that they are equated.

Sometimes it felt that the scientific concepts were mentioned with the intent one would mention them at a dinner party: to sound smart.

Why this book received the award I am not entirely clear on.

Perhaps I have missed something important, but the more I tried to draw lessons the more I realised that:

1. Whatever the author was talking about was obvious even without the analogies
2. The introduction of concepts was really only as a surface really only as an entry point to the advice.

–

Aviral Prakash

29/08/2024