Buonomano - Brain bugs: how the brains flaws shape our lives

The human brain is the most complex device in the known universe, yet it is an imperfect one. And, ultimately, who we are as individuals and as a society is defined not only by the astonishing capabilities of the brain but also by its flaws and limitations. Consider that our memory can be unreliable and biased, which at best leads us to forget names and numbers, but at worse results in innocent people spending their lives in prison as a result of faulty eyewitness testimony. Consider our susceptibility to advertising, and that one of the most successful marketing campaigns in history contributed to an estimated 100 million deaths in the twentieth century; the tragic success of cigarette advertising reveals the degree to which our desires and habits can be shaped by marketing. We often succumb to the lure of instant gratification at the expense of our long-term well-being, and our irrepressible tendency to engage in supernatural beliefs often leads us astray. Even our fears are only tenuously related to what we should fear.

The outcome of these facts is that what we presume to be rational decisions are often anything but. Simply put, our brain is inherently well suited for some tasks, but ill suited for others. Unfortunately, the brains weaknesses include recognizing which tasks are which, so for the most part we remain ignorantly blissful of the extent to which our lives are governed by the brains bugs .

The brain is an incomprehensibly complex biological computer, responsible for every action we have taken and every decision, thought, and feeling weve ever had. This is probably a concept that most people do not find comforting. Indeed, the fact that the mind emerges from the brain is something not all brains have come to accept. But our reticence to acknowledge that our humanity derives solely from the physical brain should not come as a surprise. The brain was not designed to understand itself anymore than a calculator was designed to surf the Web.

The brain was designed to acquire data from the external world through our sensory organs; to analyze, store, and process this information; and to generate outputsactions and behaviorsthat optimize our chances of survival and reproduction. But as with any other computational device the brain has bugs and limitations.

For convenience, rather than scientific rigor, I borrow the term bugs from the computer lexicon to refer to the full range of limitations, flaws, foibles, and biases of the human brain. The consequences of computer bugs range from annoying glitches in screen graphics to the computers freezing or the blue screen of death. Occasionally computer bugs can have fatal consequences, as in cases where poorly written software has allowed lethal doses of radiation to be delivered to patients during cancer therapy. The consequences of the brains bugs can be equally wide ranging: from simple illusions, to annoying memory glitches, to irrational decisions whose effects can just as likely be innocuous as fatal.

If there is a bug in your favorite software program, or an important feature is absent, there is always hope that the issue will be remedied in the next version, but animals and humans have no such luxury; there are no instant-fix patches, updates, or upgrades when it comes to the brain. If it were possible, what would be on the top of your brain upgrade list? When one asks a classroom of undergraduate students this question, invariably the answer is to have a better memory for the names, numbers, and facts that they are bombarded with (although a significant contingent of students ingenuously opts for mind reading). We have all struggled, at some point, to come up with the name of somebody we know, and the phrase You knowwhats his name? may be among the most used in any language. But complaining that you have a bad memory for names or numbers is a bit like whining about your smartphone functioning poorly underwater. The fact of the matter is that your brain was simply not built to store unrelated bits of information, such as lists of names and numbers.