Ask A Genius 479 – Predicting Sex, Expecting Sex, and Entitlement as Evolutionary Baggage in Incorrect Prediction
December 20, 2018
[Beginning of recorded material]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What about the prediction from a central processing arena for conscious thought? Is this always and only the main operation of the brain?
Rick Rosner: There are plenty of instances where prediction is not the main job of the brain. A more general way of starting to think about what the brain’s job is, is to think of it as a game that your brain is trying to score points; or, you in combination with your nervous system use you as an organism, or try to score points with these points vary from person to person and from moment to moment.
And even with the inner person, you have various parts of the brain and body trying to accomplish various things that may be at odds with each. Maybe, one of the biggest areas in which accurate prediction and surprise minimization is not the objective of you as an evolved organism is in the area of sex.
Think about how many guys both human and otherwise walk around inaccurately thinking, “She wants it,” when they mean females, it is evolution. Given that you are good, you’ve evolved as something that has managed.
You come from a long line of organisms, billions of them, stretching back for hundreds of millions of years. All the way back to the beginning of life. A source of beginning is sex. Those who all managed to get laid.
Given that the guy did try to get laid, it is safe to say that your brain will set you up to say the wrong things if it will help you get laid. So, the guy thinks that she wants it. Even though in reality, she does want it.
But it may help you get laid because you think she wants it. “I am going to go ahead with this,” and then the woman like you that maybe goes along with it, or maybe she has no choice because you are that big an asshole.
But your prediction that she wants it is inaccurate. However, you move forward anyway because your evolutionary history is of a being who evolves through a lot and comes from a long line of creatures who managed to get laid in one form or another.
Evolution says, “I want you to make that mistake and go ahead and try to get laid.” But I will try to learn more about this principle and see what subtleties are since he’s written a thousand papers [Ed. Karl Friston].
I am sure you are also this guy started off as a physician, psychiatrist, or somebody who deals with the issues of people with broken brains. So as soon as he addresses the idea, the situation of brains making an accurate prediction.
Because that has been his clinical practice for his whole life. So, it is an interesting place to start.
[End of recorded material]
Authors[1]
Rick Rosner
American Television Writer
Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Editor-in-Chief, In-Sight Publishing
Footnotes
[1] Four format points for the session article:
- Bold text following “Scott Douglas Jacobsen:” or “Jacobsen:” is Scott Douglas Jacobsen & non-bold text following “Rick Rosner:” or “Rosner:” is Rick Rosner.
- Session article conducted, transcribed, edited, formatted, and published by Scott.
- Footnotes & in-text citations in the interview & references after the interview.
- This session article has been edited for clarity and readability.
For further information on the formatting guidelines incorporated into this document, please see the following documents:
- American Psychological Association. (2010). Citation Guide: APA. Retrieved from http://www.lib.sfu.ca/system/files/28281/APA6CitationGuideSFUv3.pdf.
- Humble, A. (n.d.). Guide to Transcribing. Retrieved from http://www.msvu.ca/site/media/msvu/Transcription%20Guide.pdf.
License and Copyright
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at www.in-sightjournal.com and www.rickrosner.org.
Copyright
© Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Rick Rosner, and In-Sight Publishing 2012-2019. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Rick Rosner, and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
Rick Rosner 