John Von Neumann

[Psych Psundays] Metaphors for the brain

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Another week, another issue of my new Psych Psundays series. A few responses I got to last week’s issue:

#1. “Pswell pstuff, John!”

#2. “This felt very personal…”

#3. “Hi John, the Psych Psunday series is fantastic. I had already read about Daniel Kinahan and his father because I’m a big fan of investigative journalism and books written by former police officers, journalists, and prosecutors who fight these criminals. I agree with everything you wrote.”

That’s encouragement enough for me. So let’s mush on.

This morning I listened to an interview with Jason Stacy, who is the performance coach of Aryna Sabalenka, the current no. 1 female tennis player in the world.

Stacy took some audience questions. One woman, very blonde and with very white teeth, asked:

“My question is, when your body is tired, but your goal is bigger than your comfort, what is the mental switch that elite athletes use to keep going?”

What caught my attention is the use of the word “switch.” It’s such an innocent-sounding word, but it exposes the prevalent metaphor we use to think about the brain, which I claim is neither useful nor pleasant.

That unpleasant and unuseful metaphor is that the brain is a machine, or more specifically a computer, or more specifically still, a buggy computer.

I don’t know exactly where this metaphor comes from.

A bit of research today told me that people have been comparing the brain to the new technology of the time for centuries.

In the age of mechanical automatons, Descartes wrote that the brain is like a hydraulic machine.

In the age of electricity, the brain was compared to a telegraph relay.

In the age of computers, John Von Neumann wrote The Computer And The Brain, about the similarities and the differences between brains and computers.

Now, in the age of big data, brains have been metaphorically reduced to “prediction machines.”

The problem is, at the same time, we’ve had people like Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky doing research on just how good humans are as prediction machines.

The result of Kahneman and Tversky’s research is prospect theory, which says that predictions or statistical evaluations done by human brains are consistently and predictably wrong.

In this view, human brains are prediction machines that aren’t all that good, or like I said earlier, they are buggy computers.

It’s not a not a very pleasant way to look at yourself.

What about useful?

Jason Stacy, Aryna Sabalenka’s performance coach, answered the very blonde, very white-toothed woman’s question about the one mental switch of elite athletes with a chuckle and a shrug. He said, “There’s a problem in the world these days where everyone is waiting to feel good to do something versus doing something to feel good.”

Stacy’s advice was to take action, consistently, even if it’s the smallest, most miserable bit of action at the start.

In other words, here’s a performance coach, in an actual measurable and competitive field, coaching at the very highest level, telling you that the “mental switch” ain’t really there to be flipped, and that what you really need to do is to grow and adapt over time.

For the purposes of this email, that’s all the proof I need to tell you that computer metaphor of the brain is not only not pleasant, but it’s also not useful.

But we all crave understanding and we crave simplicity. If the brain is not a computer, even a buggy computer, then what is it? Or at least, how can we think about it in a pleasant and even useful way?

For that, I would like to point you to a book I read last year.

This book doesn’t explicitly spell out a metaphor for the brain, but it makes the case, through various fascinating case studies, that the brain is — shockingly — not a machine but a living thing, an organ or perhaps an organism, like a tree or a climbing vine.

There are no switches to be flipped inside.

But over time, the brain grows and adapts to its environment, in alignment with its goals and the constraints put on it. Also, unlike a machine, which comes pretty much finalized out of the factory, the brain is capable of growing and adapting throughout its life.

Maybe I’m not selling the book well or this metaphor of “the brain as a climbing vine.” I won’t try to sell either any better right now.

All I will tell you is this book is one of the most influential books I’ve read over the past few years because it’s 1) fun, 2) inspiring, and 3) practical. And the idea of the brain as being a living and adaptable thing, rather than a buggy computer, is much more pleasant and more useful to me personally.

If you’re interested in psychology and neurology, and if you want some practical and inspiring takeaways, I highly recommend this:

https://bejakovic.com/doidge

Screaming in terror at a loss of supreme intelligence

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John von Neumann was probably the smartest person of the 20th century. He didn’t have Einstein’s hair or the dopey absent-minded scientist look. That’s perhaps why he never became the icon like Einstein.

But according to friends and colleagues (a smart bunch made up of past and future Nobel laureates), von Neumann was the sharpest of them all. Eugene Wigner, who won the 1963 Nobel Prize in Physics, said of Von Neumann, “Only he was fully awake.”

I first read about von Neumann in a textbook for a math class. There were little sidebars about the giants of the field, and von Neumann was in there. A few bits of von Neumann’s life story, as told in that sidebar, have stuck with me for years:

* While von Neumann was a kid, his parents would get him to perform mental tricks at parties they hosted. ​​A guest would randomly choose a page of the phone book. Little 6-year-old Jancsi would look at the page for a few moments. And then he could answer any question about who had what phone number and what phone number had who.

* Unlike most of his physicist and mathematician colleagues, von Neumann was a sociable animal. He liked loud music, drinking, and partying.

* Probably due to his work on building the first atom bomb, von Neumann developed cancer at age 52. The disease progressed quickly and he died a few months after he was diagnosed. And in those last few months, von Neumann’s mental powers started to lapse. Colleagues could hear him screaming in terror at the loss.

Here’s what gets me:

Even with an advanced stage of cancer, I’m sure von Neuman’s brain was still a few standard deviations ahead of the rest of us. And yet it didn’t matter.

Because it’s never really about what you’ve got. Only change matters. Positive change is nice. Negative change is terrifying. It’s feeling the ground give way under you as you’re sucked into a sinkhole.

I’m not sure what my point is today. I certainly don’t think that harping on real or possible loss is the best way to lead off a message. People have heard it too much and they’ve become wary.

But if you want to really understand the people in your market… their motivations… their hesitations… then you’ll have to look at their loss, or their fear of loss. Of health, of money, or even of perceived intelligence.

Speaking of which:

Have you thought about another day passing, without learning anything new to make you better at making sales and persuading people of your value? Pretty terrifying, isn’t it?

There’s an easy fix though. Each day I write a short new email, with a marketing or copywriting lesson, wrapped up in some kind of story. Not always as depressing as today’s. If you want to try out those emails and see if they soothe your sense of dread, click here and fill out the form.