There is some single human characteristic that, if changed, would result in the greatest expansion of human well-being. This characteristic is something I consider humanity’s greatest flaw. While a possible answer came to mind immediately, I felt inspired to get a broader perspective and took an informal poll from folks I know. What I’d like to do in this blog is explore the responses I’ve received in an evolutionary and psychological context, determine what sort of progress we’re making toward a solution, and imagine a world without the flaw. I’ll conclude by presenting my own answer and examining its criticisms.

Below are the poll results presented in the order collected:

Lack of love

Lack of compassion

Superstition

Tribalism

Ability to harm others

Lack of critical thinking

Lack of empathy

Ignorance

Lists (haha)

Intolerance

Lack of whiskey

Racism/Sexism

Greed

Awareness

While this list represents a very small sample, it seems like there are at least a few themes for investigation. The first that jumps out is ingroup bias (observed in tribalism, ability to harm others, lack of empathy, and racism). From an evolutionary perspective, ingroup bias wove its way into our ancestry because those who formed tribal communities were better able to defend themselves against outsiders and claim resources as their own. While this bias was a benefit to the survivability of the species for millions of years, it is now an obstinate blemish in our modern civilization and a constant obstruction to social progress. This tension should be expected since the social progress we’ve made in the past 10,000 years greatly outpaces the lumbering stroll of our evolutionary progress in that period. As far as I know (and I could be wrong), we have had next to no genetic changes within that period. All our vast changes as a species can be attributed to the agricultural revolution, which freed people to specialize, which led to writing, metallurgy, and a long line of other technological and social policy advancements leading to today.

Are we on the path to overcome our nature with respect to ingroup bias? I think so and I think we have globalization and the internet to thank. In Steven Pinker’s book The Better Angels of Our Nature, he makes the case that our ability to communicate our thoughts and feelings to others bridges the gap between groups to reduce violence. If we can understand what the outside group is thinking and what they’re going through, we find it much easier to empathize and show compassion. With only language, our communication was limited by proximity to those in our tribe. With the advent of writing, we were able to extend those ideas even further. With the internet, we can now immediately know the impact of events on people half a world away and have virtually no barrier to stepping into their shoes. It’s hard to imagine repeating the effectiveness of WWII propaganda painting Germans as monsters now that we can have a live video conference with them.

One wonders what the world would look like if, at the snap of our fingers, we could relieve ourselves of ingroup bias. Sports would suddenly be less entertaining. You might still support a team for being “the best” or because you like the team story, but we would no longer expect to see high concentrations of fans for one team in one area. Other biases would still lead to a concentration of a local team’s fans (availability bias through local news and local sporting events, for example), but someone in Seattle would be much more likely to support other teams. Similarly, nationalism might still exist, but it’d exist moreso on the grounds of actually endorsing policy and the actions of the nation. I imagine the turnout for armed services would probably drop (much like local fanhood) as a result. There’s a whole book worth of hypotheticals that fit within the notion of removing ingroup bias, but I think we’d find the overall trend to be less violence, more compassion, and (returning to the point) more well-being. Is this the greatest woe though? It’s a huge one, but I think I’ll save the top spot for my personal favorite.

The next theme I can make out is in superstition and lack of critical thinking and I’ll put these under the title of “Faith.” Faith is generally detrimental to making sound conclusions, but, like ingroup bias, it served an evolutionary importance. A large part of our prehistoric learning was based on operant conditioning (e.g. we eat the berry, feel sick, and don’t eat the berry again). While this ability is not unique to humans, the ability to see correlational trends is limited to those with a developed prefrontal cortex and our species has made a huge investment in this regard. Over the past 5 million years, our brains have tripled in size as a whole and during the same time, the prefrontal cortex increased sixfold. This huge caloric investment in brain-energy paid dividends with our increased ability to see correlations, simulate reality in the mind, and plan. This advantage led to coordinated attacks on prey as well as adoption of human migratory patterns to areas with the highest resources per season. Resulting increases in caloric intake lead to increased population and further domination of the local food-chains. While all this seems great from the perspective of survival-of-the-fittest, without any structure to regulate our prefrontal cortex, correlation seems to be causation. Unfortunately, to our brains, everything is correlational. If our ancestors wanted to understand why the winters were mild one year and harsh another, they’d simply find a correlation and one that satisfied our curiosity particularly well was the notion of the supernatural (to be fair, everything from our ancestors point of view was supernatural—they had no natural understandings whatsoever). Believing things we didn’t understand satisfied the new-found curiosity of the prefrontal cortex. Unfortunately, with no regulator on these beliefs, some very strange models for how the universe works came about under the banner of religion. At the dawn of civilization, the explanation for maladies like bad crops or sickness were attributed to faith-based reasoning such as God needing more human sacrifices rather than to just leave it at “we don’t know yet”. Even today, 84% of people worldwide identify themselves as religious and are still satisfied with faith as a source of answers. I imagine the reason we see superstition and lack of critical thinking on the list is because these relics of our evolutionary upbringing are clear impediments to societal well-being. Christopher Hitchens does a great job in outlining these reasons in God is Not Great so I’ll let you investigate further if you haven’t already.

How are we combating the faithful menace? The only instances in which we’ve seen faith decline are when correlational regulators came into existence and these are a very recent phenomenon. The idea of forming conclusions on the basis of testing hypothesis with reproducible results didn’t exist until the 16th century. Since then, it’s been an uphill battle against the entrenched religious position. Still, secular thought is growing as a percent of the population every year and I believe we can attribute this to a worldwide increase in educational standards. Progress will be slow, but I fully expect the majority to swing non-religious in the coming century.

What would the world look like without faith? I love this question because it puts a magnifying glass on all the baggage that comes along with religious thought. In particular, religion comes with a de facto answer to the purpose of life. In the cases of the most observed religions, the answer is something along the lines of serving a god, following the rules, and (more consequently) getting into heaven. Heaven is the ultimate well-being maximizer so, if you can believe in its existence, it makes sense to do anything to get into it. Without the stick and carrot of heaven and hell, we’re still beings bent on maximizing well-being and I like to think we’d simply adjust our time frame from infinity down to the years of our life. It’s much easier to see adopting social policies oriented around human well-being without the influence of deontological, religious rules. Equal rights for races, sexes, sexual orientations, etc. would be much more easily achieved and have been much more so in nations with high rates of secularism. There wouldn’t be this strange obsessions with controlling people’s bodies through abstinence-only sex education, anti-abortion policy, and anti-birth control policies. These thoughts are the tip of the hypothetical faithless iceberg and perhaps worth re-examining in later blogs, but back to the topic at hand!

The final flaw I want to examine before getting into my answer is awareness/ignorance. I have a hard time ranking this one as higher or lower than my own in terms of severity since it seems crucial to pair it with others (awareness always pertains to awareness of some other thing or idea). Lack of awareness of cognitive biases, for instance, seems like an excellent nomination for humanity’s greatest woe. If we were all constantly aware of how our minds systematically fail to produce sound conclusions, there’s a good chance we’ll make fewer of them (though it’s probably true that we’ll have an easier time spotting the biases in others). As just one example, in his book Nudge, behavioral economist Richard Thaler demonstrated that if the default option for being a organ donor is “no,” rates of being a donor were at about 10%. If the default option is “yes,” rates jumped to about 90%. Being aware of the default effect has serious implications for those depending on organ donations. It seems to me that there are a multitude of answers to “Of all things to be aware of, “x” would have the most positive impact if all humans suddenly gained awareness.” Perhaps this will find its way into a future Wright question, but for now, let’s proceed to the Wright answer (haha, ok, I’ll remove this when I revise).

Lack of willpower is humanity’s greatest flaw. This is an another evolutionary asset, well-being liability costing us happiness in nearly every aspect of life. The difference with willpower is we, as a species, are not making progress toward its remedy. If anything, we’ve created a consumer world that discourages seeking long-term benefits, in favor of smaller, short-term gains (refer to my previous blog on hyperbolic discounting for an example). In another informal poll I took of people I know, I asked, “What would you do differently if you had infinite willpower.” Not a single person said “nothing”. Instead, they listed aspirations that they felt were out of reach of their willpower-inadequate selves. On the list were things such as dieting, drinking less, working out, quitting smoking, reading more, studying more, getting better grades, running a marathon, saving more, paying off debt, getting more sleep, submitting more job applications, keeping the home clean, being more scheduled, getting a degree, seeing the doctor more regularly, and so on. Each of these is something we recognize as a short term pain for a long-term benefit, but few are willing to make the investment.

In many ways, humanity’s flawed strategy for maximized well-being is to use a happiness credit card—constantly purchasing a small gratification now at the expense of our long-term benefit and racking up debt in the form of forgone achievements and societal harm. We’re hitting snooze instead of getting up and going to the gym because we want sleep now. We’re stacking another dirty dish in the sink because our favorite TV show is on. We’re ordering pizza again because it’s easier than preparing a healthy meal. We are failing at doing what we know is best for us and the cost extends beyond individuals. In the US, obesity has risen to 35% of the population and the result is a $147 billion bill on the taxpayers in increased medical costs. With the willpower to balance their caloric intake, we’d save ourselves that fortune, they’d live longer, and we get the pleasure of a more aesthetically-pleasing population. Studies have shown that criminals and drug-abusers are among the worst at self-regulation and the worldwide impact of those looking to illegally make a quick buck or or get a quick high includes nearly the entire cost of the prison and law enforcement system.

[You need to do a better job of organizing these ideas. What are all the actual costs of well-being? It seems like you should categorize based on severity since not doing the dishes and crime seem to be different. You also need to show how this is the GREATEST flaw to humanity and address Courtney’s claims about how increasing willpower might come at the expense of others.]

[So what’s going on in your mind is you have a feeling that willpower is humanity’s greatest flaw and now you need to back it up. What are the actual ramifications of a lack of willpower? Brainstorm:

Crime; pretty much all crime is the result of wanting a quick payoff (ie lawbreaking) An alternate explanation is that it’ just higher tolerance for risk. It’s not inevitable that the criminal will be caught

Poverty An alternate explanation is that poverty is caused moreso by mental illness

Cheating in relationships Once again, this could be just a higher tolerance for risk. If one didn’t think they’d be caught and didn’t see how cheating would negatively affect the relationship, then one could argue that cheating might be a tactic for greater well-being (though this is a seemingly bad guess)

Poor health

Little savings; lots of debt

Lack of education; poor grades

Lack of voter turnout

Inability to make success happen This might be more of a central point to make. Willpower directly relates to achievement (along with intelligence, luck, and (now I’m considering) awareness). Everything we think would make us happier is a goal we can set and willpower can take us there. Whether or not we are AWARE of the right goals to set is a separate issue. If we want better relationships, we can set goals and use willpower to make them better. If we want more engagement, we can use willpower to divert our time into more engaging activities. If we see lack of accomplishment as a happiness problem, we can once again target it with willpower.



A possible theme I’m seeing is risk/reward as an alternative explanation to lack of willpower. Perhaps a preference for higher risks is the problem? Perhaps its an inability to consider long-term odds such that paying $1 for a 1% chance to win $150 is a bad gamble if we can only make it once, but a good one if we can make it as many time as we want. Similarly, a 48% chance to double our money might be good for a one-time investment, but we’d lose in the long run with many bets. Now we’re getting into the territory of decision theory and all the biases Kahneman uncovered in Thinking Fast and Slow. Is this where you want to take the blog? Need to refocus.]