Why is the human brain so weak?

[Bootstoots]

The stats may be skewed by the large rural Indian population of the west where alcohol/suicide is an ongoing problem.

This is from Saturday's WSJ. It is a book review about how we make decisions and our lack of rationality.

Rural Western Indians are certainly a high-risk group for suicide, but they're not enough to explain the uniformity of the high suicide rates in the rural West. If they were the main reason for this trend, counties with reservations would see very high suicide rates but heavily white counties would be around average.

But that's not what we see: essentially every county in Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico reports above-average suicide rates, including counties with negligible Indian populations. Something else is clearly going on here.

The other interesting feature is a belt of elevated suicide rates along the upper South from Oklahoma to Appalachia. Does this area have anomalously high gun ownership rates, even when compared to the Deep South, or something like that? Or does rugged terrain just cause people to want to end it all?

 

[dIZZyBlIZZy]

The other interesting feature is a belt of elevated suicide rates along the upper South from Oklahoma to Appalachia. Does this area have anomalously high gun ownership rates, even when compared to the Deep South, or something like that? Or does rugged terrain just cause people to want to end it all?

methods of suicide

While firearms are the most common method (at least in 01), they are barely a majority. 55.08% to be exact, so gun ownership is not the only thing to consider.

Further, it's hard to tie reservations to the demographics when far and away the most suicides are committed by white males.

Edit: Also, looking 1950-2005, the highest age group for suicides (sometimes over 25 per) are over 85, which leads to a possible variable that in some cases it's not depression, but a terminal illness like cancer or heart disease.

 

[Slobadog]

Since humans have advanced technology and social organization they naturally rely less on genetic quality. Animals without technology and much social organization depend more upon the quality of their genes than we do. Any deficiency in the quality of genes would be more likely to negatively affect a animals odds of survival and reproduction than a human's. Its hardly surprising that we have more biological errors in our population. Even our great brains eh arn't so important when computers do our math for us.

 

[Smellincoffee]

Also consider that we human beings are living in environments radically different than the ones our brains evolved to function in. They're adaptable to a point, but we ask brains that evolved to deal with tightly-knit social groups of a few dozen members to live daily in cities with millions of people. There's so much STIMULUS and so little consideration given to our biological limitations. I don't think preindustrialized people walked around with depression and such. Not that their lives were pleasant, but their lives were human-sized. The modern world is not. Why should our brains be less vulnerable than our bodies, which have developed new diseases in response to the way we live? Of course, we've only been doing this intense urbanization thing for a few hundred years, so we're still developing our understanding of how it effects our overall well-being.

 

[Zelig]

Why is the human brain so weak?

Not enough natural selection to kill off weak-brained humans before they're able to reproduce.

Even our great brains eh arn't so important when computers do our math for us.

Throughout human history, math has never been more important or applicable to as many people as today.

 

[Gatsby]

What I'm really asking is why humans have such complex emotions. Why is this necessary for our existence? Animals seem to get by just fine using mostly instinct alone. Why can't humans be like this? Are complex emotions beneficial to humans from an evolutionary point of view? Would we be as successful as a species if we didn't have complex emotions? In short, why aren't we more like Vulcans?

Are you saying that animals are like Vulcans?

All those pesky emotions are there because they contribute to the survival of the species and/or the individual. Anger and rage help you cope in cases of physical confrontations with enemies and predators; love facilitates pair-bonding and thus the successful raising of children; compassion is conducive to social cohesion within groups of people, because people who are in a tribe/group stand a much better chance of survival and procreation than people who face life alone. Imo, emotions are just more complex versions of natural instincts.

We have evolved to be emotion-driven, and the rational mind is a comparatively recent and rickety structure precariously poised on top of the vast and ancient instinct/emotion-driven mind. Chances are we (or our pre-homo sapien ancestors) would have gone extinct without emotions.

The problem comes when you combine an emotional being which has evolved to live in communal non-sedentry hunter-gatherer tribal societies, with a very new (in evolutionary terms) form of society characterised by large sedentary populations of mostly unrelated people, a strict hierarchy and class system, property ownership, and a reliance on a much smaller selection of food sources which said emotional being is not necessarily well-adapted to eat. Add to that the psychological impact of trying to dominate the natural world instead of being part of it, and layer upon layer of cultural baggage (particularly the advent of mass media, "education" institutions, and emotionally manipulative marketing techniques), and it's all but inevitable that the emotional being will experience emotional and psychological difficulties.

So that's one reason why we aren't like Vulcans. The other main reason is that Vulcans are a fictional race from a mid-20th century American sci-fi show, and as such they symbolize the ethos of a very particular culture at a very particular time in human history.

 

[El_Machinae]

@El_Machinae That's very interesting, I should do more reading about this crazy brain of ours

Too bad we don't understand so much of it

I think that the collective 'we' knows a great, great deal about the brain. There is a LOT of information out there! The reason why people don't know much, is because we're not educating ourselves on what we know, imo. Well, that and we don't have good bioinformatic and good infotainment ways of summarizing our knowledge.

I, too, think it's frustrating that we don't know as much as we could. There're two solutions, I think. The first is to help fund the neuroscientists and psychologists. The second is to fund the people who try to teach about the brain. There're some rather good authors out there who're not technically scientists, but who endeavour to synthesize current knowledge. If we buy their books, and fund them, then they can keep trying to make good theoretical explanations, and can build up the science that way. Remember, research and teaching creates a feedback loop. If we want brain science to speed up, we can help support either (or both) of the processes.

And, since I've evangelised so much, I might as well drop a recommendation. I found "Mapping the Mind" by Rita Carter to be a good layperson book, something to ease people into brain science.

 

[EnglishCrusader]

The human brain is weak?

 

[Disgustipated]

Yes.

Why should people be screwed up for life because their parents raised them wrong. It almost seems like you need perfect parents to grow up well adjusted.

Or maybe it's the mental health community trying to tell us we are all screwed up...

Either way, you'd think the human brain would be strong enough to fix itself. But many people cannot fix themselves.

And if the human brain was stronger, there wouldn't be so many fat people around...

 

[Akka]

Or maybe you have just bad criteria about what is the strength of the brain.

 

[El_Machinae]

I think it's a fine criteria. It's a legitimate complaint. It's something we should concern ourselves with improving. It's a 'weakness' compared to our desired outcomes. That said, I think the OP question has been answered. Why know why it is weak in this fashion (or, at least, we can explain the origin).

It's akin to asking why the footbones are so 'weak', because they're broken during construction work so often. Yes, the foot is amazing. But those bones still break. Once we acknowledge that, we can buy steel-toed boots, and overcome the weakness.

 

[holy king]

I live in a rural area, and I go to the doctor as needed. As do most people who live in rural areas. I know the people in my area generally see a GP as needed for themselves, or children, etc etc.

This. Now that I think about it, just about anyone in my rural region goes to the doctor at the slightest sign of illness, and the same goes for mental illness, while people in the city tend to ignore it. A lot of the city hospital numbers here are from rural living residents.

well, different culture you got, then.

 

[Aleksey_aka_al]

The problem is in the society and modern civilization, not the brain.

 

[Akka]

I think it's a fine criteria. It's a legitimate complaint.

No it's not. First, the problem, if it exists, is with the mind, not the brain. I'm not talking about some kind of "otherworldly soul" and know full well that the mind is in the end the result of brain chemistry, but many psychological problems comes not from a biological structural failure (like hormonal unbalance in the brain itself), but from trauma or bad experiences and the like.
In this way, many problems are actually not a sign of weakness, but a sign of strength - they are actually the defense the mind used to not shatter. Like scars show that the body can endure a lot of damage and still recover, even if diminished, and as such are a proof of resilience.

Second, as someone pointed out, many problems come not from the fact the mind/brain is weak, but just that we live in a completely different way from which we evolved. We as such put it under a strain that is much higher than we think.

Talking about weakness so off-handedly seems more ignorance and shallowness than an actual good point to me.

 

[timtofly]

No it's not. First, the problem, if it exists, is with the mind, not the brain. I'm not talking about some kind of "otherworldly soul" and know full well that the mind is in the end the result of brain chemistry, but many psychological problems comes not from a biological structural failure (like hormonal unbalance in the brain itself), but from trauma or bad experiences and the like.
In this way, many problems are actually not a sign of weakness, but a sign of strength - they are actually the defense the mind used to not shatter. Like scars show that the body can endure a lot of damage and still recover, even if diminished, and as such are a proof of resilience.

Second, as someone pointed out, many problems come not from the fact the mind/brain is weak, but just that we live in a completely different way from which we evolved. We as such put it under a strain that is much higher than we think.

Talking about weakness so off-handedly seems more ignorance and shallowness than an actual good point to me.

In other words the scientific method "ruined" the brain? Both literally and figuratively. It gave us the knowledge that we did not need while "feeding" us the ability to rely on that knowledge.

 

[EnglishCrusader]

Yes.

Why should people be screwed up for life because their parents raised them wrong. It almost seems like you need perfect parents to grow up well adjusted.

Or maybe it's the mental health community trying to tell us we are all screwed up...

Either way, you'd think the human brain would be strong enough to fix itself. But many people cannot fix themselves.

And if the human brain was stronger, there wouldn't be so many fat people around...

Well because it was made by nature. If humans could make the brain, it'd be much better.

 

[AlpsStranger]

The problem is in the society and modern civilization, not the brain.

I always hear stuff like this and wonder, what is the supposed solution? We can't simply say "Presto-pasto!" and return to a more mystical and tribal time. If we have a nuclear war, rapture, or space rock that might work. Otherwise, the future is probably going to keep on coming, and I don't think it's going to get less weird soon.

I'd take living to see this stuff over the psychological comfort of a more "human" era any place, any time. I realize not everyone agrees, but that's how I feel.

 

[classical_hero]

Yes.

Why should people be screwed up for life because their parents raised them wrong. It almost seems like you need perfect parents to grow up well adjusted.

Or maybe it's the mental health community trying to tell us we are all screwed up...

Either way, you'd think the human brain would be strong enough to fix itself. But many people cannot fix themselves.

And if the human brain was stronger, there wouldn't be so many fat people around...

So people who aren't like you are weak. Got it.

 

[Disgustipated]

no, I'm weak too. I should be able to will myself to have the self confidence to be with the hottest woman in the world, but I can't do it. I can't change my brain. It's frustrating that I can't change my personality.

 

[Gatsby]

no, I'm weak too. I should be able to will myself to have the self confidence to be with the hottest woman in the world, but I can't do it. I can't change my brain. It's frustrating that I can't change my personality.

You can do that sort of thing, but like any other impressive achievement in life it isn't going to be a quick and easy process. Even those fictional Vulcans had to meditate constantly to maintain mastery over their emotions, didn't they?

There are a lot of influences that conspire to keep a person's mind/personality in its current state. Aside from strictly biological factors, there is the relentless stream of messages that mass media, politicians, and advertisers etc drill into people's heads day after day - in the long run these have a far deeper impact on the psyche than making you want to buy a new car or vote for a certain party etc. There's also the memories, perceptions and inherited prejudices (e.g. from parents, friends, religion etc) ingrained in people's minds, and every time one of these is recalled it is reinforced by that very act of recollection: these things have a huge influence on how a person sees and conducts themselves, and many of them can be so ingrained that you forget that they're even there. People also tend to think similar thoughts and in similar ways as they go through life, usually out of laziness or convenience, and these thought patterns can thus often become habitual.

The mind is a system, and a very complex system at that. It is characterised by a vast array of positive and negative feedback loops, active components, buffers, cause-effect delays and information flows.The rational mind is only a small part of this system, and many parts of it are external to the brain (e.g. advertising). To effectively reprogramme the mind/personality, you have to first appreciate the system-nature of it, and then analyse its system dynamics to see what feeds into what, how it feeds in, and identify the leverage points within the system where changes can most effectively be made.