Why Everyone (Else) Is a Hypocrite summary

Do you make toast with a butane torch? Not a civilized way to start your morning, is it?

Chances are you prefer to use a toaster. This, granted, is common sense, but it’s also something particularly human. When you have a specific task to perform, whether cooking breakfast or solving an equation, you often turn to a specialized tool to make the job easier.

Let’s travel back in time to the earth’s most recent ice age. Saber-toothed tigers prowl around, and as an early human, you’re a survivalist. Right now, you’re hungry—– but not as hungry as the tigers are.

In this situation, would you rather have great vision, allowing you to spot predators from a distance, or perhaps great navigational skills, enabling you to quickly figure out an escape route?

People seem to readily believe that the human mind is centered on the concept of a coherent self, where this self is something like a manager or supervisor of your mind.

This concept could make sense if we consider the brain’s modularity, right? Some “thing” has to watch over the brain’s specialized apps (or modules) to ensure everything runs smoothly.

Did you ever play with Matchbox cars as a child? Thinking about the action of those small cars will help you understand how the brain’s modules interact.

Cyberneticist Valentino Braitenberg used the concept of small “vehicles” in the 1980s as the basis for an insightful thought experiment that reveals the functional challenges of the modular brain, even with only two modules.

Think you’re a good driver? Perhaps better than most other drivers on the road? You’re not the only person with that opinion.

Studies show that most people consider themselves above-average drivers. The thing is, everyone can’t be above average. So why do we think we’re all so special? Blame the brain’s modules!

Why on earth have some of the brain’s modules adapted to make people think too highly of themselves?

Doesn’t such misguided behavior potentially put lives at risk, by making people speed down a dark street or even drinking and driving? Yes, but such traits emerged for a reason, and it has to do with how you are perceived by other humans.

Aside from overconfidence, there’s another human trait that also has evolutionary origins: hypocrisy.

There are two ways humans are hypocrites. First, we ourselves do something that we’ve told someone else is a “wrong” thing to do. Second, we let others believe we’re condemning an action on moral grounds when in reality, we’re motivated by self-interest alone.