Accepting and now forcefully responding to this decentering and disturbing idea, Keith Stanovich here provides the tools for the “robot’s rebellion,” a program of cognitive reform necessary to advance human interests over the limited interest of the replicators and define our own autonomous goals as individual human beings. He shows how concepts of rational thinking from cognitive science interact with the logic of evolution to create opportunities for humans to structure their behavior to serve their own ends. These evaluative activities of the brain, he argues, fulfill the need that we have to ascribe significance to human life.
We may well be robots, but we are the only robots who have discovered that fact. Only by recognizing ourselves as such, argues Stanovich, can we begin to construct a concept of self based on what is truly singular about humans: that they gain control of their lives in a way unique among life forms on Earth—through rational self-determination.
Customer Reviews
Sometimes eloquent, but the substance is often underwhelming:
This book asks us to notice the conflicts between the goals our genes created us to serve and the goals that we as individuals benefit from achieving. Its viewpoint is somewhat new and unique. Little of the substance of the book seemed new, but there were a number of places where the book provides better ways of communicating ideas than I had previously seen.
The title led me to hope that the book would present a very ambitious vision of how we might completely free ourselves from genes and Darwinian evolution, but his advice focuses on modest nearer term benefits we can get from knowledge produced by studying heuristics and biases. The advice consists mainly of elaborations on the ideas of being rational and using scientific methods instead of using gut reactions when those approaches give conflicting results.
He does a good job of describing the conflicts between first order desires (e.g. eating sugar) and higher order desires (e.g. the desire not to desire unhealthy amounts of sugar), and why there’s no easy rule to decide which of those desires deserves priority.
He isn’t entirely fair to groups of people that he disagrees with. I was particularly annoyed by his claim that “economics vehemently resists the notion that first-order desires are subject to critique”. What economics resists is the idea that person X is a better authority than person Y about what Y’s desires are or ought to be. Economics mostly avoids saying anything about whether a person should want to alter his desires, and I expect those issues to be dealt with better by other disciplines.
One of the better ideas in the book was to compare the effort put into testing peoples’ intelligence to the effort devoted to testing their rationality. He mentions many tests that would provide information about how well a person has overcome biases, and points out that such information might be valuable to schools deciding which students to admit and employers deciding whom to hire. I wish he had provided a good analysis of how well those tests would work if people trained to do well on them. I’d expect some wide variations - tests for overconfidence can be made to work fairly well, but I’m concerned that people would learn to pass tests such as the Wason test without changing their behavior under conditions when they’re not alert to these problems.
Good, but wordy and dramatic:
Stanovich introduces the reader to the idea that humans are merely the hosts for two replicators — genes and memes — and that these replicators don’t care for the interests of their vehicles (us). However, Stanovich also thinks we have reached a point in evolution where we can “rebel” against the interests of these replicators and pursue our own interests.
Much of Stanovich’s discussion rides on his concept of “thin” versus “broad” rationality, i.e. simple “wanton” utility maximization vs. utility maximization according to a reflectively acquired value system.
Stanovich can be dramatic at times, constantly repeating his concern that the truths he is revealing will shatter our world-view and depress us. I was not depressed by any of the truths Stanovich revealed to me, and I could have done without the drama, but that may be because I started reading the book already believing in Darwinism, and not clinging to a smug sense of superiourity at being part of the only species on the planet which possesses consciousness.
The book probably could have been about half as long. I appreciate that Stanovich includes many counter-arguments, illustrations, and study-data, but he unnecessarily repeats many of his points several times. By cutting out these redundancies and the drama previously mentioned, the book could have been shortened.
While not ground-breaking to people who are well-read in the relevant fields, this book is a good overview of some of the fundamental ethical concerns that confront humanity in the age of Darwin.
Could benefit from a good edit:
This was a hard book to rate. Stanovich covers some fascinating ground, and has much to say that is worthwhile. Unfortunately he takes way too many pages to make his points, which all could have been clearly conveyed in a third the number of pages. It’s not that he goes into more depth than necessary, but rather that so much of the same material is repeated over and over again, in a somewhat rambling and confusing manner.
Much good previous work is built upon, but in some cases the work is not adequately represented. For example, the book is largely about dual process theory and about rationality, and Stanovich frequently cites Evans and Over’s work (e.g., Rationality and Reasoning, 1996), yet nowhere does he mention their dual process theory of rationality, which is central to their work and differs from and is more fundamentally “dual process” than Stanovich’s own less developed theory of thin and broad rationality.
Nevertheless, there are some very good ideas and integrations of evolutionary and cognitive science ideas to be found, as long as one is willing to dig for them.
Living in the world of replicators:
The Robot’s Rebellion is about the effects of replicators and evolution, specifically genes and memes. As a result of the genes there is the “vehicle” (the individual) built by the replicators with a two sided inter-influential mind, the automatic unconscious side and the conscious analytic side. The automatic side has goals that aren’t always in line with the vehicles, like a bee giving up its life by stinging. The conscious side can use tools to override or alter the automatic side. The memes’ (an idea held by more than one person) effect is culture. Ideas can spread just for the fact that they are good at spreading. Therefore a spreading idea doesn’t have to be helpful to us but just needs to have properties that make it good at spreading.
Therefore the goal is working on becoming properly rational, understanding the tendencies and effects of genes and memes and critiquing them as well as our values and desires with the tools we have, though those tools (e.g. logic) are also memes and are subject to critique as well. There are also cultural products that make it difficult to act out accordingly, an example Stanovich gives is our market system. Also cultural products become so infused with our way of thinking that they create thinking boxes (paradigms) and thus we rarely think outside of them.
some strengths
○ a subject index
○ a hearty appendix of notes
○ nice thought experiments
○ immensely referenced
○ interesting parallels with Buddhist thought.
some weaknesses
○ a little cluttered
○ Stanovich’s thinking might also be boxed by his approach of helping us to satisfy desires better vs. not even playing the game of desire satisfaction and dropping them.
Would be nicer if it was more practically organized or contain a practical summary chapter, listing the genetic and memetic traps and tools for deliverance from the restrictive clutches of the mighty replicators.
Your Genes (and Memes) Don’t Have to be Your Future:
Robot’s Rebellion is an excellent book. I’ll spare the details, as the other reviewers have written very complete summaries of the text. But Stanovich’s thesis, that humans are uniquely adapted to take greater control over their lives if they will learn how to use their higher cognitive abilities, resonated very strongly with me. We can do much to have happy, fulfilling lives if will start to assess our actions and our biological limitaitions critically. Stanovich weaves a very convincing argument that we make our lives better by overriding our genetically and “memetically” programmed intellectual reflexes. But we need to start using logic and accept the hard realities behind much of our mental processes.
I hope Stanovich continues to write on this subject. I would like to see more discussion of how we fall into traps and how we can develop a program to build more meaningful lives.
I found much of Stanovich’s thesis to be very consistent with Erich Fromm’s works: Escape From Freedom, The Sane Soceity, and Man for Himself. Although written long before the biophysical studies underlying Stanovich’s work, Fromm very intuitively undestood the challenges that we face in modern, market-oriented society. I think Fromm’s works are a great booken to Stanovich.
