The imperialism of economics. By John Lanchester
Robin Hanson &
Kevin Simler: The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday
Life
Reviewed by . By
John Lanchester
What are you doing? I
don’t mean what are you doing with your life, or in general, but what are you
doing right now? The answer, in one respect, is simple enough: you’re reading
this magazine. Obviously. From a certain economic perspective, however, you’re
doing something else, something you don’t realize, something with a sneaky
motive that you aren’t admitting to yourself: you are signalling. You are
sending signals about the kind of person you are, or want to be. What’s that
you say - you’re reading this in the bath, or on your phone in bed, or
otherwise in private? Well, the same argument applies. You are acquiring the
tools for a “fitness display.” This, the economist Robin Hanson and the
writer-programmer Kevin Simler argue in their new book, The Elephant in
the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life, is an advertisement of “health,
energy, vigor, coordination, and overall fitness.” Fitness displays “can be
used to woo mates, of course, but they also serve other purposes like
attracting allies or intimidating rivals.”
So there you go:
that’s what you’re doing, there in the bath with the magazine. Your rivals are
right to feel intimidated. Wait, though - surely signalling doesn’t account for
everything? Hanson, in a recent podcast interview with Tyler Cowen, a colleague
at George Mason University, was asked to give a “short, quick and dirty” answer
to the question of how much human behavior “ultimately can be traced back to
some kind of signalling.” His answer: “In a rich society like ours, well over ninety
per cent.” He was then asked to cite a few voluntary human activities that
“have the least amount to do with signalling.” The example Hanson came up with
was “scratching your butt.”
That made me laugh,
and also shake my head. Economists often do... There is something thrilling
about the intellectual audacity of thinking that you can explain ninety per
cent of behavior in a society with one mental tool...read more:
