Are you in two minds about something? No coincidence, because you’ve actually got two

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Those who’ve observed the human mind making decisions are usually left in no doubt why coins can be tossed with roughly the same level of efficiency.

Studies have now shown that the ancient machinery can work at adrenalin speed. “Predator coming, run like hell”. The modern brain gets out of bed, apparently, with threats like “Political speech coming, run like hell”.

It’s a matter of complexity. The ancient brain, confronted with a political speech, would probably just bite it.

How inappropriate.

Reptiles and humans have common areas in brain faculties, in the ancient brain.

(I do quite a bit of slithering, myself. I’d been wondering why.)

The human brain, however, has developed the outer cortex. That means a large addition, extra weight to lug around and feed. So the outer cortex, despite much evidence to the contrary, often seen in the form of headlines, must have some evolutionary benefit.

A study was created to analyze the current state of the human doublethinking machinery, and explores the possibility that the brain may actually shrink, if the old system is declared evolutionarily redundant:

Science Daily explains:

The results of their modelling showed that when the threat level is high, such as the risk of being attacked by a dangerous animal, it is very useful to have the fast-acting, if inaccurate, system. But when dealing with situations which don't occur very often, or complex scenarios with many conflicting cues such as social situations, the cortical system is of more use than the sub-cortical system.

Trimmer commented: "As life became more complex, the benefit of gathering information before making a decision put an evolutionary pressure on the early brain. This may have led to the rapid development of the cortex in mammals. So if humans continue to live in a world of dangers such as wild animals or fast-moving cars, there will still be an evolutionary benefit to maintaining the sub-cortical system, and it is unlikely to atrophy in future humans."

The implication is that people’s brains won’t shrink. I’m not so sure about that. I saw a guy, really big, with the top of his head no more than two inches from his eyebrows. No cranium worthy of the name. He was smiling happily, as he went into social security.

I just slithered off, and didn’t bother to bite the guy.