You know those visual scenes where, once you see it, you can never un-see it? They tattoo themselves on your brain? Like that YouTube video you watched of how a chicken nugget is made. That is...disturbing. I wish I could go back to the world where I was blissfully ignorant of that. There's a parallel here with knowledge. There are some truths that are unsettling, but re-program your entire perception of your world that make it impossible to go back. First, some science.
In the 1970s and 80s, a group of neuro-scientists (namely Michael Gazzaniga and Roger Sperry) carried out some wild experiments. They were studying "split-brain" patients—individuals who had a severed corpus callosum, the bundle of nerve fibers connecting the left and right hemispheres of the brain. The procedure is primarily done to treat severe epilepsy.
In one such experiment—they call it the "walk" command experiment—a split-brain patient would have the word "walk" flashed only to their left visual field, which goes exclusively to the right (non-verbal) hemisphere. They would then stand up and start walking away from the testing area. When stopped and asked, "where are you going?" or "why did you get up?", without hesitation, the patient would give a reasonable-sounding explanation like "I needed to stretch my legs", or "I was going to get a drink of water", or "I was going to close the door". That doesn't seem odd...but here's the interesting twist: the left hemisphere, which produces speech, never saw the word "walk" (remember, there's no way for the left and right hemispheres to communicate). It had no idea why the body just stood up and started moving.
Repeating for emphasis: The left hemisphere, which has no access to the command that caused the action, confidently fabricated an explanation rather than say "I don't know" or admit confusion. That's crazy.
This finding was replicated across many such experiments, where researchers would find that the brain just invents a justification for an action it didn't initiate, and believe that justification completely. That's the other part of this: the subjects were not consciously lying. They truly believed their own made-up rationale.
How do you explain this? (no pun intended) So there's a wide body of evidence (I'm taking Claude at its word on this one) that supports the idea that our cognitive reasoning abilities emerged out of a need to function in complex social groups. Specifically, to explain our actions to others-and those explanations needed to be compelling, not necessarily accurate. Ok, but why? Well, modern evolutionary psychology suggests that it's a way preserving our social images, being able to frame our self-interested actions in terms of fairness, necessity, or principle, which helped us avoid being seen as purely selfish, which would have been socially costly in tight-knit ancestral groups. And the better early humans could justify their behavior persuasively, the better they were at maintaining relationships, avoiding punishment, or securing resources. And anybody who has sales experience knows, if you are convinced of your own pitch, it's way easier to convince others as well. This is what created selection pressure for rationalization.
This is mind-boggling. I'm well aware of the findings from behavioral economics that show how irrational humans are, but I never connected the dots all the way to how we cope with that irrationality, especially internally. Digging deeper, there's a cognitive bias known as the "introspection illusion"—we tend to believe our own explanations for our behavior, even when those explanations are manufactured after the fact. This also flips the common-sense notion of human rationality upside down: explanations are not the cause, but the effect. The real underlying causes are an unconscious cludge of competing impulses, emotions, and heuristics.
Sure, this property of the mind does have an adaptive function, helping maintain psychological and social coherence. But in the quest to understand yourself in the modern world, the existential implications are jarring. Beyond rationalizing decisions, this probably extends to the narratives that govern your identity.
I've been sitting with this realization for a while...letting it slowly sinking in. It's made me revisit so many of my past actions and choices...and if I'm being truly honest with myself...I've explained a lot away after-the-fact. Primarily to mask a fear, shame, or vulnerability.
"I'm not engaging in conversation because these are not my people" = fear of social embarrassment
"Oh, I pivoted away from that startup idea because the market's too small" = fear of failure
"Uh, I don't need a co-founder because I work better alone" = fear of judgement
"I rent instead of buy because it's more convenient" = fear of commitment
...The more I dig, the more uncomfortable revelations I unearth.
In this clip I found, ChatGPT was asked,
"Speak as the ultimate philosopher/psychologist. I want you to blend ancient wisdom with modern science, stoicism, Buddhism, Jung, neuroscience, all of it. Now, give me five brutal truths about the human mind. The kind of truths people need to hear if they want to stop wasting their life."
Here's one of the harsh truths it shared:
"Every excuse is just a well-dressed fear. Your ego protects you from embarrassment more than it guides you to greatness. The moment something feels uncertain, your mind pulls the emergency brake and calls it logic. Until you're willing to look stupid, you will never be free."
Damn...
Well, I don't know about you but I'm confused as hell. Did I decide not to sign-up for improv classes because I really didn't have the time? Or was it because I was afraid of looking foolish in front of others? Do I choose not to go to networking events because they're genuinely a waste of time? Or is it because I'm scared of being judged? Am I desperately trying to launch a startup because it's authentically me? Or is it because I'm afraid of admitting failure? How many of my life's decision were made for self-preservation!?
Ok, with this new awareness, you can easily get caught in an existential tailspin. So I'll try to end with an uplifting note.
First, I doubt you can completely remove this act of illusion the mind pulls (it's programmed deep in our biology stack), but there's strength in awareness. Recognizing that, lurking beneath your conscious processing, there are these hidden fears and motivations should give you an opportunity to interrupt the loop and counteract their influence. I've noticed that with some practice, I can catch myself running these mental routines and raise them to conscious awareness, where I can interrogate them more honestly.
Second, this tendency to confabulate can be used for good. It can help you reframe negative experiences so you can move on.
"She broke up with me? Well screw her, we were never compatible anyways"
"Did not get that job? Good, the company seemed toxic anyway"
"Customer churned? Fine, they were never a good fit"
In the face of disappoint and failure, your post-hoc rationalization can help you quickly move through it, and get you back on your feet. You have to be careful though, not to let it blind you from learning real lessons about yourself.
Finally, I do believe who you are is just the sum of a long anthology of stories you've told yourself about yourself, of course, informed by experiences. But if those stories are just interpretations, not absolute truths, then you can rewrite them. You can replace them with narratives that serve you better. And going forward, you can simply choose different actions, decoupled from your usual patterns which are just confabulations, to construct a new, hopefully more desirable, narrative about who you are. Simple, but probably not easy.
I can't claim any of these prescriptions work. This is a dangerous truth I've only recently accepted (I have no choice now that I know it!) and these reframes are only now starting to deliver some relief.