Nature abhors a vacuum, and so does the human mind. And so does my cat. But unlike my appliance-skittish cat, our human minds are uniquely driven to understand the world around us. This is great for postulating theories, but it has no emergency shut-off valve. In the absence of any supporting evidence, or the presense of contradictory evidence, our minds continue to churn out an overrun of questionable answers.

What is everything made of? Earth, water, fire, air.

What causes disease? An imbalance of blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile.

How was the world created? In a shining egg, the first woman and man dreamed that God was dreaming them (Makiritare). The gods sacrificed a millipeded milliheaded man and churned him into primordial butter (Hindu). Buddha shot a golden frog with an arrow, causing it to burp fire and pee water (Mongol). A god thrust his seed into the primal ooze (Japan). The big man was feeling craftsy for six days (The Big Three: Judaism, Christianity, Islam).

Even for everyday questions, the answer “I don’t know” is just so frustratingly unsatisfying:

What was that noise?
Why am I sick?
Why is the economy tanking?

“When presented with random uncorrelated events, the earthling mind [produces] theories to fill in the gaps.”

If you found yourself trying to find the hidden meaning in the symbols on page 2, that is exactly what Dr. Zorxablorg and I are talking about. The symbols were connected randomly.

“For example, when earthlings’ bodies start turning plump and spherical, they cannot comprehend the causes of the bio-quantum fat matter.”

People have been talking non-stop about diets for centuries! Past old whacky diets included eating cotton balls, sleeping more, no sex, washing fat away with soap, chew-and-spit, more alcohol, cigarettes, and tapeworms! While we have more scientific knowledge now, even our modern diets still fail most of the time. I’m tempted to invent something new and random, like “The P Diet”, where you must avoid foods beginning with P, like pizza, pie, pork, potatoes, etc., except peas (ironically), and it would probably have the same success rate as other diets.

“And when faced with any complex political problem, earthlings decide the simple solution is to lower taxes. Or raise them.”

Real life is complicated and full of tradeoffs. But would you vote for a politician who says, “I don’t know what the solution is”? Of course not! How about, “With great sacrifice and much time, we can make a small difference!” Meh. Through a sort of social evolution, we are breeding politicians who have an easy answer for everything.

“Earthlings have such a strong instinct to eliminate the unknown, that they think they can control the future with their minds.”

We already talked about Wishful Thinking last chapter. The future is always an unknown, so wishful thinking applies here too: the power to reduce future unknowns through wishing, prayer, and superstitious rituals.

“If you ask they why they like a certain movie, song, or clothing, rather than admit to themselves that they do not know, earthlings tell themselves arbitrary reasons that are amusingly inconsistent with their other beliefs.”

Our emotional feelings of liking and disliking come from a different part of brain than where we do conscious analysis. We are aware of our feelings, but the reasons are not conscious, so the other part of our brain constructs an analysis to retro-justify why we like/dislike something. Research shows that if you ask someone to explain why they like something, this often changes their preferences to become less consistent. If you dislike a movie, you might point out it was full of plot holes, even if your favorite movies have just as many plot holes.

Some specialists can learn to blend objective reasons with subjective tastes more consistently, like movie critics, fashion designers, musicians, artists, food critics, etc. But obviously this is quite limited, because these experts still hotly disagree with each other, and often disagree with their past or future selves.

“And if the earthling mind is unable to construct an explanation for anything, it solves this by blacking out the unknown to erase it from their consciousness. That is, earthlings do not want to know what they do not know.”

The Dunning–Kruger Effect shows us that when people are starting to learn something, they don’t know how much more there is to know, so they think they are closer to the top than they really are. So if you want to feel like an expert, just declare there is nothing else to learn. Teenagers are masters at this.