Comment by bitexploder

Trivers mapped the evolutionary algorithms, but modern network neuroscience maps the actual hardware running those algorithms right now. When Trivers talks about "self-deception for social advantage," he's describing a highly weighted survival prior that was genetically selected for over millennia. But he doesn't have the real-time mechanics. Today, Friston’s predictive processing and the tri-network model show us exactly how that prior executes in the tissue: the Default Mode Network simply ignores contradictory sensory data from the insula because updating its rigid self-model costs too much metabolic energy. Humans are not running elaborate plots, our brain is just minimizing free energy and avoiding prediction errors in the present moment.

Trivers work is not useful for explaining psychological suffering or real time behavior in a local family environment. We know a lot more than we did in the past. He basically could not separate out what our DMN is and used an elaborate narrative that fit at some macro level but falls apart when looked at closely. He gets the cost right. But we can now say with confidence the mind is not divided in the way he proposes. The narrative creates this division in the reader’s mind, but it is not real. Illusion.

Pinker is really falling for the narrative and ideas here and spends a lot of words in a topic that modern neuroscience pretty easily explains. To push back at Pinker’s conclusion: A rigid self identity with priors that are not updated also explains Triver’s many conflicts and social outcomes. The dude (Trivers) ended up being a creep FWIW.