Hello everybody,
This week, we’re looking at animal intelligence with the philosopher of science and bestselling author, Peter Godfrey-Smith. I interviewed Peter as part of Big Think’s exciting first print magazine.
You can find the companion article here: Think like a crow, choose like a crab: The animals inside our minds
I shower alone.
This is a pretty common thing. I’m sure some readers will have a few exciting tales of shared and steamy showers, but I think it’s fair to say that most of us shower alone. And so, for about 20 years of my life, no one saw my lathery habits. No one knew my rituals, quirks, and eccentricities. In what order do I wash my body? How do I put on my shampoo? What temperature is ideal? Only I knew.
My wife was the first person to point out something odd. She said to me that “it’s pretty unusual” for people to stand in the shower with their arms crossed, looking somewhere between furious and depressed. Because that’s how I’ll stay for a good ten minutes. Yes, I do the normal washing stuff. But mostly I just stand there, arms crossed, relaxing.
I object to my wife’s accusation of “unusual” — I still believe a lot of people do this (your comments are very welcome). But the point of this story is to highlight just how much of our lives we do from habit. So many things we do are “because I’ve always done so,” and it often takes someone else or a jarring, dissonant outside voice to call attention to it.
Sometimes, as with my wife, that voice is wrong. I like my grumpy, folded-arms relaxation time. At other times, it’s good to pull up and examine these habits. A rut can be a very dangerous thing. So this week, we look at a useful trick to examine just that — and it’s all thanks to some hermit crabs.
What I’ve learned from a crab
Hermit crabs love their shells. They will spend a great deal of their life hunting for the perfect shell to call home. They tuck in, wiggle about, and make themselves comfortable. “I love what you’ve done with the place,” they say to their neighbors.
When it comes to life goals, getting a lovely shell is as good as it gets for a hermit crab. So, in 2009, some scientists wanted to test just how much those shells mattered. The team from Queen’s University, Belfast, gave the crabs a series of increasingly strong electric shocks. What they discovered was that the crabs would tolerate considerably more pain if the shell was a great one. They’d suffer more to keep a well-loved home.
In 2016, the team changed the experiment. This time, rather than electric shocks, the scientists simulated certain undesirable conditions for the hermit crabs. For example, they would inject the environment with the odor of a shark to imply the presence of a terrible predator swimming nearby. Again, the team found the crabs would risk far more danger for the preferred shells. They would be weighing things up.
That ability to “weigh up” is what’s important here. For this week’s Mini Philosophy interview, I spoke with Peter Godfrey-Smith about animal intelligence and/or consciousness. As you can hear below, we spent a great deal of time considering the various elements of “intelligence” in humans and how far, if at all, other animals share in these cognitive abilities.
This was the first time that an interviewee said something that really sent me into a spiral. I couldn’t stop thinking about hermit crabs. I kept imagining their little minds running through the pros and cons of their shells. I was absolutely, criminally anthropomorphizing these leggy crustaceans, but I couldn’t stop extrapolating from their “weighing up” to humans.
I kept asking myself: Am I just a crab? I drape myself in a gilded cloak of human exceptionalism, but am I really any different from those crabs bearing shocks in want of a good thing? Yes, I have more wants than a shell. Yes, my “weighing up” is more sophisticated, complex, and varied, but basically, my life comes down to a million tiny moments defined by one simple question:
Is it better to carry on, or do something else?
Is it better to sit on the sofa or get up for a sandwich? Is it better to carry on reading this book or go to bed? Is it better to work at this job or quit? Is it better to stay with my wife, the shower sheriff, or get a divorce? Is it better to carry on living as I am or be someone else entirely?
Big to small — life is about weighing up.
And this is where my shower habits come back in. Because, as I fell into my crabby spiral, I kept thinking: The biggest difference between me and a crab is not that I am more rational or more deliberative, but rather the opposite. I am governed not by pure reason but by a chest of cognitive biases, heuristics, and cortical tattoos. I never weigh up the pros and cons of standing for ten minutes in the shower with my arms crossed — it’s just the way I’ve always done it. I never weigh up whether I should disown my entire family — because I’ve never had the thought. So much of my life is guided unthinkingly along in the zombie shuffle of unconscious habit.
I am well aware that these heuristics and biases are not without purpose. It’s a hard job to be a brain, and we need to use a few shortcuts and hotkeys now and then. But I’m determined to “be more crab.”
I’m going to sit down more often and reflect on the state of my shell. Is it a nice shell? Am I happy here? And how much suffering and misery am I willing to take before I find a new shell? I think we can all learn a bit from hermit crabs.
IN YOUR OPINION
One of my favorite answers this week. I always love a good animal fact, and the more I learn, the closer they feel.
But, of a great bunch, this is my favorite, from Samyak on Instagram, who wrote simply:
“Crows hold grudges.”
It’s great for two reasons. The first is that I love the image of a cross-armed crow, looking at the wall as their partner comes back into the nest. “Everything alright, darling?” the bird croaks. “If you need to ask, it’s worse than I thought.”
But the other reason I like this is that it reminds us just how rooted our behaviors are. It’s easy to say, “sulking is silly” or “don’t sulk,” but the very fact that animals — high-intelligence animals — sulk shows that there must be some benefit to it. Perhaps it prevents us from being duped, reinforces solidarity, punishes antisocial behavior, or whatever. The point is that all our behaviors have some kind of reason — be it neurological or evolutionary.
Next week, we’re exploring public philosophy and so I’m asking:
What’s the best talk you’ve ever heard in real life? And why?
Send me your thoughts via email or comment below.
MINI READING LIST
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RESOURCES
This newsletter contains my reflection on the topic at hand. Here is a list of the material shared in this email, as well as extra content about the topic that I've shared on my other social platforms:
The companion article inspired by my conversation with Peter Godfrey-Smith.
My short video exploring Peter’s book Other Minds, featured on Mini Philosophy's Instagram page
The full, unedited audio interview with Peter Godfrey-Smith:
Jonny is the creator of the Mini Philosophy social network. He’s an internationally bestselling author of three books and the resident philosopher at Big Think. He's known all over the world for making philosophy accessible, relatable, and fun.
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This is a fascinating essay, thanks. I’m following up on your recommendations. All the best, John.
All we have to decide is what to do with the time that has been given us. --- Gandalf