Conversation as social grooming – a rationality problem?
Summary: the evolved social communication style of humans is not optimised for problem-solving. People of average intelligence generally fail to notice this, therefore they habitually fail to make full use of their faculties of precise thinking, and privilege conversation at the expense of less natural but effective means of problem-solving such as books, the internet and humans outside their social group.
Dunbar’s number is a theoretical upper limit to the number of other people with whom an average human can maintain stable social relationships, given the limitations of human brain power in facilitating these relationships. The number is extrapolated from a regression of mean group size in other primates and the neocortex volume of these primates; the human average neocortex volume is input, and out pops Dunbar’s number which is given to be ~150 (although the error bars are rather wide).
Other primates, with their relatively small social group sizes, maintain their social relationships by physically grooming one another. However, the large potential social group size of humans renders physical grooming impractical because it would be so time consuming.
From the wikipedia article on Dunbar’s number:
Dunbar, in Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language, proposes furthermore that language may have arisen as a “cheap” means of social grooming, allowing early humans to efficiently maintain social cohesion. Without language, Dunbar speculates, humans would have to expend nearly half their time on social grooming, which would have made productive, cooperative effort nearly impossible. Language may have allowed societies to remain cohesive, while reducing the need for physical and social intimacy.
This certainly seems to be the case – humans use conversation to maintain their social relationships, rather than picking insects and dead skin off each other (if only we could claim to be so much more advanced than our primate cousins in every respect).
The relevance of this to rationality, as I see it, is that to the extent that human conversation is not optimised for efficient exchange of information and problem solving, social conversation is a sub-optimal means of obtaining help from other people. Presumably, our natural mode of conversation with social companions is a compromise between conversation as instrumental means of solving problems or gaining information, and conversation as grooming – it seems to me that in the EEA, these criteria would not have led to entirely the same results if our approach to conversation were only optimised for one or the other.
If there had been internet and books in the EEA, humans would have evolved to prefer these information sources to what they can extract from their social contacts, in comparison to their natural inclinations given our actual evolutionary history (in which conversation was usually the best information source available, compromise though it may be). Given this counterfactual I suppose conversation would be optimised more as a purely social grooming activity, too.
Therefore when people are talking to friends, they may be unduly optimistic about how useful they expect these interactions to be in comparison to (for example) researching things themselves, or asking questions on an internet forum. Admittedly humans are generally well aware that ulterior motives can be at play in their conversations, but even if someone has good reason to believe that their interlocutor is not consciously trying to hinder them (as is generally the case with friends) they are likely to overestimate the quality of the information, analysis or advice they receive.
To state the obvious, social companions may be unwilling to speak the truth, regardless of how important it is to the problem. More subtly, friends may fail to realise the degree of precision of thought that is necessary in solving certain problems and resolving dilemmas – they may think they are offering advice (and the person with the problem may think so too), when in fact they are still in the habitual mode of conversation optimised towards the standards of “be interesting”, “don’t make a status play by acting too smart or talking too long” et cetera.
I see this as a problem that relatively smart people are likely to circumvent, firstly because they are used to thinking precisely in their work or studies and know what that feels like, therefore they tend to recognise when their social interactions are ill suited to problem-solving; and secondly because “acting too smart” is not frowned upon as an attempt to claim undue status in their social groups. That’s probably why I’ve never seen this problem discussed on Less Wrong; nonetheless to the extent that anyone is interested in improving the practical rationality of the IQ<115 crowd, it might be a useful concept to tackle with them.
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Interesting, I didn’t realize that the office cooler small talk is an equivalent of monkeys in a troop grooming each other.
http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1993-04-11/
It may be true that conversation could have been better optimized to problem-solving, but that doesn’t imply that it is not the optimal method of gathering information in many cases. That said, you’re right about the fact that it is often suboptimal to get help from friends (vs internet or books), but I think this has more to do with the source than the medium of communication. If you were surrounded by people knowledgeable in the topics you are interested in, it wouldn’t be the best choice to read books only instead of simply asking them about things (although combining the methods usually brings better results). Conversation can get quite efficient in solving things in such an environment, the problem is rather that such environments are rare (so reading internet forums is eventually still better).
I’ll tell you what prompted me to write this piece: I should imagine that I’ve spent more time around fairly low-IQ people than most here. And I can’t help but notice that their conversations can seem to fall short of the rationality of which they are capable, even given that they aren’t the smartest folks (no disrespect intended, merely facts).
For example at a football match (typical working class social event in the UK), I can just see social chatter (grooming) being treated as serious analysis. People will discuss tactics and so forth for minutes on end without thinking precisely once—talking in circles, in an entirely superficial way—and yet there is nothing to betray that they recognise this themselves. I can join in, but being somewhat acutely aware of rationality and precise thinking, I have to consciously enter into “grooming” mode. The failure to do so may be the origin of common rationalist stereotypes (e.g. Spock) who often violate grooming norms in conversation for the sake of intellectual precision.
Admittedly, perhaps when the subject of conversation is more serious the brain recognises this and switches modes—but that isn’t the impression I’ve formed. Obviously that isn’t a compelling argument, but I think that maybe readers will draw upon their own experiences and find they agree with this analysis.
My article could have expressed what I was trying to say a little better. Basically, I think that people below a critical point in intelligence aren’t even subconsciously aware of this fact about their conversations. Therefore, they dumb themselves down by doing most of their thinking in the context of social conversation, which doesn’t encourage precision even when there is a problem under discussion that requires precise thinking.
By reading books and talking to knowledgeable people outside of a grooming context (e.g. on an impersonal kind of internet forum, or with some kind of professional) they are more likely to make full use of the precise, pedantic thinking that is the hallmark of rationality, within the bounds of the intelligence that they possess.
This is a different consideration, beyond the question of whether books and other information sources actually contain more relevant knowledge than friends have to offer. And the problem is probably greater when it comes to analysis and interpretation—the exchange of mere facts seems more compatible with grooming chatter than does, for example, discussion of whether it’s a good idea to get married (anything that involves long and complex chains of reasoning).
This sounds like that episode of the IT Crowd in which the computer guys learn to talk football (starting about 1:10).
In America, at least, this kind of talk is sometimes called shooting the shit
I don’t know that intelligence is directly correlated to that. Socialization may have more to do with it—though individuals of higher intelligence may be less likely to so socialized as ‘nerd’ culture is more heavily geared towards instrumental problem-solving. I’ve seen very intelligent people who seemed to be entirely ignorant of the fact that all their conversations were achieving was essentially verbal grooming. Even in more ‘intelligent’ groups—I used to ‘head’ the local H+/transhumanist meetups in my area before they fell apart—the tendency towards ‘circle-jerk’ grooming-through-mindless-agreement becomes evident.
As to whether these individuals are aware of what they’re doing—I don’t know.
That being said; the habit of using speech as a social lubricant and tool to demonstrate commonality / mutual-identification rather than for any specifically productive end is ubiquitous, absolutely. And in writing this I am struck by a wide category of individuals I know—such as one young woman who is currently pursuing an accelerated 4-year course for a double-major; with a masters in Mechanical Engineering (and I forget the minor) who has routinely engaged in this sort of speech-patterns while apparently seeking problem-resolution. I stumble with her in communication very frequently as a result; I attempt to engage in real problem-solving and am met with disinterest or just confusion. (One such recurring topic; what she should do with herself upon the diagnosed-to-be-imminent death of her fiance.)
The point, if I even have one at all here, is that I do not believe this phenomenon is strictly inversely-correlated to intelligence, but rather to some other factor.