Elon Musk: The cortex is mostly in service to the limbic system

Even in science
the unemotional thinking portion of the brain is still under the influence of the emotional limbic system (LS), the part of the brain that tells us we are hungry, horny, threatened, delighted, etc. The LS regulates autonomic or endocrine function in response to emotional stimuli and also is involved in reinforcing behavior. According to Wikipedia, “Some scientists contend that this [limbic-cortex} connection is related to the pleasure obtained from solving problems.”

In science, some problems can only be solved once.
Kepler reported orbits were ellipses and orbital speeds had a geometric relationship.
The Wright brothers added a motor, rudders, stabilizers and ailerons to a glider.
Cousteau co-invented the aqualung, enabling scuba diving.

Some problems took two and three attempts.
Huxley (1868) reported on the many traits shared by the small dinosaur, Compsognathus, and the small feathered dinosaur, Archaeopteryx.

Heilmann (1926) wrote a book that mistakenly caused that discovery to fall out of favor.

Ostrom (1973) resurrected Huxley’s hypothesis with the description of Deinonychus.

At the time, many said, “Oh John, you’re crazy,” Ostrom reported in 1999.

Huxley and Ostrom finally became widely accepted with the reporting, over several years, of the dozens, then hundreds of feathered dinosaurs coming out of China.

How does the limbic system rule in paleontology?
Workers want their own hypotheses to be accepted, even in the face of invalidating evidence, because it feels good to discover something.

Workers want hypotheses they have accepted to be valid, even in the face of invalidating evidence because it doesn’t feel good to change.

Workers who have paid money and time in academia want the hypotheses they learned and paid for to be valid, especially when their fellow students (= tribe members) paid the same money and time to elder academicians, even in the face of invalidating evidence because it doesn’t feel good to feel short-changed or misled.

Workers do not like to acknowledge that others discovered something before they did because second place doesn’t feel as good. Apologizing for honest errors doesn’t feel good either.

Some workers would rather denigrate those who upset their academic paradigms, rather than support their own positions in unemotional debate using the scientific method. Again this is because it doesn’t feel good to change, or be influenced by a disrespected individual. Respect and disrespect, including prejudice and blackwashing, are also products of the limbic system, not the higher processes of the thinking cortex.

The limbic system.
We all have one. We all need one. We would not want to be without one. But sometimes we need to tell the LS to sit down while the cortex takes control. The cortex is the part of the brain that makes us human, the last part of the brain that becomes fully mature, the part of the brain involved in impulse control. The LS is the monkey brain. The scientific method makes the LS sit down. The scientific method also helps workers sleep at night, because the LS has a dark side known as a feeling of guilt.

Phylogenetic analysis
also makes the LS sit down. Ideally phylogenetic analyses provide results based on unbiased, unemotional numbers. Small analyses with a dozen to a hundred taxa are still subject to taxon exclusion, the number one problem today in paleontology. The large reptile tree (LRT, 1885+ taxa) may not be perfect, but the bigger it gets, the more it minimizes taxon exclusion while it exposes internal errors that get corrected.

Given this fact,
the LRT riles the limbic systems of paleo workers because it recovers non-traditional results after testing taxa together that have never been tested together before. The LRT presents unwelcome change. Apparently no one’s limbic system wants to challenge the ten years of work needed to rebuild their version of the LRT with another ten years of work with the dreaded possibility that results might match.

Christine Comaford, writing for Forbes, reports,
“Our brains do an amazing and wonderful job, but they don’t usually like change very much. You may like the idea of change. Heck, parts of you may be very interested in change theory, talking about change, managing change—and especially describing how other people should change. However, actual change involving ourselves is scary to certain parts of our brain.”

Comaford continues,
“Once our critter brain has equated a particular phenomenon with safety or with survival, it will continue to carry out that program. And it will do so as long as we are not dead, because it really doesn’t care about our quality of life—it cares about survival. And speaking of staying alive, one key component of staying alive is belonging, or being like the other critters in the environment.”

In this case, ‘the environment’ is the academic environment.
This is where you’ll find this nebulous thing called ‘scientific consensus. Scientific consensus waits for a supermajority of acceptance, or the perception of same because ballots are never counted. Heilmann mistakenly and adversely affected scientific consensus. Huxley and Ostrom struggled against scientific consensus using the scientific method. Due to the limbic systerm of other workers, Ostrom’s cortical, unbiased logic did not matter to the consensus – not until the Chinese feathered dinosaurs tore the blinders from the supermajority. Then they looked around and checked with their colleagues to see if that was the correct way to think from now on. Finally it felt good to accept that birds are dinosaurs because their friends were also saying birds are dinosaurs.

“The cortex is mostly in service to the limbic system”.
Not the way it should be in science. That’s just the way it is. Learn to accept this simple fact. Then it’s easier to see, accept and understand the limbic system working ‘at full steam’ in your fellow hominid primates. To change their minds, their votes, their respect takes politics, not science. Politics, like scientific consensus, is closer to the limbic system. John Ostrom was frustrated trying to change minds with logic, and he was a PhD. If you’re a scientist, try to tell your LS to sit down. Try to take the time to rerun the experiment. Try to let your cortex take over. Try to recognize when your own limbic system is in charge. Black washing, name calling and disrespecting are all signs to watch out for.

wiki/Limbic_system
forbes.com/hijack-how-your-brain-blocks-performance/