Press Secretary - lydgate/mindmeld GitHub Wiki

From The Elephant in the Brain:

Well, what Gazzaniga concludes from his years of research, including later work on healthy patients, is that all human brains contain a system he calls the “interpreter module.” The job of this module is to interpret or make sense of our experiences by constructing explanations: stories that integrate information about the past and present, and about oneself and the outside world. This interpreter works to the best of its abilities given the information available to it. So in whole-brained patients, when information is flowing freely between the two hemispheres, the explanations produced by the interpreter typically make a lot of sense. But when the information flow breaks down, whether because of brain damage or any other reason, the interpreter is forced to weave more tenuous, inventive explanations, or even whole-cloth fabrications.

The key question regarding the interpreter is this: For whom does it interpret? Is it for an internal audience, that is, the rest of the brain, or for an external audience, that is, other people? The answer is both, but the outward-facing function is surprisingly important and often underemphasized. This has led many thinkers, including Dan Dennett, Jonathan Haidt, and Robert Kurzban, to give the interpreter module a more memorable name: the Press Secretary (see Box 6).

They go on to summarize the takes from the writers listed above. The argument here is that the interpreter module, which we typically think of as the "CEO self," is in fact a "press secretary" whose purpose is not to narrate stuff for ourselves, but to justify things to others. Rather than providing legitimate reasons, this module provides legitimate-seeming rationalizations ("post hoc", i.e., after we've already done something or decided what to do based on pre-rational or irrational urges).

In this telling, the self is co-created by interactions with others, because we need to appear competent and rational.

Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson, The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life (Oxford University Press, 2018).

See discussion 2021 02 01.