I’m asking myself why I just spent the entire f**king day trying to figure out something I read this morning in a psych journal [link]. It’s such an esoteric subject I’m wondering how it captured my attention in the first place. They say they’ve discovered where ‘context-dependent’ learning has advantages not found in modern society. Economists and educators consider context-dependent learning an impediment to optimal decision-making. Now psychologists are finding out that it has adaptive value in nature that you don’t see in a classroom or on the trading floor. Context-dependent learning actually helps people make ‘optimal choices’ about which trail to take and what foods to eat in the wild.
I guess I’ve always been cursed by my own curiosity ..trying to imagine what the world must have been like for our tribal ancestors. Since so much of our evolution took place then, I’m constantly wondering what is native to our lives and what are the inventions of modern society that we weren’t designed for. I’ve been asking these questions since I was ten. Looking back, I see how they unknowingly led me to my field of study in college ..my career choice ..and a lifelong fascination with the findings of neuroscience.
I remember speeding down an LA freeway one morning on my way to college going “we weren’t designed for this ..sitting in transport vehicles rushing over highways elevated far above the savannah that was once our home ..arriving at destinations in a matter of hours where it would have taken them a lifetime .. making decisions at speeds that would have been mind boggling back then.” I often wonder what challenges this presents our psyche that we’re not even aware of. What tasks routinely disturb the balance of homeostasis and cause things like stress, anxiety and hypertension.
For some reason I feel it’s important to know the difference between nature and man-made conventions. Not that I think one is better than the other ..they each come with their own set of consequences. Perhaps it’s the reason I take an ‘ecological perspective’ to events in life, which drives my father crazy. There’s a reason why we’re tuned to the context of information ..it prepares us for the events most likely to occur in nature. Storing and using contextual information has greater ecological value than most economists and educators give it credit for.
