A lot of common ideas about education, charity and laughter (we laugh because something is funny) are evolutionary useful lies we tell ourselves.
"But while we humans often play by ourselves (e.g., with Legos), recall that we laugh mostly in the presence of others. So what communicative purpose does laughter serve in the context of play?
Gregory Bateson, a British anthropologist, figured it out during a trip to the zoo. He saw two monkeys engaged with each other in what looked like combat, but clearly wasn’t real. They were, in other words, merely play fighting. And what Bateson realized was that, in order to play fight, the monkeys needed some way to communicate their playful intentions—some way to convey the message, “We’re just playing.” Without one or more of these "play signals,” one monkey might misconstrue the other’s intentions, and their playful sparring could easily escalate into a real fight"
This book shows that many of our institutions have both visible, socially-respected goals, but also hidden goals nobody likes to acknowledge.
Example: Health Care
Visible goal: Improve Health
Hidden goal: Show how much we care ("kiss the booboo")
This explains why much of health care is devoted to high-cost high-visibility interventions (like bypass surgery) and much less to lifestyle interventions (like diet/exercise).
It also explains why many obvious changes that would improve the stated goal keep failing to be adopted - they hamper the hidden goals.
Software example: Why do people keep estimating development task size assuming nothing goes wrong? And why do their managers not hold them responsible for continually slipping the schedules?
Visible goal: Accurate estimates
Hidden goal: Brag about how fast we are
If accurate estimates were the only goal, then when schedules slip there would be a strong feedback loop to improve future estimates. My experience has been the opposite - the slip is blamed on something "no one could have foreseen" and everybody keeps estimating as before.
To be clear, it's always a mix of the visible and hidden motives. Much of health care is actually about improving health. But acknowledging the hidden motives is vital to understanding how much of society works.
I had a boss who used to say there was always a “good reason” and a “real reason” for doing something. A person will tell you the good reason but they won’t often admit the real reason. Sometimes not even to themselves.
A lot of common ideas about education, charity and laughter (we laugh because something is funny) are evolutionary useful lies we tell ourselves.
"But while we humans often play by ourselves (e.g., with Legos), recall that we laugh mostly in the presence of others. So what communicative purpose does laughter serve in the context of play? Gregory Bateson, a British anthropologist, figured it out during a trip to the zoo. He saw two monkeys engaged with each other in what looked like combat, but clearly wasn’t real. They were, in other words, merely play fighting. And what Bateson realized was that, in order to play fight, the monkeys needed some way to communicate their playful intentions—some way to convey the message, “We’re just playing.” Without one or more of these "play signals,” one monkey might misconstrue the other’s intentions, and their playful sparring could easily escalate into a real fight"