Game changer, p.16
Game Changer, page 16
He would need to scramble two other hired hands for the job, but he had resources to spare. With Quinn in the picture, his new team would need to proceed with caution, with a healthy respect for Quinn’s capabilities.
But given the element of surprise this shouldn’t be a problem.
Quinn’s escape had been a setback, but a minor one in the scheme of things. The truth was that he didn’t really need to acquire Quinn. Killing Rachel Howard was the more important task, and even this was just a precaution. Even if she were never touched, his plan would almost certainly succeed.
But he did hate loose ends, and why allow even the possibility of a fly in the ointment? He could continue pursuing his plan without interruption, while others focused on these minor inconveniences.
Kovonov thought for a moment longer, selected a contact from his phone, and brought the device to his ear. One quick call and he could get his ship precisely back on course.
25
Rachel was proud of her ability to summarize and simplify her field, but she wondered how fast the intruder was on the uptake. And she would just be scratching the surface, no matter what she did.
Einstein had famously said, “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” On the other hand, Einstein had never suggested that the explanation of millions of pages of research produced over more than a century could be done through a brief discussion in a moving car.
“Neuroscience is the study of the structure and function of the nervous system and brain,” began the chair of Harvard’s neuroscience department as she drove randomly through the streets of Waltham, Massachusetts. “At least that’s the dictionary definition. But this doesn’t do it justice. It’s really about understanding what makes us tick. What drives human beings? What drives behavior? How much of our decision-making is based on emotion, and how much on reason? Can we cure neurologic disease? Improve upon the human condition? And what improvements should we make, provided that we’re able?”
Rachel paused to let these questions sink in. “And even more fundamentally,” she continued, “do we have a soul? Is consciousness divine, special, miraculous? Or is consciousness something we might someday replicate in every respect with the right bits of matter arranged in just the right way?”
Quinn raised his eyebrows. “What do you think?” he asked with genuine interest. “Do we have a soul?”
“I’m not sure. On the face of it, it seems clear that we don’t. That everything we are emerges from the physical properties of the brain. Not that I’m suggesting this rules out the existence of a soul entirely, mind you, just that it makes this a more difficult position to take. But what is absolutely clear is that damage to different regions of the brain can cause dramatic and insanely specific changes to your personality, behavior, abilities, and desires. Can change who you are.”
“But not everything is changeable, right?”
“Just about,” said Rachel. “There are changes that can impact whether you are aggressive or pacifistic, outgoing or introverted. Changes that can cause a disregard for social norms, impulsive behavior, hypersexuality, and increases in risky behavior. Changes in your level of spirituality, or even the ability to name animals or hear music.”
“That does seem pretty comprehensive,” said Quinn.
“And we’re all aware of how dramatically our personalities and perceptions can be altered by drugs and alcohol. And not just LSD and other banned substances. Think of all the prescription drugs that change our personalities and behaviors. Drugs used to treat psychosis, anxiety, depression, hyperactivity and other conditions. All can change the you that your friends have come to know and love.”
The light turned green and Rachel inched forward before making a right turn. Given it was early evening on a Monday night, the streets were as sparsely traveled as she would have expected.
She glanced at her passenger, and then chastised herself for even momentarily thinking of him as a passenger rather than what he was: a dangerous intruder. Even so, the man did appear to be genuinely fascinated and eager to learn more.
“Let me give you a concrete example,” she continued. “It involves a boring guy named Charles Whitman. Bank Teller and former Eagle Scout. By all accounts he was a model citizen. But in 1966, this former Eagle Scout climbed to the top of the University of Texas Tower in Austin and opened fire. Before he was shot by police, he had killed thirteen people and wounded thirty-three.”
She paused. “Not what one would expect from his background, is it? Authorities found a suicide note in his home. In it, Whitman said he had recently been having irrational and unusual thoughts. He requested that an autopsy be performed on him to see if something had changed in his brain.”
“Let me guess. It had.”
“Turns out he had a tumor pressing against a region of the brain called the amygdala. This is an almond-shaped set of neurons involved in emotional regulation, especially fear and aggression.”
Quinn nodded in understanding, but she wondered if he was truly grasping both points she was trying to make. Not only that a change to the physical brain could instantly transform a man from good to what was traditionally called evil, but that the conscious mind was severely influenced by, and seemingly powerless to stop, a region of the brain whose motivations were hidden from it.
“I’ll give you a second example,” continued Rachel. “In the early 2000s, a forty-year-old Virginia teacher suddenly became obsessed with child pornography, and even tried to molest his eight-year-old stepdaughter. Until this point he had been strictly interested in adult females.”
“Another tumor?” guessed Quinn uncertainly.
“Very good. That’s right. This time in his orbitofrontal cortex. When the neurosurgeons removed it, the man’s sexual appetite returned to normal.” She raised her eyebrows. “But six months later, the pedophilic behavior returned.”
Quinn tilted his head in thought. “Had the tumor grown back?” he asked.
Rachel was impressed despite herself. She had told this story many times, and few had jumped to this conclusion, however obvious it was in retrospect. “Yes. Exactly. They excised it once again, and once again his interest in young girls disappeared.”
“Jesus,” said Quinn. “That is so creepy. So specific a change in behavior.”
“Exactly.”
“Wow. I’d have to think about what these cases imply a lot harder, but they do seem to make your point. Like you said, if we do have free will, if we do have a soul, at the very least it can be subverted pretty easily by physical changes to our brains.”
“Pretty sobering, isn’t it? And we think we’re in control when much of the time we’re not. Unconscious subroutines, seared into our brains, are calling a lot of the shots, and then we’re expert at taking credit after the fact.”
“But you said you couldn’t rule out a soul. Given what you’ve just told me, why can’t you? You’ve demonstrated that the you inside is totally dependent on the physical state of your brain. So how can consciousness be divine, or miraculous? Seems like consciousness, and the soul if you’d like, could be recreated by using wires and switches to duplicate the exact functionality of the human brain.”
“Well said,” she replied, impressed with his grasp of the material. If he ever got tired of abducting women, he should really consider a career in neuroscience. “I can’t rule out divine consciousness because while scientists think they’re zeroing in on what makes us tick, there are those who argue there is far more to the system than meets the eye. Let me give you an example involving a transistor radio.”
“Do they even make those anymore?” said Quinn.
Rachel smiled. “No, but it’s still a good example.”
She organized her thoughts. “Imagine you’re a Kalahari Bushman who finds a radio,” she began. “As you’re messing around with it, sound suddenly emerges from inside. Voices, music, intelligent conversation, all streaming from this mysterious little box. If you’re a Bushman scientist, you’d open the box and begin to study the insides. You might find that if you pull a wire from its contact the voices stop, or maybe they get softer. You put it back and the voices return to normal. Soon you’d discover what we’ve discovered about the brain, that a huge number of changes to the wiring will have a major impact on what comes out of the other end.”
“I’m with you so far,” said Quinn.
“Good. So what if someone asked you how these bright plastic wires are able to produce music and voices? You wouldn’t know, but you’d be confident you were getting close to understanding.”
Rachel shook her head vigorously. “But you aren’t. Nowhere near. Because you can’t possibly imagine that what you’re hearing has nothing to do with the wires, nothing to do even with the radio. You’d never even dream that this content is generated by a transmission tower hundreds of miles away beaming out powerful radio waves. If someone suggested this was the case, you’d be sure they were insane. ‘It’s all about these invisible waves,’ they would tell you. ‘You can’t see, taste, or feel them, but they’re racing through your body even now, fast enough to circle the globe seven times in a single second. And these invisible waves are carrying the voices and music, not the wires.’”
“When you say it that way,” said Quinn, “I’m not even sure that I believe it.”
“Exactly. And the Bushman scientist lives in a world with no technology whatsoever. He’d never be able to guess this truth in a thousand lifetimes. He would never believe that while the radio’s wires need to be configured just right to pick up the voices, the content of the voices has absolutely nothing to do with the configuration of the wires.”
“Now that is a fascinating analogy,” said Quinn.
“The moral of the story, of course, is that while many of us believe that consciousness, the soul, and everything else resides in our neuronal wiring, there could well be far more to it than we’re even capable of imagining.”
She let Quinn digest this for a moment and then said, “But I brought up the soul just as an interesting side discussion. To really give you a sense of what neuroscience has learned, I should start at the beginning.”
“By all means,” said Quinn.
“Let’s compare human beings and animals. Animals are born pretty much complete and ready to go, with instincts and behavior already wired up in their brains. A baby zebra can run less than an hour after birth. Many animal species don’t tend to their young at all, they’re born with all the physical skills and behaviors they need to survive.”
Rachel paused. “In contrast, human infants are as helpless as it’s possible to be. We’re born with our brains largely unfinished. Which isn’t to say we aren’t prewired to some extent.”
“How so?”
“Within minutes of birth a baby knows to seek out a face. We’re prewired for language acquisition, math, fear of heights, suckling, and so on. But instead of wiring up in the womb, babies mostly wire up through exposure to their environment. Which makes us flexible, versatile, able to readily learn new tricks. Instead of being hardwired, we’re more like live-wired. Millions of new synapses form in an infant’s brain every second.”
“Not sure I totally get how the environment impacts this wiring,” said Quinn.
“Well, an easy example is language. If you’re born in Japan, your brain gets wired up to understand Japanese. In America, to understand English. You become better able to hear the sounds of your language, and less able to hear the sounds of other languages. Through time, a baby raised in Japan will no longer be able to hear the difference between the sounds of R and L, since these sounds aren’t distinct in the Japanese language.”
“I thought they just couldn’t get their mouths to form these sounds.”
“That too. But they aren’t even wired to hear them. Just like those who are red-green colorblind can’t detect any difference between these two colors.”
Rachel stopped at a red light and turned to face the man sitting beside her. “But the point I’m trying to make is that we’re born unfinished, to maximize versatility. You can’t teach an animal to excel at tennis, play chess, do the backstroke, play a piano, touch type, or solve a Rubik’s cube. For each of these skills, the human brain creates unconscious subroutines. Burns the proper circuits into our brains. When you have to do an activity consciously, you are slow and inefficient. Unconscious subroutines programmed in are just the opposite, fast and efficient. But in many cases, learned activities that become part of your unconscious wiring can no longer be accessed by your conscious mind.”
She studied Quinn’s face for just a moment longer before turning her attention back to the road. “You just spoke of the process you use to make sounds in a language. If you were to try to consciously move your lips and tongue to form each sound you make when you speak a sentence, you’d find you couldn’t do it. Thankfully, the proper subroutines are burned into your brain, freeing you up to concentrate on what you’re saying. But go ahead. Without moving your lips or tongue, try to visualize the ballet of movements your mouth would need to make to say the word, oblique. Or petulant. Or any other word for that matter.”
“No need,” said Quinn. “If you say I can’t do it, I believe you.”
“Conscious meddling with our unconscious subroutines actually makes things worse, not better. When you’re really great at a sport, for example, you perform better if you don’t consciously think about what you’re doing.”
Quinn nodded. “Fascinating. When a basketball player can’t miss a shot, or a tennis player is hitting every line, the athlete is often said to be playing unconscious. I always thought this was just a figure of speech.”
Rachel smiled. “Not so much,” she said. “So our efficient systems let our inefficient consciousness believe it’s always in control,” she continued, “when the reverse is more often the case. The unconscious controls our bodies and the random thoughts we have, and far more of our lives than we’d ever imagine. I’ve studied the mind for many years and I still can’t truly believe how little the conscious me controls my thoughts and actions. That’s the genius of the unconscious. It helps us survive, secretly running much of the show, but graciously letting us take most of the credit. Take taste in women, for example. Some men are hopelessly attracted to tall blondes. Some to women who are overweight. Some to big rear ends, some to small. And some are even attracted to one-legged aborigines, for all I know.”
Quinn laughed. “Wouldn’t surprise me at all.”
“Most would agree that we don’t choose who we are attracted to. This is somehow decided by brain circuitry that we can’t access. We don’t consciously decide we’re going to have the hots for one-legged aborigines.”
Rachel was intent on keeping the discussion G-rated, but an even more interesting example was the catalog of what certain people liked in bed, an assortment of sexual preferences across the species that was exceedingly varied and sometimes disturbing. This made the point also—people often had no idea why they liked what they liked, why their bodies responded to what they responded to—but she had decided that discussing unusual sexual preferences with a stranger who had accosted her was a very bad idea.
“In 1965 a guy named Hess did an experiment,” she continued. “He showed men various photos of women. But in half of the photos, he artificially dilated their eyes, which is a biological sign of sexual arousal. The men ranked women whose eyes were dilated as being more attractive than these same women when their eyes were not. When asked why, not one noticed this difference in the eyes, minor as it was. At least not consciously. When asked specifically if their ratings were due to levels of dilation, the men shrugged this off as being ridiculous. They weren’t even aware that this was a sign of female arousal. Their unconscious not only detected this difference, but managed to get their conscious to respond to it. None had any idea that genetic programming stitched into their brains from the earliest days of evolution was secretly dictating this response.”
“Doesn’t this imply that intuition is a real thing, then?” asked Quinn. “My instincts, my intuition, have saved my life on more than one occasion. But I was always under the impression that scientists thought this was a load of garbage.”
“Just the opposite. Your unconscious systems can be brilliant, far smarter and more observant than you are. Like directing your mouth to form words, your unconscious understands body language better than you do, for example. And it picks up on patterns faster than you do. There are endless examples from real life and the lab.”
“This explains a lot,” said Quinn. “So I might not be all that talented, but I’m lucky enough to have some gifted subroutines helping me out behind the curtain.”
“Give your conscious some credit. You’re smart enough to trust these subroutines. They aren’t always right, of course, but more often than you would be. When you first appeared, I had to decide what to do. I could run, scream for help, be defiant, cooperate, and so on. And yes, I consciously thought through the logic of the different actions. But what were my data points? Feelings? Intuition? My hidden mental wiring tried to read your body language, estimate risks based on limited information. If you asked me why I decided to cooperate, what could I tell you? Could I lay out an algebraic equation? No, my inner self weighed all of the options and came to a decision, which I immediately took credit for.”
“You made the right one, Professor,” said Quinn. “I promise you.”
Rachel sighed. That remained to be seen.
She noticed that Quinn was scanning her mirrors whenever there was the slightest break in the conversation, studying the cars behind them.
“All of this is not to say that the conscious mind still doesn’t have a huge role,” she continued. “For one, it’s there to handle surprises, the unexpected. Right now, my consciousness is absorbed in our conversation. So I’m driving on autopilot, using subroutines etched into my unconscious. But if a kid suddenly runs into the road in front of me, my conscious mind will immediately take over, ignoring you completely.” She paused. “And, of course, it sets goals and makes decisions.”
