I suspect that it might take more than "a little reading" to catch up on all that is known or that is reliably conjectured about human cognition. And it seems if we want to explain how people respond (or not) to PO we would have to invoke the behaviors of social groups and the influence of culture, politics, and emotion rather than about how brains work. How brains work is important to understanding individuals, but the problem with our inability to do anything about PO is primarily cultural and social in origin. And groups of people behave very differently than individuals, as evidenced by:

"the bizarre, twisted logic of economics"

I, too, have trouble thinking about the modern "morality" of business and its apologist, economics.

At any rate, I would guess that some of the conclusions that can be made about "our inability to plan" may involve stories about our culture more than about our fundamental properties as humans. But perhaps the actual origin of the behavior doesn't matter after all, because the culture I'm living in really doesn't seem at all interested in planning for the future. Unless something changes really soon, the reason for our not changing until it's too late is going to be of no practical interest.

I read so much out of my field that I'm not sure what my field is!

Are you a social scientist? There is only so much I can fit into 30 minutes. I never said our brains were 'either or' only that different systems were built on top of others -clearly there is interplay. I would recommend this piece on habituation and addiction a version of which is pending peer review in Journal of Behavioral Ecology, coauthored with some of the referenced authors.

I have had a very difficult time communicating these ideas to social scientists. I understand the problem with 'just-so' stories, but the science of mirror-neurons being the origin of culture, relative fitness being drivers of competition, and conspicuous consumption being driver of our behaviour are not my original ideas. I've just ordered a new book by Geoffrey Miller, "Faking fitness: The evolutionary origins of consumer behavior". The brain sciences (NOT social psychology) are all over these concepts - they just don't understand thermodynamics and oil depletion yet. My girlfriend suggested instead of speaking about neuroscience at an oil conference that maybe you should speak about oil at a neuroscience conference...;-)

So forgetting everything you said and I said, do you think telling people the 'general' facts about peak oil is enough to effect change?

Wow. What an absolutely horrid criticism. Worry not, Nate and let this one slide off your back.

dtbks is talking about "cognition" as the squishy unmeasurable consciousness/meme of the day...it's anti-empirical and especially anti-psych. In short, it's constructivist crap.

Say what you mean, sir and stop hiding behind pretense--what you mean to say is that psychology and evolutionary biology, and science writ large, is a dysfunctional base of knowledge that does not deserve to be listened to.

From the dripping condescention of your post, "dtbks", it seems you consider yourself wise indeed in these matters. One is at something of a loss, then, at the light weight of your comments themselves.

There are so many objections I have, I can't even begin to address them.

Evidently.

There are other "big picture" views of cognition

Many of which are flat-out delusional. Which is your favorite? You don't seem to have clarified it other than to note that it's symbiotic, and that's not exactly a deep insight, particularly in the way you offer it. Of course the functions of the brain have evolved to be symbiotic, and Nate did not - to my ear - imply otherwise.

Normally functioning humans are quite capable of regulating (for example) their food intake. Breakdowns in that regulatory process are a) NOT the norm (morbidly obese Americans are still a minority) b) often traceable to other emotional issues.

On the other hand, a huge percentage of your ostensibly well-regulated eaters believes their personalities will go on living when their body dies. Food regulation and metabolism has all sorts of feedbacks and is perhaps not the best example, (though I'd say it's a good one: morbid obesity is not the only consequence of gluttony). But abstract concepts dancing about in the neocortex are a different story.

You sneak in many evolutionary "just so" stories. One struck me for the pure inconsistency of your arguments: You said: Homo sapiens sapiens evolved in a time of scarcity (I'm roughly paraphrasing you here) and then proceed to basically say that we're unable to plan for the future. Well, how did our ancestors survive? In my evolutionary "just so" story, they survived by planning for the future in times of scarcity. Just because Americans are unable to plan for the future does not mean that humans as a whole are unable to plan for the future. Consider the possibility that this phenomenon is driven by social cognition, rather than anything inherent in the human brain.

When summarizing the entire mental evolution and energy situation of the human race in a half-hour, one may be forgiven for a few "just so"s. So what? I don't see that you have shown any inconsistency in Nate's arguments here, could you point it out? Indeed, your argument seems to be an "appeal to authority" where you're the authority. The point that Americans may be worse at planning than some other cultures is a reasonable one, but I don't see that Nate has argued otherwise.

Reasoning biases are NOT proof of anything. a) Reasoning biases are not robust and highly representation dependent. IIRC there was a study recently published (I'm talking last 20 years) in which people were asked to make probability judgments based on provided percentages (in one condition) and based on set representations e.g., one in ten people blah blah blah (in the other condition). Subjects in the "set" condition did just fine. Reasoning biases are just as likely a subset of a much broader phenomenon related to specificity effects and corresponding "failure to transfer," which have absolutely nothing to do with our reptilian brain and have everything to do with cognitive efficiency, nothing more.

Say, could you possibly be more sloppy, less rigorous and use more opaque jargon? Something was published in the last 20 years IYRC "blah blah blah"... Clearly you have read something at some point, IYRC, but it isn't coming across in your comments.

I could go on and on.

Dude, for my money, you have.

Please, read outside of your field a little.

Y'know, you have a long way to go in a followup post to establish that you're not high on crack, much less to begin to refute what Nate has outlined. Maybe a keypost?