Neurobabble and Brain Porn

If we think we understand something, we feel we are capable of making an informed decision on the topic. Companies know this, and thus as the authors of The Invisible Gorilla said:

“Companies often prey on the illusion of knowledge to hawk their wares, emphasizing technical details in a way that leads people to think they understand how a product works.”

Audio companies wax eloquent about the quality of their cables. Phone manufacturers list a gazillion details of their models. So do car manufacturers. The term for this “information”? Technobabble.

 

The same thing happens when explaining (irrational) human behavior. A popular answer almost always involves evolution and the wiring of the brain. Sure, that’s often the real reason. But when it’s thrown in just to make an answer sound more scientific and believable, it’s called “neurobabble”.

 

And then there’s the cousin of neurobabble: “brain porn”. Huh?

“(Brain porn refers to) the colorful images of blobs of activity on brain scans that can seduce us into thinking we have learned more about the brain (and the mind) than we really have.”


 

Neuroscientists know this, and acknowledge that such pics serve as a good “sales tool” when making a presentation. Everything else being equal, the presentation or pitch with such a pic wins! Worse, even if the pitch makes little sense and makes claims without substance, it still has a good chance of passing.

 

Lastly, another problem with these brain porn is that they are like those images of space, i.e., the images are “colored” by computers. Just because some areas look dark in the brain image (or space) doesn’t mean they are dark. Or brightly lit. Or anything else in between. The coloring is done based on criteria chosen by humans e.g. the rule might be that galaxies emitting X-rays should be colored, rest dark; or regions of the brain showing at least a 10% increase in activity be colored, rest dark etc. Brain porn doesn’t convey that the other regions of the brain (or space) are still “on” (or “lit”) unless you know how to interpret it.

 

Whoever said that a picture is worth a thousand words obviously never imagined what computers would be doing one day.

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