The Power of Metacognition

The American media scholar Douglas Rushkoff, in Present Shock, described today as "a state in which everything has been rearranged toward the instant of the present." In the digital world, powerful signals are fed from outside without rest, telling us that we must focus above all on the 'momentary event' that has just occurred. Even while watching TV, 'breaking news' banners on the current weather, road traffic, financial market ups and downs, and the like stream past constantly. On smartphones, fine-dust warnings, infectious-disease case updates, last-chance sale alerts, newly arrived emails, and social-media comments—things that only just happened—blink in the form of 'notifications', pressuring us to "respond immediately." Rushkoff pointed out, "These distractions do not merely exhaust our cognitive abilities. They also instill in us the feeling that if we don't chase after them at absurd speeds we'll be left behind by the present. The extraordinary efforts we make to keep up with the shifting flow of data end up making us overvalue the importance of the signals that change sends us far beyond their actual significance."

When information about the present is served right before our eyes, our brain pounces like a starving animal that has spotted its prey. The power of technology is removing waiting more and more, processing as much as possible in real time and delivering the result instantly. Preferring the satisfaction of immediate desire over the uncertain gain of the future is the nature of every animal, humans included. Pleasure and pain right now are vividly present without needing to be imagined, while distant future gains and losses are not concretely drawn in the mind. Behavioral economics tells us that most people tend to make decisions contrary to their own interest because they weigh future pain as less important than present pleasure. High-interest long-term installments, monthly payment sales, and credit card payments are all products that exploit this 'present-value preference bias.' Richard Thaler, the behavioral economist at the University of Chicago who won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2017, introduced present bias through the 'apple experiment' in his book Nudge.

Intuition, which has a huge influence on human behavior, carries a strong 'present bias.' Observations of how people make decisions using MRI imaging have shown that the cerebral cortex, which handles rational thinking and deliberation, is not activated; decisions are made in the blink of an eye through momentary choice. Walter Mischel's 'marshmallow experiment,' in which more than two-thirds of children chose to eat the single marshmallow in front of them right away rather than waiting fifteen minutes for the teacher to return and getting two marshmallows, is another example showing the present bias of instinct.

In a situation where the future, including survival, is uncertain, swallowing the prey in front of you or seeking immediate gratification is the natural choice. Almost all animals apart from humans behave this way by instinct. But humans are different. Some scholars even emphasize that humans are the only animal that thinks about the future. Because humans can imagine the future, they become anxious, and in response they have developed rational and abstract thinking abilities through categorical thinking and causal thinking. The Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert said, "The human brain is a kind of prediction machine, and the most important thing this machine does is to create the future." The computer scientist Jeff Hawkins, who founded Palm Computing, said, "Prediction is not one of many things the brain does. Prediction is the primary function of the neocortex and the foundation of intelligence; the neocortex is an organ of prediction." In the Paleolithic age, when the average life expectancy hovered around thirty, the present-preference bias of human thinking was not much of a problem. It even had a rational side. But as life expectancy extends toward one hundred and physical survival threats shrink while the information environment changes rapidly, relying on the 'present bias' of intuition becomes an increasingly serious problem.




In developmental psychology it is believed that children become able to read other people's minds from around the age of five. Children under four cannot consider what another person's mind is like, and so they cannot understand the world from another's viewpoint or see themselves from that vantage point. The ability to notice that another person has their own thoughts and mind is called 'theory of mind' in psychology.

Theory of mind shows us that, from an early age, humans possess the ability to understand the minds of others. Among living beings, humans are the only species that reads the minds of others and exercises empathy. Thanks to this capacity for empathy, humans became social beings. The American anthropologist Sarah Hrdy declared, "Without the special combination of empathy and mind-reading, we would never have evolved into humans." One reason humans came to be the most powerful presence in Earth's ecosystem is that, as social beings able to engage in refined cooperation and goal-oriented behavior through communication and empathy, we developed in ways that other species could not. Among all animals, only humans explore things they cannot perceive with the five senses. Other animals cannot be curious about or investigate what lies beyond their inborn sensory domain, and so they never come to know it.

In fact, humans are beings who think about and pursue invisible things not only in the mental states of others but in many domains. They ache in their hearts to win the love of someone whose mind they can neither see nor touch; they pour out devotion and effort in the hope of winning the recognition and approval of those around them. Some endure the many hardships of reality for a distant dream or happiness, and some consider religious faith or conviction in justice more important than life itself.

Yuval Harari characterizes this human trait of pursuing and valuing the invisible by declaring that 'humans are beings who believe in fictions.' He saw that the inclination to create and believe in fictions, that is, in invisible things, lies at the core of human ability. He argued, "The distinctive power of Homo sapiens comes from creating and believing fictions," and "Homo sapiens conquered this planet above all thanks to its unique ability to create and spread fictions." During the hunter-gatherer period, humans could drive large animals such as beasts and mammoths into traps and hunt them thanks to their sophisticated capacity for cooperation and communication.

The ability to believe in the invisible served as the energy of refined cooperation that elevated huge groups to the level where they could bind together through shared myths and form societies and states. This trait of humans in creating and believing fictions gave birth to universal religions that transcended the tribal and national group myths, crossing language, cultural area, ethnicity, and race. The emergence of ideologies and thought systems, monarchies, democracy, socialism, and other political systems is also the fruit of human activity that imagines and pursues the invisible. Beyond the stage of imagining the invisible, only humans possess the ability to represent worlds that do not exist, to believe in them, or to make them the aim of action. It is the greatest strength of humans. Thanks to developing this ability, humans became thinking beings able to carve out their own destiny and produce civilization.




Why did the Germans give up freedom on their own? The German social psychologist Erich Fromm published Escape from Freedom, considered a classic of the twentieth century, in 1941. It is a book that investigates why, once humanity finally obtained the freedom it had so long pursued, the opposite phenomenon emerged of fleeing from freedom. When the German people, who had enjoyed freedom and basic rights under the Weimar Constitution—at the time the most democratic and advanced in the world—voluntarily gave up their freedoms and rights as democratic citizens and chose Hitler and the Nazi dictatorship, Fromm posed a question about this paradoxical social reality and began his research. Fromm distinguished two kinds of freedom: freedom from subjection (freedom from) and freedom to choose and achieve what one wants (freedom to). The former is called negative freedom, and the latter is called positive freedom. Negative freedom means liberation from physical confinement as well as from political, economic, and mental bondage, and the state of being able to pursue what one wants without the pressure or interference of others. Positive freedom means the freedom of an individual to choose and realize the goals they want. Negative freedom—liberation from cold, hunger, the threats of the wild, restrictions on movement, and so on—is a necessary condition of happiness but not a sufficient one. Only when positive freedom is also given—such as traveling to a place one has dreamed of, or owning the house or car one wished for—can human beings finally feel that they are free. Negative freedom and positive freedom do not always go hand in hand, but a person can enjoy the full benefits of freedom and choice only when they are free in both dimensions.

According to Fromm, after the modern Enlightenment and the Reformation, through the power of reason individuals were freed from various forms of bondage, but they also found themselves in a situation where they had to make important decisions by themselves. This isolated individuals and turned them into helpless beings filled with loneliness and anxiety. An individual who cannot bear this isolation and anxiety is placed before an either-or choice. One is the path of fleeing from the heavy burden of 'freedom' and choosing a new object of dependence and obedience. The other is the path of pursuing and realizing positive freedom by seeking out what one truly wants.

Most people cannot long endure the isolation and anxiety brought on by 'freedom from...'. The phenomenon of citizens of a free country voluntarily submitting to fascism and a dictator like the Nazis was, he analyzed, an 'escape from freedom' carried out at the social level. Fromm saw the rise of Nazism as a political and economic problem of a German society suffering from defeat in the First World War and excessive war reparations, and at the same time a social-psychological problem. The escape-from-freedom phenomenon Fromm points out is not a problem only of twentieth-century Nazism. An individual who cannot realize positive freedom on their own cooperates with anonymous authorities, uncritically accepts values given from outside rather than values they themselves seek, and sinks ever deeper into helplessness and conformity. Fromm gave Protestantism, fascism, and fetishistic capitalism as examples of the main objects to which individuals, fleeing from freedom, try to cling. In the digital world the problem has grown worse. Individuals are regarded as free beings whose range of choices and authority has unprecedentedly expanded, but they are also beings enslaved to forces and platforms more gigantic than ever, losing their freedom. The powerful and intelligent automated recommendation algorithms and personal customization of digital technology lead us to immerse ourselves in things we did not choose for ourselves. Furthermore, immersion in content recommended by algorithms not only lengthens the time spent on the platform, but also makes it hard for users to feel the isolation and anxiety caused by the absence of positive freedom. Personalized content

leaves users no room for reflective or self-critical thinking about their own usage habits, the time spent, or the effects these have. The intelligent platform is a dopamine-supply system that stimulates the user's pleasure, endlessly pouring out enjoyable and stimulating content in order to leave no gap for reflection. Fromm emphasized that for positive freedom, above all, it is important to know oneself. He thought that a human being, freed from external bondage, could become a being who acts freely according to their own will once they simply know what they want, think, and feel. The problem, however, is that humans do not know this. Fromm said, "Modern man lives under the illusion that he knows what he wants, but in fact he only wants what he is 'supposed' to want," and added, "Knowing what one truly wants is not as easy as many people think; it must be understood as one of the most difficult problems that everyone must solve." The reason it is so difficult for humans, beyond their instinctive needs, to discover what they truly want is that they must find the answer by themselves without relying on anything outside. For example, most people pursue more wealth and higher status. Where does the desire to earn money come from? One reason might be the wish to own a good car and house. Then why do people want good cars and houses? Because they expect that if they own a good car and house they will be happy.

Yet a good car and a good house are not satisfaction and happiness themselves; they are merely means to them. In most cases, cars and houses have become objects and values simply because other people prefer them, so we naturally take them as our own objects and values. If we carry this thought seriously, we end up facing the essential question: "What is the true happiness I am pursuing?" If one tries to answer this question without relying on outside influences, one realizes, as Fromm says, that this is the hardest problem of all. The 'knowing what one truly wants' that Fromm puts forward as the solution is what we call metacognition. 'Escape from freedom'—this paradoxical phenomenon we face as a result of pursuing more freedom—reveals the two-sidedness of freedom itself. Negative freedom, meaning liberation from all kinds of bondage and restrictions, is instinctive and intuitive, easily grasped by the senses and visible. Everyone pursues it, and in modern society negative freedom is concretely specified and guaranteed through institutions such as laws and education at the level of human rights and the right to pursue happiness. Positive freedom—choosing and realizing what one wants—is different. It cannot be guaranteed by the social system or by law. Our constitution guarantees economic freedom, meaning the right to work, as well as the freedom to choose one's occupation, and it specifies the right to education, but these legal provisions do not bring positive freedom into being. The freedom to study at the school one wants, the freedom to work in the job one desires, and so on, are both the self-realization that people most long for and expect, and also positive freedom. They are not guaranteed by laws and declarations; they must be achieved by individuals through their own choices and efforts. Another paradox of freedom is that freedom is both authority and responsibility. Freedom means the authority of an individual to choose and decide on their own in the absence of bondage and coercion, and the individual must bear responsibility for the result. To choose freedom is the decision to take responsibility. Many dimensions of responsibility follow from choice. The act of choosing affects the individual's present and future, and in some cases may require them to bear economic, legal, and moral responsibility. Camus's remark that everything is a matter of choice can be put another way: each person's life is the product made by the actions they have chosen. The twentieth-century French existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre said, "A human being is nothing but the sum of their acts." To say that life is the result of choices means that, fundamentally, the responsibility lies with each person. Freedom means the expansion of choice, shaking off restrictions and limitations, and choice brings responsibility. Responsibility is the burden that limits freedom. Underlying the paradox of freedom is this circular loop of freedom→choice→responsibility→restriction→freedom. The expansion of freedom and choice that we instinctively want comes with benefits that are easy to see. Yet the responsibility we must bear because of freedom is hardly recognized and remains invisible.