Wouldn't you rather be an ape?

Are we really any better off with our big, stupid brains?

I was watching TV this weekend when I saw a commercial for a new device for sleep apnea—a device that doctors surgically implant (in a quick outpatient procedure, of course) that then somehow monitors our tongues…or throats? The details are muddy. The point is, it allows people with sleep apnea to breathe easier and therefore to sleep without wearing an elaborate CPAP machine.

Now maybe you’re a person who doesn’t yet know what a CPAP machine is. It looks sort of like the inside of Darth Vader’s mask, only you wear it while you sleep. Personally, over the last five years or so, it feels like almost everyone I know has discovered that they have sleep apnea and need a CPAP machine. I’m not saying sleep apnea isn’t a real thing, but I also have a small suspicion that if I went and had a sleep study (which is how sleep apnea is diagnosed), I, too, would find that I have sleep apnea and need a CPAP machine.

There are some medical diagnoses that it makes total sense to me would be legitimately increasing. Anxiety? Yes. Depression? Of course. Asthma and allergies? Oh, yeah, the air we breathe is crap, on top of the fact that we spend so much less time outside teaching our immune system not to freak out about, you know, grass.

Sleep apnea? I mean, maybe if sleep studies are more accessible than they were in the past, it makes sense that more people would be diagnosed. But is there something essentially flawed about the anatomy of our throat and nasal passages that makes sleep apnea more common?

Actually, yes. The problem is our big, stupid brains. In fact, sleep apnea is just one of many problems caused by our big, stupid brains.

Our big, stupid brain does, in fact, make it more difficult for us to breathe. Unlike most mammals, we don’t have a snout—a protruding nose. We ditched it to make room for…yep, our big brains. Getting rid of our snout shrunk our sinuses, which is probably why we have so many problems with nasal and sinus congestion, infection and a whole host of ear and sinus complaints. Yeah, there’s a reason your cat and dog don’t really sneeze or have runny noses as often as you.

Our big stupid brains also make childbirth particularly dangerous and painful. Scientists call this the ‘obstetric dilemma.’ Our heads are so big at birth that we can’t even hold them up for months, all to make room for more brain. But we also walk upright, which comes with a narrowing of the pelvis. Big brains and small pelvis mean that compared to other primates, humans have particularly difficult births with higher rates of maternal and infant mortality.

Walking upright with a spine originally designed for climbing trees and a big, heavy brain at the top helps explain why many of us will have back problems at some point in our lives. Yes, partly because of the way we move (or don’t), but also, just poor design.

This isn’t even to get into the way our big, stupid brains don’t have the ability to distinguish between the real threat of the lion stalking towards us on the savannah and the experience of reading a headline about war in the Ukraine. That fight-flight-freeze response worked really well in our evolutionary past. Now it’s like a circuit that’s being flipped over and over again until we’re paralyzed by anxiety or depression.

Okay, right, right. Our big, stupid brains cause a lot of problems, but, also, they’re amazing! They’re the pinnacle of evolution! With our big human brains, we created civilization! And science! And art!

Whatever. We created civilization? Like, the Kardashians and January 6 and Putin? That civilization? Hard to argue we shouldn’t have just stopped with using sticks to fish ants out of holes.

Science, sure. Science did allow us to do important things like cut that maternal and infant mortality rate due to our big brains and narrow pelvises down somewhat. But science also gave us nuclear weapons. And plastic—the stuff that’s now forming islands in the oceans that will break down over thousands of years. The planet as a whole really could have done without any of our science.

And the pinnacle of evolution? Nope. Evolution doesn’t have pinnacles. Evolution isn’t the same as progress. There’s no inevitable path toward increasing complexity or intelligence. Evolution is just about what works in a specific environment.

Our big brains may have evolved because they gave us some sort of evolutionary advantage—made it easier to navigate or make tools or figure out what to eat without dying. But biologist Stephen Jay Gould suggested that the consciousness that came with our big brains—our ability to plan and dream and imagine things like 10-inch stiletto heels (how’s that for civilization?)—is largely an evolutionary accident.

Human consciousness is like a spandrel, to use Gould’s architectural metaphor. The arch was an important invention that allowed for all kind of building innovation. The spandrel is the triangular space between arches which are often filled with architectural detail, like paintings or carvings. The spandrel isn’t key, but it comes with the arch.

Spandrels. Very pretty. Mostly useless. Just like human consciousness. Photo by Girl with red hat on Unsplash

A brain that allowed us to use tools is the arch. The spandrel is human consciousness. It serves no evolutionary function. It just came with the big brain. All the important things that make us human aren’t an evolutionary pinnacle, but an evolutionary incidental.

And art? Yeah, art is good. A good story or song or movie might just make our big, stupid brains worth it. On the other hand, that elephant that could paint wasn’t too shabby, either. And computers can make art now, so…

Really, wouldn’t it be better to be an ape? What do you think? Ready to give up your big, stupid brain?

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Thanks for being here as part of this community, as always! You know, I had my doubts about Substack at first. Like, really, was this model going to work? Yeah, great to have a way to connect directly with readers. But were people really going to pay for writing (more on that coming soon)? And how would people find newsletters when the content wasn’t discoverable in a Google search the same way a blog is?

But it seems to be working for me, as a writer and a reader. I’ve discovered some amazing newsletters on here. Most recently, Experimental History, which is a great place to read social science applied to current events in a clear and entertaining format. Especially check out his post on the myths of political hatred.

Substack is especially nice if, like me, you hate social media, but still want to know what’s going on out there. I read about quiet quitting on a Substack newsletter. When I take social media breaks, Substack keeps me from falling into total cluelessness, only without the algorithm and in a much more intelligent, pleasurable way.