Editing 1588: Hardware Reductionism

{{comic
| number    = 1588
| date      = October 9, 2015
| title     = Hardware Reductionism
| image     = hardware_reductionism 2x.png
| titletext = My MRI research shows a clear correlation between the size of the parietal lobe--the part of the brain that handles spatial reasoning--and enjoyment of 3D Doritos®.
}}

==Explanation==
{{w|Reductionism}} is the belief that things can be explained by their smaller parts. It can be abused, when complex phenomena with multiple causes are attributed to a single, simple cause.

{{w|Neurological}} reductionism is the attempt to explain people's behavior and personality by physical features of their brain. With advances in {{w|neuroscience}}, and especially in brain imaging, there's a fad to claim that brain types determine what the mind is. Examples of this kind of bad reductionism would be:

*Male brains have more grey matter than females. Therefore, males are smarter. For an example of criticism of this kind of reasoning, see ''[http://www.theguardian.com/science/brain-flapping/2013/dec/04/male-female-brains-real-differences Male and female brains: the REAL differences]'' (4 December 2013).
*Brains of gay males are slightly more symmetrical, as are female brains, when compared to straight males. Therefore, gay men are fated to be more effeminate. See [http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/06/080616-gay-brain.html Gay Men, Straight Women Have Similar Brains] (16 June 2008).
*The left side of the brain is associated with logical thinking, and the right, with visual and artistic thinking. Therefore, people divide into "left-brain" or "right-brain" types, depending on how good they are at using each side. See {{w|lateralization of brain function}} on Wikipedia.

There are several problems with this kind of reasoning. First, most studies identify [https://xkcd.com/552/ correlation], not causation (see {{w|correlation does not imply causation}}). Brains are plastic; they can be shaped by experience. For example, if, in a given society, the females are taught to mind their appearance, and the males are taught that aesthetic considerations are unmanly, then of course the female brains will end up with more developed aesthetic centers. In other words, behavior and capabilities aren't always ''determined'' by the brain. Sometimes it's the behavior that shapes the brain; sometimes a third factor (e.g., malnutrition) shapes both.

Second, even when the brain is actually a cause of the behavior, it's far from the only piece in the puzzle. Many studies on brain differences are correlation studies, often about very small effect sizes. Unfortunately, the popular science media tends to gloss over the statistical concept of "effect size". For example, imagine a study that says that males' brains are 0.1% more likely than females' brains to exhibit {{w|attention deficit hyperactivity disorder}} (ADHD). Journalists are prone to report it simply as '''Study Shows that Males Have More ADHD''', and this becomes a conversation sound-bite that neglects other factors, like genetics or pregnancy smoking.  See also [[882: Significant]], which does not discuss effect size, but does raise other objections to writing soundbites based on a single study.

Another kind of excessive neuronal reductionism is the overemphasis on brain modules ("scientists identify brain area responsible for religious faith", and the like). Though it's true that the brain has specialized areas, it's also true that the processing is very complex, messy, and distributed all over. Some varieties of brain damage can often be overcome by learning to use undamaged areas of the brain.

The comic illustrates the problem by analogy to some better-understood general-purpose computing hardware: the {{w|CPU}} in a smartphone. [[Cueball]] and [[Megan]] have used their smartphones to take pictures of the same event: a {{w|triathlon}}, that is, an athletic competition comprising three modalities (e.g., swimming, cycling, and running). Cueball wonders why is it that Megan's photos are more popular, and Megan gives a reductionist explanation: She tells that her phone is quad-core (four cores) whereas Cueball's phone only has two cores (here she even throws in the typical sentence "research shows that" to make her claim sound more valid). A {{w|Multi-core processor|core}} is a part of a CPU that executes programming instructions, often described metaphorically as the "brain" of a computer or smartphone. Megan thinks that this means Cueball's smartphone can only capture two events at the same time; to anyone who understands how computers work this conclusion is absurd. She misunderstands how the specialized modules work (for that matter, how a digital camera works at all) and fails to realize that the number of cores is unrelated to how many events can be captured. Her claim is like saying that male brains are better at spatial reasoning, and therefore males are better triathlon photographers, or that females are better at multitasking, and therefore females are better triathlon photographers.

A CPU with more cores could process pictures faster, speeding up facial recognition or color filters. So it's true that Megan's CPU makes it slightly easier for her to take pictures. However, this has, at best, an extremely small effect on the number of "likes". There's a lot more going on with photography than the CPU of the phone: Megan's photographing skills, her luck in capturing interesting scenes, the number of online friends she has, etc.

So Megan misunderstands many things: the modularity of CPUs, the small effect of the CPU on the quality of her photography, and the actual causes of her success, much like people who reduce ability to structural features of the brain.

The title text is mocking reductionist explanations based on [[Randall|Randall's]] MRI ({{w|Magnetic resonance imaging|magnetic resonance imaging}}) research. One of the most famous (and [http://arstechnica.com/science/2011/08/gender-gap-in-spatial-reasoning-mia-in-matrilineal-society/ disputed]) claims about gendered brains is that women's brains are (slightly) worse at spatial reasoning. {{w|Doritos}} is a popular junk-food brand of {{w|tortilla chips}} that are typically so flat that they can be called a 2D snack. In the 1990s Frito-Lay (PepsiCo) introduced a special 3D version, the {{w|Doritos#Doritos_3D.27s|3D Doritos}}. (These [http://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2012/10/25-junk-foods-we-wish-still-existed/3d-doritos bloated snacks] took up more surface area in one's mouth, and had a hollow center filled with cheese-flavored air). So the title text associates a larger spatial reasoning brain area with enjoyment of this three-dimensional variation of the popular junk-food snack; the conclusion could be that men like these 3D snacks more than women because of their better spatial reasoning, although there could obviously be several other reasons for such gender specific choice of junk-food. 3D Doritos were discontinued, but reintroduced in 2015, the year of this comic's release.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball holds his smartphone looking at it while talking to Megan who is holding her smartphone in her hand.]
:Cueball: Your photos from the triathlon got so many more likes than mine.
:Megan: Yeah - My phone is quad-core. Research shows that iPhones like yours have just two cores, so they have a hard time capturing scenes with three different events in them.

:[Caption below the frame:]
:If we talked about phone hardware the way we talk about brain hardware

==Trivia==
*When this comic was originally published there was a misspelling: triath'''o'''lon instead of triathlon.

{{comic discussion}}
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[[Category:Smartphones]]
[[Category:Photography]]
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