 I try to convince people not to use teleological arguments where they're not warranted, but a lot of them just don't see the point. When trying to make sense of some event, there are many different ways to categorize and dissect the circumstances which led up to that event. For example, if I asked you why you're watching Thunk right now, you might say, well, because there's a new episode, or because I enjoy it, or maybe because my parents always encourage me to learn weird new stuff, or maybe you get a little bit more technical, like because I clicked on a link, or because the internet is streaming information to my CPU, which is sending signals to my GPU, which is displaying a video on my screen, or maybe even, well, first you see there was this big bang. We don't really think about it much, but whenever we explain why something happened, we're necessarily making choices about what resolution to use for that explanation, and how best to group the causes that we can see at that resolution. Some combinations of those factors are more useful or intuitive than others, and it's easy to get into disagreements with people if you choose to use a different scale or categorization than they would. Like if someone asked you why you were late for work, and you said, well, because of the laws of physics, you might be technically correct, but you're still probably going to get fired. Explanations are ones which revolve around some sort of purpose, intent, or goal. In answering a question like why are knives sharp, although it's technically correct to say something like because they were ground against a stone at an acute angle, it makes a little bit more intuitive sense to appeal to a teleological explanation, like because we intend to use them to cut things. Teleological reasoning actually makes a lot of sense in an environment which is mostly dominated by designed man-made objects. Cars have wheels because we need them to roll. Screens have colors because we need to see them. It's probably difficult for you to pick out a single object in your field of view that doesn't have some sort of purpose or intent associated with its characteristics and why it is the way that it is. Teleology is kind of special among other kinds of explanation because it necessitates a sort of predictive power. An idea about some future state of affairs and a plan for them. Usually there's a clear one-way relationship between cause and effect, but in a teleological relationship, the effect is kind of what causes the cause. I'm going to want to cut something at some point, so I made a sharp knife. Of course, there are numerous examples for which it doesn't make a lot of sense to flip the cause and effect like that or to appeal to some sort of anticipatory intent like why is the sky blue or why do apples fall downward? There isn't an intended purpose for the color of the sky or the direction of gravity. It's not like the atmosphere or falling objects are steepling their fingers and going excellent. But interestingly, it would seem that humans have a particular affinity for trying to explain things that way, even if it doesn't make a lot of sense. According to a 1999 study by Dorothy Kellerman, children are likely to default to a teleological sort of thinking, even in situations that don't really call for it. If you ask a child why mountains are the way they are, they might say, for climbing. If you ask them why clouds exist, they might say, so we can have rain. Five year olds probably don't know enough about plate tectonics or evaporation to give physical responses to these questions. So they appeal to intent, maybe because it's familiar. Even if in this case, it's a little bit crazy. We climb mountains because they're tall and we have rain because of clouds, not the other way around. But in the absence of a more complete understanding of the world, maybe it makes sense to jump at a format of answer that works for other stuff, like knives and cars. But here's where it gets interesting. In 2008, Kellerman performed an experiment on some university students who had completed their undergraduate scientific curriculum. They were shown a series of explanations for different kinds of phenomena. Ranging from reasonable, like children wear gloves to keep their hands warm, or plants wilt because they get dehydrated, to nonsensical, like cars have horns to illuminate dark roads. If she cranked up the speed at which the students were forced to respond to the questions, they were basically just as good at picking out silly physical explanations, no worries there. But the faster they were forced to respond, the more likely they were to make mistakes in favor of teleology. Even though they had a reasonable scientific understanding of principles like nuclear fusion or genetic mutation, if they weren't given a lot of time to think about it, they were likely to suggest that stuff like the sun radiates heat because warmth nurtures life and germs mutate in order to become drug resistant were acceptable explanations. In 2012, she replicated this study with professional physical scientists, researchers in the fields of physics and chemistry, who really ought to know better. They made the same sorts of mistakes, although if they were given some time to go back and review their answers, they were generally better at spotting their errors. What's the deal? Well, in her paper, Kellerman suggests three possible explanations for this phenomena. First, maybe we've got some sort of instinctive teleological slant to how we try to make sense of the world, some sort of hard-coded bias in our brains that defaults to agency, even when there isn't any. We've collected a whole laundry list of other cognitive defects where we imagine human characteristics in weird places. For example, we're prone to perceiving human faces and voices in random noise, or assigning human characteristics and feelings to animals or even inanimate objects. Maybe this teleological thing is just another entry on that list. Second, maybe we're taught a compelling worldview at a very early age, which represents nature as an entity with a will and goals. I mean, we've all heard the phrase mother nature at some point, and it's a concept which appears in several cultures. Maybe that's just lodged deep in our subconscious, and when we're too distracted to think things through, it just pops out. Third, it's possible that we just gradually accumulate a series of crappy teleological explanations for natural phenomena throughout our lives, and we're slowly conditioned to think of them as a good answer for anything, even when they're not. Some well-intentioned teachers might use a metaphor of agency to explain things in a way that's easy for a five-year-old to understand. The water wants to be at the lowest possible point, or the Earth has a magnetic field to protect itself from harmful magnetic radiation. Repeat that same scheme over and over for years, and eventually, maybe that's just where our brains go when we're looking for answers. Perhaps when we're trying to explain the same phenomenon to someone else. Each of those mechanisms sound pretty plausible to me, and they each have fascinating implications. If we're wired to imagine agency in the world around us, that tells us something about how our brains work. If we're trained to do so, either by custom or mythology, that gives us a reason to re-examine how we teach and talk to children about why things are the way they are. Whatever the cause, we all seem to share this problem from five-year-olds to physicists, and it's probably a good idea to remember that it's there. And let's be real, I'm a designer, and I can say with some certainty that even for man-made stuff, sometimes the question why doesn't have an answer that has a lot to do with design. What's the last teleological error that you made? Please leave a comment below and let me know what you think. Thank you very much for watching. Don't forget to blah, blah, subscribe, blah, share, and don't stop thunking.