Brian Lynch

The Consensus Trap

AI’s growing capacity to synthesize evidence and settle arguments creates an illusion: that settling what is true will also settle what people do. It will not. Behavior is governed by affect — shame, interest, threat, loyalty — not by the truth-value of a conclusion, and no incre...

The Regression Trap

Building on Daniel Kahneman’s account of regression to the mean (including his flight-instructor case), Silvan Tomkins’ theory of discrete affect, Donald Nathanson’s Compass of Shame, and recent neurobiological work on the lateral habenula (LHb), the paper traces a mechanism by w...

The Consensus Trap

AI’s growing capacity to synthesize evidence and settle arguments creates an illusion: that settling what is true will also settle what people do. It will not. Behavior is governed by affect — shame, interest, threat, loyalty — not by the truth-value of a conclusion, and no incre...

The Habenular Vice

This paper argues shame is not fundamentally social, though it is usually treated that way. Drawing on lateral habenula (LHb) physiology, insular interoception, and the evolutionary history of valence, it makes four claims: shame is precognitive, decided by the LHb before conscio...

The Regression Trap

Building on Daniel Kahneman’s account of regression to the mean (including his flight-instructor case), Silvan Tomkins’ theory of discrete affect, Donald Nathanson’s Compass of Shame, and recent neurobiological work on the lateral habenula (LHb), the paper traces a mechanism by w...

The Habenular Vice

This paper argues shame is not fundamentally social, though it is usually treated that way. Drawing on lateral habenula (LHb) physiology, insular interoception, and the evolutionary history of valence, it makes four claims: shame is precognitive, decided by the LHb before conscio...