How we Think: Curiosities and Important Things

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Our intuition is terrific, if we have much knowledge and are perceiving the current situation well. But, if you don't have much knowledge your intuition is likely to be superficial (or as Andy Warhol used to say "I am deeply superficial") and if your perception of the current situation is incomplete your intuition will also be. The idea of using each, not to fight one another, but to inform the person in two different ways makes great sense.

Our imagination isn't nearly as strong as we would like to believe it is. In chess I have seen a zillion times a person picks up a piece, moves it to a square and the instant they release it they then realize it's a big mistake. Somehow, only when the fact is before their eyes, do they see. One of the key mental skills necessary for anyone to become a good player is to restrain that initial desire to play a move without some kind of confirming analysis (we generally call it 'blunder-check'). This isn't possible in action sports or extemporaneous speaking. But, how often do we hear a politician speaking very very slowly, as if mentally retarded, to avoid saying something embarrassing or wrong? They're doing blunder-check as they go. The effort to do this is very unnatural and tiring.

Mental focus is a peculiar thing since we think we're paying attention all the time. But, in fact, to solve a problem or to create a complex thing requires a specialized focus on smaller and smaller things rather than the general free-wheeling attention we normally use. This too is unnatural and tiring, so we shouldn't do it all the time. The way to avoid tiring from it is to shift in and out of focus to relax and then work. But, and this is the horrible catch, to shift out of focus and then back in can take about 15 minutes. Some situations don't allow us that luxury and so we have to stay focused for long stretches. That's where tiring happens and we can begin to lose control.

The Left-Brain Right-Brain model is interesting, but the Triarchic model is more correct and not much harder to understand. The Reptilian core, the Mammalian middle and the Primate outer brains have their own functions developed over millennia. For problem solving and other higher order thinking we definitely need the capabilities of the aloof intellectual Primate brain. That's where we do maths and all kind of logical thinking, including writing and planning and dealing with abstractions of all kinds. Thus, to distract someone it may be as easy as leading their brains to begin dealing with non-primate issues by engaging the other parts of their brain. Encroach on someone's territory, especially young men, and they'll become Reptilian. Another terribly unobvious thing is that the Primate brain is the newest and least capable, so using that thinking is slower and much more tiring. Overwork it and it may collapse and leave you responding only from emotional fear or sensual needs.

Perhaps on of the curious things is how there are prodigies. They only exist in a few areas: music, chess, mathematics and perhaps religious preaching. For most people the development of the Left-Brain Primate intellectual skills comes quickly (especially with some teaching), but knowledge takes time and experience. So, how do the prodigies get by without so much experience? Oftentimes they begin very young and practice like mad to gain the experience (some say 10,000 hours is necessary for mastery). But, how many very young kids are capable of that kind of sustained effort? It's rare.

An amazing thing I've heard of in the martial arts world is 'time stopping'. This is when a person is overwhelmed with objects and speed and their intellectual Left-Brain Primate brain isn't getting the job done, so something more primitive takes over. The Primate brain is slowest, though precise, but the Mammalian or Reptilian brains can handle billions of perceptions regularly and can 'take over' to deal with life & death issues in moments of crisis. During that, I've been told, time seems to slow or stop. Everything continues apace, but our sense of the events is that of a person who is super-focused and noticing everything without feeling rushed. This is definitely 'the zone'. How well we can perform in an intellectual way during that would depend upon practice I suppose. Anyway, they say time flies  when you're having fun, so I suppose it makes sense that time slows when we're feeling threatened. Maybe we just lose interest in 'time' when we're really really into doing something.

Another area of our thinking which is peculiar is how we perceive without consciously realizing something. Some blind people can still perceive with their eyes. Some parents are said to have 'eyes in the back of their head'. The autistic savant in "Rain Man" could look at a pile of toothpicks and count them instantly. There have been numerous stories of sales personnel being able to read the body language of their customers very well and use that to help them close the deal. Much of this is done unconsciously and therefore it's a curious thing that one person might be able to move that to the conscious intellectual level and use it while another person might not realize anything is being perceived at all. This, among many things, shows how separate are our different brains and how we aren't so integrated as we generally believe.

One example from the political world: a friend of mine claims to be a Libertarian. They generally favor less government and more private individual freedom. We discussed the Obamacare law and one provision in particular where government subsidies for indigent care would go away (or at least shrink) as individuals got their own insurance to pay bills. He couldn't understand why a government program which was working should be changed. So, I asked him, if he is for small government and personal responsibility in theory, then why didn't he favor the Obamacare individual mandate (to buy insurance) instead of favoring the government involvement subsidizing indigent care? He had no answer because it had never occurred to him to compare his actual belief with his 'ideas'. He doesn't care to combine or compare his ideas with his 'real' beliefs. Peculiar that.

Enough for now.