When I was about 20 years old, I worked as a janitor at a home for elderly people. I had no skills that a janitor was supposed to have. In fact I didn't even know that a janitor needed skills :)
One day I was asked to fix a clogged sink, I thought, "Sure, how hard can it be?", then I went to work. This is how I did it.
- I examined the sink and quickly established that the problem was a clogged water trap (vattenlås).
- I carefully removed the water trap, it was filled with filthy stinking brown water.
- Very carefully I lifted the trap, to avoid spilling the filthy water on the floor.
- Then, I poured the water into the sink...
I realized that I was not as smart as I thought I was. How could I do this? I was so very careful not to spill a drop and yet my stupid brain failed me big time. What was wrong with me?
After many years, and a lot of books, I think I have understood what the problem is. It is not me, it is my brain. I am a pattern matching robot, who reacts to incoming patterns in predefined ways. If there is not a pattern that matches, it chooses the closest matching pattern and that is not necessarily good.
Robots
My intention with this text is to show that we are more like machines than any of us are willing to admit. We react to patterns that we pick up through our senses. Our ability to work in a rational way is extremely limited since our rational part of the mind is extremely limited. To demonstrate this, I'll start with several examples.
Irrationality
What I mean with irrationality is, something we do without paying attention. It is something we can do without involving our conscious part of the brain.
Irrational = Unconscious = Without paying attention
Facts are useful; they give the conscious mind something to do while the emotions decide what’s true! --Dale Dauten
Most of what we do, we do without paying attention
Earphone Study
In the earphone study researchers wanted to find out how much we are affected by actions that are seemingly unrelated to our brains.
In the study a number of people were asked to test out earphones, to tell if they were comfortable.
- The first group were told to sit without moving and listen to what was being said in the earphones.
- The second group were told to nod their heads while listening.
- The third group were told to shake their heads while listening.
After the test was completed the subjects were asked about what the person had been talking about in the earphones. The result was statistically significant: The group that were nodding were more positive than the group who sat without moving and, they were more positive than the group who had been shaking their head. The opinion of the people were affected by how they were moving their head while they were listening!
How rational is that?
Biking
How do you ride a bicycle? You grab a hold on the handlebars, push off with your foot to get some initial speed, keep you balance by moving the front wheel in the direction in which the bike is falling. When the bike is falling the other way you turn the wheel that way instead, and so on.
Needless to say this way of teaching someone to ride a bike will not work. We can ride bikes, but we don't know how we do it. And even if we could do it the way I described it, our conscious minds are too slow to be of any use. Try riding a bike with a wheel that turns the opposite way, when you turn the handlebars. It is very, very difficult.
Decisions
Imagine that you are standing on a trampoline, preparing to jump into the pool. Half a second before you jump, your unconscious mind has started its activity that will eventually make you jump. Half a second! Conscious decisions are initiated unconsiously!
Cocktail Party
Imagine you are at a cocktail party, having a conversation with some friends. Then, suddenly, you hear someone mention your name somewhere around you. Your conscious attention is moved to the other conversation. You may not even hear what your friends are talking about anymore, because your unconscious mind has scanned the environment around you and now you want to know what they are saying about you.
Is this a rational way to act?
Snap
Our unconscious mind is exceptional at making snap decisions. It does it all the time. If we meet a person in the street we, unconsciously, scan them to see if they are a threat, if they look good, etc. If there is something that is not "normal" about them we are immediately aware of it.
Sleep
When we are sleeping, our brains repeat the thoughts we have thought during the day. In a study two groups of people were tasked with first learning some new skills, then solve creative problems based on what they had learned. The first group learned the skills and started applying them right away. The second group learned the skills, had a nights sleep, and then applied their skills to the problems. The group that was allowed to "sleep on it", were 70% more effective than the first group.
Beauty
You may have heard the song by Skunk Anansie, called "Just because you feel good", some of the lyrics go like this.
Just because you look good, doesn't make it right! -- Skunk Anansie
It is a good song, but unfortunately the conclusion is wrong. We are, naturally, affected by beauty. We cannot do anything about it. A good example of this is the justice system, who ought to be immune to this. Beautiful people get, significantly, lower sentences than ugly people.
Our irrational mind, doesn't have any problem discriminating people.
Tumour
This is a story about a man who started to like child pornography. After he had made a pass at his wife's sisters daughter, his life went to pieces. He was divorced. But he went through a medical examination that showed that he had a tumour in his brain... When they removed the tumour his mind returned to normal. Of course, it was too late to do anything about his broken marriage, but still, good for him. But there is an epilogue to this story. The man started to feel the urge for child pornography again, and went to see his doctor. The tumour had returned and once removed, the behavior of the man returned to his "normal" behavior.
Dreyfuss Model of Skills Acquisition
In the Dreyfuss Model of Skills Acquisition an expert is defined as someone who has "intuitive grasp of situations based on deep, tacit understanding". Intuitive! In order to become experts we have to let go of our need to be rational and trust our intuition. Being rational is too slow.
Einstein
Einstein was an extremely intuitive scientist. He had trouble communicating his ideas to other scientists since he was not thinking in a language that he was able to easily communicate to others.
I only need symbols to communicate. -- Albert Einstein
Optical Illusions
What square is lighter? "A" or "B". The obvious answer is of course incorrect. They both have the same color as can be seen in the second picture. Just as easily as we are fooled by this optical illusion our rational mind is fooled all the time when our unconscious filters remove facts from our every sensation of "reality".
This is a good thing. Our rational mind couldn't cope with the overflow of information it would otherwise experience.
Reflective Robots
So as you can see, we are pattern matching robots, who react to patterns in predefined ways. But that is not the whole truth. The cool part is that we are reflective robots and this is where our rationality comes into play.
Rationality
My definition of rationality is, of course, similar, but opposite, to my definition of irrationality. Rational is something we do consciously, something we pay attention to. But, rationality is extremely limited.
Time
Our rationality is able to deal with time. While our unconscious lives in the present our conscious is able to move back and forth through time at our whim.
Planning
Being able to deal with time is essential for planning. What is the use of planning if there is no tomorrow? How can we plan for the future if we cannot rely on experience from the past?
Focus
The conscious mind can focus, to concentrate the entire conscious mind and some parts of the unconscious mind.
Discipline
Related to focus is discipline. This is also something that the conscious mind excels at. While our irrational mind, simply reacts to incoming patterns, our rational mind is able to keep the mind in check in order to force ou