Sharing what I have learned from what I have read: A blog by Joe Abittan
Some of the decisions that I make are based on thorough calculations, analysis, evaluation of available options, and deliberate considerations of costs and benefits. When I am planning my workout routine, I think hard about how my legs have been feeling and what distance, elevation, and pace is reasonable for my upcoming workouts. I think … Continue reading Unconscious Rules of Thumb
In Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman demonstrates how quick our minds are and how fast they react to potential dangers and threats by showing us two very simple pictures of eyes. The pictures are black squares, with a little bit of white space that our brains immediately perceive as eyes, and beyond that immediate … Continue reading Scared Before You Even Know It
I grew up playing basketball and one thing coaches always tell players is that they have to have confidence when they shoot the ball. If you shoot while thinking I hope I don't miss, then you are going to miss. If you are worried about being yelled at for missing a shot and if you … Continue reading Ideomotor Effect
"Another major advance in our understanding of memory was the discovery that priming is not restricted to concepts and words," writes Daniel Kahneman in his book Thinking Fast and Slow, "You cannot know this from conscious experience, of course, but you must accept the alien idea that your actions and your emotions can be primed … Continue reading Conscious and Unconscious Priming Effects
In Daniel Kahneman's book Thinking Fast and Slow, Kahneman lays out two ideas for thinking about our thought processing. Kahneman calles the two ways of thinking about our thought processing System 1 and System 2. System 1 is fast, automatic, often subconscious, and usually pretty accurate in terms of making quick judgments, assumptions, and estimations … Continue reading We Think of Ourselves as Rational
Have you ever tried to laugh at something that wasn't funny because social conventions called for laughter? You probably found it a little awkward and your laugh probably didn't sound the most generous or real. Humans are really good at laughter, but we are not very good at consciously understanding and being aware of our … Continue reading Laughter
Yesterday I wrote a bit about how non-verbal communication often happens below the level of our consciousness. However, just because it is something we don't consciously recognize doesn't mean that the messages conveyed are meaningless. I wrote yesterday about how non-verbal communication can allow us to communicate some messages slyly, implying things and making our … Continue reading Non-Verbal Communication & Messages
I have written in the past about the idea and model that our brains act as press secretaries, taking the information that comes into the mind and presenting it in a way that makes everything happening in the mind look as good as it possibly can. This idea comes back in Robin Hanson and Kevin … Continue reading Press Secretaries
"Our minds are built to sabotage information in order to come out ahead in social games." In The Elephant in the Brain, Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson write about the ways in which we act out of our own self-interest without acknowledging it. We are more selfish, more deceptive, and less altruistic than we would … Continue reading Sabotage Information
"The unreal disguise of consciousness serves only to emphasize to me the existence of the undisguised unconsciousness." Fernando Pessoa wrote this in The Book of Disquiet as he reflected on the way that people thought about and moved through the world around him. What Pessoa noted is that we act and behave as though we are … Continue reading The Undisguised Consciousness