17 February 2006

Interesting thinking about thinking

Dammit, Fenster, close those blinds -- I'm trying to make a decision in here: Today brings fresh evidence that it's not wise to trust too much to your conscious mind (see " You think you know what you think? Think again"). A Dutch study on the decision-making process found that while the conscious mind, with its limited bandwidth, is find for making little choices like which cereal to buy, it tends to fumble anything much bigger. Much better choices in complex matters, the researchers found, come by "deliberating without attention," or in technical terms, "sleeping on it," letting the unconscious, with its non-linear processing system, do the heavy crunching.

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