You're not perfect, and neither is your brain

First, let me apologize for my recent absence. I have been having problems with my internet connection, and realizing just how lost and disconnected I feel without it.

The plus side of my internet-less-ness is that I have been able to read books at an even faster pace than usual. (By the way, I found a new favorite fictional writer, Haruki Murakami). Two books that I have recently read have been stuck on my mind: Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me), by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson; and Predictable Irrationality, by Dan Ariely.

The basic premises of these books, respectively, are that our brains instinctively justify bad decisions, foolish beliefs and hurtful actions and that we are not nearly as rational as we like to think we are.

The overriding thought that has stuck with me is that our brains are not the flawless, reliable machines that we often view them as. Whether it’s being suckered into paying $3.00 for a cup of coffee after years of paying 50 cents (an example in Predictable Irrationality) or falsely convincing yourself that you are a holocaust survivor (an example in Mistakes Were Made), our brains deceive us pretty frequently.

The more I understand how my brain is flawed, the more I realize the importance of this realization. Our brains evolved according to what was advantageous in our environment. But with the rapid change in environment brought on in the past few thousand years, a lot of our brains mechanisms are simply outdated.

The best example I can think of is our love for sugar and calories. In our hunter/gatherer days, the rare source of sugar provided a much-needed boost of energy and we learned to pack in as many calories as we could when they were available because we never knew when our next meal would be. In today’s first world countries, food is overly abundant and we rarely have to worry about where our next meal will come from. Yet our love for sugar and calories persists, and as a result we’re fat as hell and dying of heart diseases, diabetes and an endless list of other health complications due to our inability to curb this evolutionary addiction.

Now this is just my personal experience and it may not apply to everyone, but I have found that the best way to resist this temptation is to understand why I am so drawn to Snickers bars and fried chicken. By understanding that my desire for these things is irrational, and understanding why that irrational desire exists, I am much less likely to succumb to those desires. Of course, every once in a while I still break down and devour an entire pizza by myself, but I understand that I am succumbing to an outdated addiction and make sure that it is only occasional.

But this post is not exclusively about dieting tips. This mentality can be applied to just about every aspect of our lives. Don’t be so quick to dismiss someone’s story of events just because you remember it differently; our personal memories care very little for truth. Question whether that PlayStation3 is really worth $400 to you, or if that same money could be used for something that would make you happier (or someone else happier!); we have no internal gauge of value except in relation to other things. Question your actions from a third-person view, instead of your biased opinion; our brains will do anything they can to convince us that everything we do is right.

One of the most universal everyday goals of people is to make good decisions. We are constantly making decisions, and the more good decisions we make, the better we end up. I am absolutely convinced that one of the most vital tools to making good decisions is realizing that our brains are not perfect and taking its flaws into consideration in every important decision we make.

Mind undergoing improvements: please bear with me

"Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death." – Albert Einstein

Okay, I have been trying for hours to come up with a coherent post, because I promised one a week. I tried writing about consciousness, then morality, then something that didn’t even have a main point…everything ends up in incoherent rambling, and I’m just not confident enough in anything I’ve written to post it here.

Instead I want to talk about my rambling mind, because I think it is an important topic. My writing is all over the place because that’s where my mind is right now: jumping from tangent to tangent, unable to settle anywhere long enough to finish a thought. It makes it nearly impossible for me to communicate my thoughts to anyone else, which is frustrating, but I have come to realize that this incoherence is a good sign, and a necessary part of intellectual growth.

I have been vigorously stirring my mind (largely in part to a new, wonderfully thought-provoking book that I am in the middle of reading) so that all of my beliefs and opinions are swirling spastically like pulp in orange juice. While they are swirling, they are completely vulnerable to be shot down.

This is a vital process for any independent thinker. No matter how objective you think you are, you will always have a tendency to try to prove yourself right. And more than that, it is important to have some kind of base beliefs (beliefs that you have reached through evidence, reason and skepticism). If you absolutely doubted everything all the time, you would go crazy. You have to have some confidence in some things, some of the time.

But from time to time, I think you have to enter a state of complete uncertainty. That’s where I am right now. Of course, the beliefs with the most evidence (there is no god, for example) fall back into place pretty quickly. But my opinions on morality, consciousness and other complicated issues are undergoing some heavy internal fire, and hopefully I will come out with a better understanding and some intriguing thoughts on those issues.

But for the time being, I have very little confidence in any opinion I might express, and I cannot bring myself to write an opinion that I myself am not confident in.