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EdgiPing t1_j4vp8y2 wrote

I've seen authors claiming this is how the mind works. The unconscious mind governs the conscious mind. Before you decide to do something (ex: lift an arm), the unconscious mind has already decided for you. Never quite understood how this works fully though.

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ScandalousSocialist t1_j4vwbpa wrote

Think of it like "instinct" vs "thoughtful action"

The very first thing you decide is often an unconscious reaction. Someone jumps at you to scare you and you throw your arms up for example, then you settle down and realize it was just your friend. That's the unconscious making a decision and then your conscious mind taking over. To make conscious decisions you have to evaluate, to make unconscious decisions you just have to react to the immediate stimuli and requires no thinking or evaluation so it comes first and must be corrected.

Continuing the example, if your conscious mind never took back over you would either run or fight your friend but you don't because your conscious mind takes back over as soon as it has made all the evaluations.

Ordering a pizza then regretting it as soon as you think for 5 seconds, mindlessly eating a bag of Oreos, all of these are unconscious actions people take every day (or at least I did and still do to a lesser extent). We can train our unconscious to an extent though, the reason it orders the pizza or keeps eating the Oreos is because that's what we have previously trained it to do. The reason monks can meditate through any sort of scare/pain is they have trained it to not react (though that's an extreme example of course)

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PhinsGraphicDesigner t1_j4wd06j wrote

The book “Thinking Fast and Slow” by Daniel Kahneman, talks about a somewhat similar concept that humans have 2 types of thinking. Type 1 is unconscious and rapid. This is where our quick biases come in to make thing easier. Hard thinking takes a lot of energy, so it is beneficial to have instinctual behaviors that don’t take a lot of effort or energy. These are things we don’t really have to think about much. Something like small talk, walking, doing a mind-dumbing, or a repetitive task at work that’ve you practically memorized and can do while sleeping. Have you ever been driving home and just blank out and kinda wake up at your destination thinking how did I get here? That’s type 1 thinking taking over. This is evolutionarily beneficial. When a predator comes, your instincts tell you to run away. You don’t want to or need to sit there thinking about all the ways a lion can rip your body in half, because then you’ve already been attacked.

Type 2 is more intense, conscious, deeper thinking. This is something like a complex math problem. Quick biases cannot solve these issues and you need to stop what your doing and figure it out.

Try this out: have someone walk around the room and have a basic conversation with them. Those are both type 1 activities and can be done easily and mindlessly. Now ask that person (who’s hopefully not a math wizard) to multiply something ridiculous like 437 times 671. 99.9% of the time, they will stop walking to try to think about answer the question. Type 2 thinking has just been activated which takes conscious effort.

The human brain is lazy and tries whenever possibly to use type 1 thinking. This is probably 90% of our thinking. Type 2 is harder and happens less frequently.

Much like this meme, we like to think we are always rational type 2 thinkers, but really most of our lives is dictated by the biases of type 1. We go around in our life using these biases we have learned / been taught using type 1 thinking because it’s easier. That is until a more complex problem arises that requires type 2 thinking.

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