Watching my brain

I've been wondering these past days at how human beings believe their world is deterministic when it is much more random. How we ascribe motives and skills to retrospective evaluation of success when it could just be a matter of chance. How such explanations lull us into a false sense of 'expertise'. How we see patterns, not because they are there, but because our brain craves for order. How we want to believe we make rational decision when in reality we are a slave of our emotions. How our brain is playing with us.

It's tough to separate yourself from your brain and watch how it fools you. But if you can - and I don't profess any particular skill at this - it makes for a fascinating spectacle. Remember your last meeting with a stranger? At the first glimpse, your brain starts trying to slot her. Tall, thin, fair - everything goes into creating an 'expected' personality. Audio and tactile cues add on and 3 minutes into the interaction, you either like the person, dislike her or couldn't care less. Anything post that is rationalization or amplitude variation on the already chosen scale.

By definition, each one of us is unique. And we are exposed to unique and almost infinite stimuli everyday. But our brain filters and fits. It has to, else it will be paralysed in processing everything.

Language, by itself, is an elaborate approximation tool to help us come to grips with the massive variation in emotion, thought and sight in this world. Our brain fits our unique sensation to an approximate available word : its 'fit' process working all the time!

How we make decisions is another example. If we were to make perfectly rational decisions, we wouldn't even be able to decide which side of the bed to get up from. That's where reflex, heuristics and 'rules of thumb' come in play. And almost always, we are driven by our emotions rather than our thinking. I know of a friend who had a 5 point scale on 10 attributes when he was meeting girls in the elaborate charade of arranged marriage. He just couldn't decide. Not only were there more combinations than he could handle, there were some 'things' (I suspect these were emotions) which were not on his list! Finally, after meeting some 20 girls, he gave up and married someone far from all points and attributes. They are a happy couple now.

Religion, especially monotheistic also pander to the brain's need for order. The notion that there is an absolute truth and one right path to reach it, is highly attractive. It takes away the ambiguity and decision making effort embedded in polytheism.

This is a fascinating journey. Realising that we are governed by our emotions and not our rationality is intriguing. Recognizing instances where our brain's need for order and fit, overrides a pursuit for what's right is amusing. And seeing that there is a lot more randomness driving events around us is comforting as it halts us in our endeavor to ascribe motives and causes to everything.

You might be wondering where I'm going with this. There are 3 implications of such thoughts in my mind:

One, recognizing that our brain will force us into stereotypes, profiling and prejudices is the first step to maintain a secular, non-judgemental outlook towards life, people and events.

Second, recognizing that there is a lot more randomness around us and resisting the urge to accord causality to coincidental events, will ensure that we do not fall into the trap of believing that we have 'THE ANSWER'. This belief can prevent us from being open to alternative scenarios, leading to rigidity.

Third, it impacts how we teach our children. Currently, knowledge is imparted in axioms and absolute truths while a better approach would be to present it as the 'current best'. The history of science reveals how knowledge itself progressed through trial and error vs. an unrelenting pursuit towards an absolute truth.

I'm no expert on this matter - far from it. I don't even know whether what I wrote is true. All I know is that this is an alternative reality. And all I commit to, is to learn more. Not to find the ultimate truth but to uncover lies that are accepted wisdom today.