The Last Impression

“Forget Future, We don’t know correctly even about past”

I wish I could write a diary. I would have avoided a lot of mistakes. You must have seen in suspense thriller movies that a murder or theft happens in the beginning of film and entire plot revolves around that murder/theft incident. Lot of characters comes under circumference of suspicion and at the end when culprit is revealed you jumped from your seat because it is the one who was less susceptible. May be the main character was himself or the close aid of main character. What if it happens in your life? Suppose something wrong happens with you that you don’t like. You had some belief, some idea, some perception, some question for someone and you spend your entire life to find the answer and at the end you realize that main culprit was someone who helped you throughout your life to find the answer. It is your closest aid – Your Memory. Actually that event was never occurred whose explanation you was searching in all your life. It was false creation of your memory.

Suppose you stored 10 pictures in your computer. These pictures are about the three years you spent in your college. Out of these 10 pics, 5 pics are related to your happy moments and 5 pics are related to your sad moments and by looking all these 10 picture you drive the feeling that you spent mixed time in your college but what happens when one day a virus deletes all those photos that reminds you your sad moment so now what will be your overall feeling about your stay in the collage on the basis of available memory (pictures)? You spent a great time in collage. Now consider some another situation if the same virus deletes all the pics related to your happy memories in place of sad memories. Now what will be your feelings? You spent your worst time in your college, isn’t it? In both cases you spent same time. The time already has gone. You only have memories related to event left but on the basis of available memory your perception about your past in entirely different. Suppose you store two images of an event in which one pic of happy face of Mr A and one pic of sad face of Mr B and basis on these two pics you remember that on that day Mr A was happy and Mr B was sad. But one day suppose one virus change the pics and it becomes sad face of Mr A and happy face of Mr B then what will be your perception about that event? Now you will remember that on that day Mr A was sad and Mr B was happy, an entirely different situation that actually never existed. You may give the argument that there are no such computer viruses that can change the face expression in images but there is such virus in your head that can do it and that virus is your mind.

I knew it all along

How many times it happened with you? When you were little hopeful that something could happen but after some time when that thing has happened and then you said that I knew it all along. You not only said it but you confidently believed it that it could happen. I give you example suppose you was watching cricket match between India and Australia and before match you were 100% confident that India was going to win that match but your guess went wrong and Australia defeated India and after the result you completely changed your stance. You said that you already knew that Australia was going to win the match. There were lots of loopholes in Indian bowling. Indian batting was not so deep and not only you would say it you would believe it also that you knew it India would lose the match. Even you would pass lie detector test also. Yes you read it right. How did it happen? It happened because memories stored in the mind have been changed. People have tendency to overestimate their ability to have predicted an outcome that could not possibly have been predicted and their mind play very important role in this biased thinking. Our episodic memory (memory related to a time frame) is not static, our memories are dynamic and the mind has power to change the memory stored in our head.

The Invisible Gaps

So have you locked your door? Have you switched off lights of your room when you left the home? Are you sure? Do you remember the last person you met? What colors of cloths he/she was wearing? Do you trust your memory? Ok let’s forget it. To understand more about our memory phenomena, we need to understand how we create memories. In simplified it contains three processes: Encoding, storing and retrieval. We receive the information of our outer world through our senses (eyes, ears, nose, tongue, skin) and information received through senses sent to brain for processing and storing in hard disc of brain this process is called encoding. Brain process the information and store them into hippocampus region of brain. You can call hippocampus to hard disc of brain here memories are stored for long time, this process is called storing. Now just try to remember when you were kid and it was your birthday.  If you are able to recollect some memories than this process is called retrieval, retrieving the past memory is like searching a particular book in a big library and it depends upon how efficiently you stored the information in your memory, how many times you recalled it. Now question is do you store everything in your memory that you see and here comes the twist. We do not store everything, every moment in our memory that we see. Just try to remember any short event of today. It may be your half hour drive, your first half our spent in office, first hour of today. Can you remember each and everything of that period? Your answer must be know and reason for that it our brain don’t store each and everything in our memory. It stores selected part of events in memory. You can compare it with the highlights of a cricket or football match. Our brain stores the memory as highlights not as complete event and they too get faded with the time. There are gaps in our memories stored in our hard disc and big problem is we are not aware about these invisible gaps. Just take an example. Suppose today morning you went to park for morning walk and you was in park from 6:00 to 6:10. Do you think your brain stored all the information (trees, flowers, people in the park etc) in your brain? Answer is No. It stored the memories in patches and how much it stored depends upon person to person, how much consciously you were present there. It can be explained by this diagram.

Now the question arises that why we store memories in our hard disc as highlights and not as complete live event and here comes in the picture the second processor in our brain – The Mind.

The Mysterious Driver

Functioning of mind and brain has been explained thoroughly in previous chapters. Pl read the previous chapter “The Mysterious Driver” to understand how brain and mind works and how mind interferes in the functioning of brain. The major difference in the working of mind and brain is that brain work on request while mind works in auto mode that means mind keep working and it tries to hinder in the work of brain. Suppose someone ask you what is the capitol of Japan? Your brain will go to your memory and try to retrieve the capital of Japan that you stored earlier in memory that is called working on request but suppose if you see an ice-cream you don’t need to make any effort you subconscious mind (hard disc of mind) will automatically send you impressions and feelings related to ice cream to your mind and this is the main reason that why we cannot store the memories as complete event and why we store memories as highlights because mind doesn’t allow brain to work continuously it keeps hindering in the brain functioning. So let’s take example of your morning walk again. You went to park for your morning walk and this time you decided that you will give conscious attentions to details and observe all things. You started to walk, you observed plants, flowers, people at that time your brain is recording everything suddenly you saw a guy is red jacket and he recalled he was also looking to buy this jacket. He will check on it on Amazon. There is sale on Amazon in next week. Mobiles will be much discounted price. Lot of new technologies are coming in mobile phone. India is improving in technology. Political discourse of India is changing…………………………and your Mind completely hijacked your brain and you could not record anything of your morning walk for few moments. Then again your conscious brain realized you again starting observing things after few moments you again lost and same happens with us all time. We live life is moments. We spend very less time in present and most of the time we live in past or future that’s why we are not able to store all memories because our brain can store only those memories that is consciously processed through brain so the next moment if someone is looking you then it doesn’t mean he is actually looking you. His eyes are open but maybe he has lost if past or future thoughts. It was an example of only 10 minutes of morning walk. Now let’s apply this knowledge learnt through this morning walk into your entire life. You may be 30 year old, 40 year old or 6o year old but it doesn’t mean that your brain have stored all memories all event into your brain. It has stored only those details and events that were consciously recorded by brain and out of them too you have forgot many events. So now if you think that mind hinders only storing process of brain then you are still wrong. Mind mischiefs don’t ends here. Mind interferes in retrieving process also. 

The False perception

If you are reading this article thoroughly then I will suggest you to hold you chair tightly because time has come to give you shock and the shock is we don’t know about past. We are designed in such a way that we are incomplete when it comes to recalling the past and the more shocking is that we are unaware of it. We store the memories only in packets and basis of those uncomplete memories we form the perception about the past, being aware of it that that perception is biased since its build on insufficient data. Just take the example of today’s morning walk suppose you saw a sad face when you was in your conscious state and when you were busy in your mental thoughts you saw lot of happy faces but you didn’t notice them so they were not stored in your memory so later when you recall the memories of your morning walk you will make the perception that mostly sad people come for walk that is actually completely wrong and you are not aware that how you was ditched by your own memory but problem doesn’t end here. Mind is so powerful that it can create false memories and can fit it coherently into missing gaps and can give you completely false overlook of your past and you can never realize it.

Memory Distortion

What if you know one day that an event that was kept hurting you for long time was actually not happened ever. It was false recreation by your mind in your head. Now till now you have known that mind stores the memories of some episode of your life as highlights and not as complete episode and unfortunately you are not aware of it so when you try to recall those memories then your mind cleverly insert false memories in that highlights of that particular episode and present you as complete episode. You believe that you can remember complete episode but actually it’s a reconstructed event by your mind that actually never happened.

The most influential experiments on memory distortions were performed by the British psychologist Frederic Bartlett almost sixty years ago. Bartlett’s participants were asked to reproduce stories taken from the folklore of other cultures; thus, their content and structure were rather strange to Western ears. The reproductions showed many changes from the original. Some parts were subtracted, others were overelaborated, and still others were additions that were completely new. In effects, the participants had built a new story upon the memorial ruins of the original. This memorial reconstruction was generally more in line with the cultural conceptions of the subjects than with the story they had actually heard. For example, certain supernatural plot elements were interpreted along more familiar lines.

In another experiment, 45 participants were randomly assigned to watch different videos of a car accident, in which separate videos had shown collisions at 20 miles per hour, 30 miles per hour, and 40 miles per hour. Afterwards, participants filled out a survey. The survey asked the question, "About how fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other?" The question always asked the same thing, except the verb used to describe the collision varied. Rather than "smashed", other verbs used included "bumped", "collided", "hit", or "contacted". Participants estimated collisions of all speeds to average between 35 miles per hour to just below 40 miles per hour. If actual speed were the main factor in estimate, it could be assumed that participants would have lower estimates for lower speed collisions. Instead, the word being used to describe the collision seemed to better predict the estimate in speed rather than the speed itself.

The second experiment also showed participants videos of a car accident, but the critical manipulation was the verbiage of the follow-up questionnaire. 150 participants were randomly assigned to three conditions. Those in the first condition were asked the same question as the first study using the verb "smashed". The second group was asked the same question as the first study, replacing "smashed" with "hit". The final group was not asked about the speed of the crashed cars. The researchers then asked the participants if they had seen any broken glass, knowing that there was no broken glass in the video. The responses to this question had shown that the difference between whether broken glass was recalled or not heavily depended on the verb used. A larger sum of participants in the "smashed" group declared that there was broken glass.

In this study, the first point brought up in discussion is that the words used to phrase a question can heavily influence the response given. Second, the study indicates that the phrasing of a question can give expectations to previously ignored details, and therefore, a misconstruction of our memory recall. This indication supports false memory as an existing phenomenon. After that lot of experiments have been conducted on memory distortion (false memory) and it has been proved that we keep reconstructing false memories in our head.

Mind reconstruct which type of false memories and insert in between already stored partial memories depends upon following factors

-          Your existing beliefs

-          Similar events

-          Overconfidence

-          Emotions

-          External Influence (Misinformation)

Preexisting beliefs and expectations plays important role in memory distortion. Suppose someday you visited a Police Station, It was your first time when you visited police station but in the movies you have seen it lot of time. So after some time if someone asks you to describe that Police Station, you will probably describe some of the things that you have not seen there, that you probably saw in movies but you mixed those memories with your actual visit memories and reconstructed new memories. In the same way suppose you attended a wedding event and after back to back you attended two more wedding events and after some time if will be difficult for you to distinguish details of all event and you will end up mixing the details. Emotions and ego are the biggest influencers to mind to cheat you. Suppose you spent pleasant time with someone but your relationship ended at bad note then you will remember only negative traits of that person and you will believe that that person was bad from the begging on the basis of end point you will calibrate all of your previous memories. So if the last impression was bad your mind will delete the good trait of that person and will remember only bad traits of that person and will reconstruct some false memories too and opposite will happen if last impression was good. That’s why earlier in the article I mentioned that our memories are dynamic and not static. We change our past memories on the basis of our last available impression. This phenomenon is called Memory Calibration. Memories can also be recreated by some external information, even on the basis of wrong information.

The Last Impression

Emotions and misinformation by other persons are the most important factors in memory distortion. We don’t perceive the past as it was, we perceive it as our mind wants us to perceive it and that’s why last impression is very important and on the basis on last impression we change our all previous memories. Suppose you spent some time with your roommate. The time was not pleasant and most of the time you hurt him now you both are going to separate in next 2 days. In last 2 days you showed too much love to him and separated at happy note. You won’t believe it but the memories related to you in the brain of your roommate will completely change and he would start to believe that actually you were good person and always tried to care him. This is the magic of last impression and you can exploit it by understanding human weakness of memory distortion and if this is not enough then you will be surprised to know that you can easily plant false memories in someone’s mind. An Indian film Drishyam is based on this theme where a murderer cleverly plant false memories in the mind of some persons and use them as eye witness and able to save himself from police. False memories can be planted by providing some misinformation like you tell your partner that you were wearing red color t-shirt when you met her first time but actually you was wearing black color t-shirt. Another way to plant false memory is the way you ask the question. Suppose in place of asking to your friend about the color of your t-shirt when you met to first time, you ask him – “tell me weather I was wearing red t-shirt or blue t-shirt when you met me first time”. This is more effective method to plant the false memories.

Dale, Loftus, and Rathbun performed an experiment when a witness is questioned they are more likely to provide false information on unusual details. For example, they put a teacher in the room who was wearing a hat and let him talk for 5 minutes. When he left the room 27 kids were questioned and asked "In which hand did the teacher hold his hat?" 17 students replied right, 7 replied left, and only 3 said the correct answer that he was wearing it.

The Solution

So till now you must have believed that we don’t know correctly even about past. There is a mischievous virus in our head and that virus is our mind that keep distorting memories, reconstructing old memories as it fits to current situation and gives you completely false perception of past. So if you have any complaint, bad feeling about your past then you can let free to your past from all charges by giving benefit of doubt because there is possibility that you had fantastic past and your current bad perception its recreation of your mind.

We do not see past as it was. We see it as we want to see it today.

But what is the solution of this?

Is there any way by which we can save ourselves from this weakness of human memory?

Yes there is

A very simple one

Write the daily diary.

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Intelligence, Rationality and Wisdom

The Gifted

Lewis Madison Terman (1877 – 1956) was the professor of psychology in the early 20^th century at the Stanford Graduation School of Education. He is best known for his study on Children with high IQ (IQ= Intelligence quotient is the measure of intelligence). Terman was interested in intelligence testing and he had firm belief that those children who have high IQ become more successful in their career and life that means there is direct relationship with intelligence and success in life. He selected 1500 kids from all over the country who had exceptionally high IQ and carried out study on them on their entire life time. It was the longest study of the world and it is still going on from last 100 years. He wanted to observe their career growth, their achievements, and their success since he had firm belief that these high IQ kids are gifted kids and they will be very successful in their life. Terman believed IQ was of central prominence to achievement and attainment. He thus hypothesized that when these kids grew up they would become prodigious—they would be policy makers, Nobel laureates, famous professors, or great artists. Terman called these kids “The Termites” and this famous study is called “Genetic Study of Genius”. With the time those kids grew up, they completed their education and started to work and here came the greatest twist. Those gifted kids of high IQ when they became adult and started working they could not do exceptionally well. Their combined performance might be called “Average”. Few of them did well, few of them failed and few of them performed average. So no significant relationship could be established between Intelligence and success. Terman’s life long belief was shattered. He spent his entire life just to prove that those kids who have high IQ are gifted kids and they would perform exceptionally well in career but his belief was erroneous. Being intelligent doesn’t guarantee the triumph in career. His work was published in 5 books, lot of articles and one monograph.

Brain as Big Library

Intelligence is the ability to grasp the information, and storing in memory in such a way that at the time of needs it can easily be retrieved and visualized. In the previous articles – “The Amazing Hard Disc” and “Science of Learning”, It was well explained that how do we learn something new and how do we store the information in our memory and what changes occurs in our brain. It was also explained that neuron is the most basic unit of human cognition and neural connections (neural pathways) are used to transfer information from one neuron to another neuron.  Our intelligence is very much depends upon brain structure that includes white matter volume, grey matter volume, efficiency of neural connection, cortical thickness etc. So if someone articulates that intelligence is God’s gift then it should not be surprising. Yes it is God’s gift but as elucidated in previous article it can be learned also. Every human have different brain architecture and it’s very much dependent on our genetics. Intelligent people have good grasping abilities. When you were in school you must have observed that few of the students were very quick in grasping what is taught in classroom by teachers. They were very good in putting information in memory and they could easily recall that learning from their memory in examinations. Consider our memory like big library, Intelligent people are very good in sampling and putting pertinent information in similar areas consider it with the library that is very organized and have different sections. They have efficient neural connections to retrieve information efficiently when looked-for and you can compare it with the big library that have lot of pathways so that you can reach easily to any section and can easily grab your books.

Check the above image. This is the question from IQ test. This image consist 3 shapes in first row, 3 shapes in second row and 2 shapes in third row.  Candidate is supposed to analyses the pattern in first two rows and on the basis of that need to guess third shape in third row. You will find these kinds of questions often in IQ exams. The basic idea behind such questions is that those persons who have high IQ, that means those who are more intelligent can solve these kind of questions very easily. Now the question is how intelligent people can solve these questions easily but less intelligent people can’t solve it easily. What actually happens in their brain when they try to solve this type of question?

Our eyes see the first shape of first row and send the information to brain and brain stores it into memory at random location, then brain sees the second shape and store it in  again in random location and then see third shape and store it into also random location and now the role of intelligence comes into play. Brain analyses all three pic and if has efficient pathways then quickly it establish a pattern and store all these 3 pics together in a pattern and second row strength the pattern and when he goes through third row his brain automatically told that which shape is required to complete the pattern and all these happened in seconds only and on the basis of this the IQ of candidates are decided. Now what happens when an intelligent guy is encountered with such type of question –?

A bat and ball cost $ 1.10

The bat costs one dollar more that boll.

How much does the ball cost?

Where Intelligence fails

The immediate answer will come in your mind is that cost of bat costs $ 1.0 and ball costs $ 0.1 but wait is it right answer? Just check again, the logic was bat is costlier by 1 dollar from ball but if your answer is $1 and $0.1 then difference is here only $0.9 that means your answer is wrong. The correct answer is bat cost $1.05 and ball cost $0.05. If you have answered it wrong then you don’t need to worry because most of the people who have very high IQ failed in this question but if your answer is correct then congratulations you are a Rational person.

This classic question was designed by famous psychologist and Nobel prize winner Danial Kahneman and Amos Tversky. The question is very simple math question and normally students of 8^th grade can easily solve this question. Kahneman asked this question to thousands of under graduate and post graduate students of Harvard, MIT, Princeton students and more than 50% of students answered it incorrect. In other universities the rate of incorrect answer was more than 80%. It cant be assumed that students of such an high reputed schools are not intelligent. They reached there it means they are very intelligent but the question is why all those intelligent students failed in such a simple math question and here comes the second character of this article in picture and that is rationality

The Antagonist of Intelligence

Why lot of intelligent people failed in bat and ball question? The reason can be explained by Mind and Brain theory. As per mind and brain theory we have two judgment making units and they are mind and brain. Brain is responsible for logical judgements and mind is responsible for intuitive, emotional judgements. Intelligence is tool of brain while intuition is tool of mind. Wherever we need to make logical decision the decision should be made by brain and wherever we require intuition then brain should take the help of mind. If both happen in coordination then there is no problem but when they don’t work in coordination and when mind interferes in the work of brain then problem occurs. The first question pattern finding in shapes was related intelligence so it falls under jurisdiction of brain and in most of the time mind doesn’t interfere here because there was no temptation and intelligent people can answer it easily. Second question of bat and ball also falls under jurisdiction of brain but here intuitive mind interferes in brain works. The first answer that you get in you mins (Bat $1.0 and Ball $0.10) actually comes through mind. Many of you who answered it correctly had also felt that this intuitive answer came in your mind but somehow you ignored it and gave logical answer (Bat $1.05, Ball $0.05).

Intelligence is God’s gift and is tool of brain and those persons are lucky who have this gift but what if you can’t use this tool. You have lot of money but you are not allowed to use that money. You have a beautiful car but you are not allowed to use that car. The same thing happened with those kids of Terman who had high IQ but still failed in their achievements and their culprit was their mind. Intelligence is of no use if we can’t use our intelligence because mind hinders when brain uses intelligence and doesn’t allow brain to use it. Why mind controlled by dopamine obstructs in brain’s work has been explained in previous articles. So if your brain doesn’t have control over your mind then despite of being intelligent your intelligence is no more useful for you and that’s why lot of intelligent persons failed in their career because they don’t have control on their mind and when they require to use their intelligence their mind takes control on them and they takes emotional decisions. Those persons who have better control over on their mind are rational person because when we have control over on mind then brain can freely take decisions when required.

The Savior of intelligence

Mind is very powerful and interferes in most of the judgement that must be made by brain. Any decision that is supposed to be made by brain but we make through mind is biased decision and prone to wrong and same happened with you in bat and ball question. That’s why rationality is superior to intelligence.  Suppose you are driving a car and cat cross your car. What thoughts will come in your head? Your emotional mind will articulate you that something bad is going to happen. Your logical brain will tell you that there is no relation between cat crossing the road and something bad omen. If you are a rational person than your brain will ignore the suggestion of mind and keep driving. Suppose you check in a hotel and you are handed over the keys of room no 13 and coincidentally it is Friday also. Your emotional mind will convey you that its bad omen and something wrong can happen. Your logical mind will say to you that a room is just a room and a number is just a number. If you are a rational person you will accept what your mind says and will stay in hotel. Suppose you are a very intelligent person and working on some important work and few of your friends come and ask you to join. Your logical brain will tell you that work is important and stick with your work but your mind will ask you to enjoy for some time. If you are rational person then you will attend to your mind and will stick with your work but if you don’t have control over your mind then you will fell in the trap of your mind and will deviate from your work and despite of being intelligent. So if your kid is gifted and is very intelligent then don’t be in delusion that he/she will be very successful in life. You need to teach him/her is self-control. You need to teach him/her the art of declining the mendacious proposals of mind. You need to teach him/her the art of controlling mind. You need to make him/her rational.

Intelligence and Rationality

Sp till now we have learnt that-

Intelligence is a tool to make quick and reasonable decision

But mind is the big villain for intelligence and it doesn’t allow to work intelligence freely

Rationality is savior of intelligence and it saves intelligence from the grips of mind

But there are lot of situations where neither intelligence nor rationality can solve the problems and here comes the third character of this article and to explain about it, I want to tell you a story.

Wisdom

Once a rich merchant’s house was robbed. The merchant suspected that the thief was one of his servants. So he went to Birbal and mentioned the incident. Birbal went to his house and assembled all of his servants and asked that who stole the merchant’s things. Everybody denied.

Birbal thought for a moment, then gave a stick of equal length to all the servants of the merchant and said to them that the stick of the real thief will be longer by two inches tomorrow. All the servants should be present here again tomorrow with their sticks.

All the servants went to their homes and gathered again at the same place the next day. Birbal asked them to show him their sticks. One of the servants had his stick shorter by two inches. Birbal said, “This is your thief, merchant.”

Later the merchant asked Birbal, “How did you catch him?” Birbal said, “The thief had already cut his stick short by two inches in the night fearing that his stick will be longer by two inches by morning.”

Intelligence has its limitation. It is dependent on the available facts and logic but world doesn’t drive through logic. The way we have mind and brain and mind hampers our decision making abilities in the same way each and every person in this world has its own brain and mind and their mind also hamper in the working of their brain. You can control your own mind but you cannot ask each and every one to control their mind and make only logical decisions.  We need to accept persons as the way they are not the way we want. To understand other person’s mind and brain for making such a decision that benefits you to get your work done is called wisdom. It involves of understanding of people like how they behave in particular situation, understanding of objects, events, situation as well as the ability to apply your brain and mind in such a way that it preserves the understanding what is actually required. To apply wisdom you need intelligence and rationality (excellent control over mind) both.

Wisdom – The art of understanding other’s mind and brain

Wisdom requires flexibility of mind and brain. It requires understanding of human behavior. Suppose your boss believes that 2+2 = 5 and he doesn’t like those persons who offend him and you are aware about this fact. If he asks you how much is 2+2 =?

What will be your reply? Intelligence says that answer should be 4 but wisdom says that you should answer 5 and this is basic difference between intelligence and wisdom. Wisdom is not about what is correct or what is incorrect, wisdom is about what is important. Wisdom is not about knowing what is logical or illogical; wisdom is about knowing what is useful. Suppose it someone asks you-

How many hairs do you have in your head?

Logical answer will be to count each and every hair for next few hours and to reach on some figure

Emotional answer will be “this is stupid question, it can’t be answered”

But the wise answer will be – “I have 20000 more hairs than your hairs”

Now let him count his hairs.

Wisdom is one of the most important virtues that we learn through people, situations and event. I recommend to read famous book of Del Carnegi “how to win friends and influence people” to understand more about wisdom. Wisdom is all about realizing that we humans are not logical machines, we are emotional creatures and logics are not right everywhere. Understanding someone’s emotions and behave in such a manner that it helps you to accomplish your work is wisdom. This chapter is not about how to become wise. Wisdom comes through knowledge. Wisdom comes through melting of ego. When knowledge shines ego diminishes. Wisdom is the most valuable virtue among all three virtues discussed in this chapter.

In short:

To make sharp and logical decisions by using your brain is intelligence

When you make logical decisions, your mind creates obstacles. Controlling your mind and to make logical decision is rationality

By understanding others mind and brain and to make flexible decision by using your both brain and mind that helps you to find your ultimate purpose is wisdom.

Sometimes you don’t have resources to make decision by your brain and you are completely dependent on you mind to make decisions. Those types of decisions are called intuition. We will discuss about in another chapter. 

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The Biased Thinking - III

Question is does our brain have such capabilities to perform such analytics then answer is no but we have one thing that these machines don’t have and that is mind. As I said earlier mind is very powerful. Mind has its own working style. Mind can carry out 1000 times more than such analytics but only drawback with mind is that it is biased. If we can keep it away from biasness then it’s very easy to predict such judgments(Sherlock Holmes had amazing control on his mind). It was the biased mind that was gripped by magic of Messy but completely overlooked Thomas Muller who was more consistent than Messy.

In India, 1950 to 2014, out of 64 years more than 50 years were ruled by Indian Congress Party. Opposition parties accused many time that most of the news media in India is either pro congress or pro left parties. Congress ruled the India from 2004 to 2014 and that time lot of privileges was given to media person. 2014 elections were very influential in term of media coverage. Opposition NDA alliance was giving tough fight to ruling Congress led alliance in the leadership of Narendra Modi. Narendra Modi was chief minister of Gujarat state and many time accused Indian Media for their biasness. He hit very hard on Indian media many times for wrongly defaming him. He was very critical to most of the influential journalists of that time though he never accused them openly that they are pro congress pro left but it was general in public that these journalists are pro congress pro left. So when an anchor asked the question to those journalists at 7:55 AM, 16 May 2014 “who is going to win today?” what was going in their mind? 

Few of the scientific exit polls had predicted the victory of Modi in elections and logically their judgement must have been Modi also but at the same time their mind hijacked their brain. They had associated feeling of prejudice against Modi so they could not want to see him win. Question was asked to them “who was winning that day” but they didn’t answer that question. Their mind changed the question from "who was winning" to "who should have won" and they all predicted hung assembly and later their all judgements went wrong. Same thing was repeated in 2017 UP election also and same journos made same mistake. Same thing happened in US elections also. Most of the influential media persons belong to liberal ideology while Donald Trump has a strict anti-liberal image. So they didn’t want to see winning Trump so their mind convinced them that Hilary Clinton was wining. Fortune wrote on November 9, 2016 -

“How is this possible when every poll and prediction site said that Hillary Clinton would win? How could everyone have gotten it so wrong?

The inescapable fact is that most of the mainstream media got it wrong because they simply couldn't believe that Americans would elect someone like Donald Trump. Denial can be a powerful drug.

In part, that's because much of the East Coast-based media establishment is arguably out of touch with the largely rural population that voted for Trump, the disenfranchised voters who looked past his cheesy exterior and his penchant for half-truths and heard a message of hope, however twisted.”

Editor of Cracked put it in an article: "If you don't live in one of these small towns, you can't understand the hopelessness. The vast majority of possible careers involves moving to the city, and around every city is now a hundred-foot wall called 'Cost of Living.'"

The simple process to predict the election result is to take the relevant sample and then analysis the sample. But media person were so much confident on their brain that they could never realized that when they were fooled by their mind. One of the important property of mind is that it is always ready to jump to the conclusion. They focused on the weaknesses of Donald Trump and jumped to the conclusion that this man can never become the president of USA and completely ignored the outlook of voters who was actually responsible for selecting their president.

Mind hinders our rational thinking since it’s designed in such a way that its always eager to jump to the conclusion. How many times you made judgement about someone by their looks, cloths, personality? How many times you have made mistake by considering a good looking leader as a good human being also? How many times you presumed that a lady who is good looking must also be honest? How many time you just judged the speech of a speeker by his speech ? We have tendency to generalize the whole picture just on the basis of one fact and completly igore other essential facts and make judgement.s Since those judgments are biased judgement so these are supposed to be wrong. In psychology this phenomena is called “Halo effect” where you just consider one aspect and makes whole picture. It was named by psychologist Edward Thordnike in reference to a person being perceived as having Halo. 

Edward Lee Thorndike (August 31, 1874 – August 9, 1949) was an American psychologist who spent nearly his entire career at Teachers College, Columbia University. Edward Thorndike originally coined the term referring only to people; however, its use has been greatly expanded especially in the area of brand marketing. Every day lot of advertisement messages bombarded our mind to influence us and to make the judgement in favor of them. Normally when we have enough time and enough information available then we can use our brain and try to stop mind in judgement making but what to do when we don’t have enough time and we are in completely blind situation. At that time we have to make decision by using only our fast mind. Mind is fantastic tool to make judgement if it is not biased that means if there is no pain or pleasure attached with the mind and its repetitive action (that means you are expert of that field). But it’s very difficult then we don’t have any biases in our mind. Either we have pain or pleasure associated with something in our mind or if we are not expert of that field. So how do we make decision when we are not expert of that field and we are neutral. Simply mind makes the decision on the first impression it receive (The first thought that comes in mind at that time). 

Who is the most talented actress? Probably you will answer the name of actress which comes first in your mind. After few second you will realize that there are more talented  actress than her, after few minutes you would realize there are more talented than her so when you have to make decision in limited time and you don’t have any pain or pleasure associated with the outcome and you are not expert then you make the decision on the basis of first thought that come in your mind.

What will you do if you received information that some crime event is going on street. You go there and you see a black person Charles Kinsey is sitting on street with a white person. His behavior is suspicious. You took out your revolver and aim on him and you observe that Charles Kinsey is shouting “don’t shoot, I am behavioral therapist and I am unarmed” and suddenly you see person sitting with him is taking something out. It may be pistol or it may be something else. If it is pistol he will shoot you. So you have fraction of second to make the judgement and it is the situation of life and death and same thing happened with that Florida’s Police Officer. He had fraction of second to make the judgement and what all information he had that time is a black man lying on street and shouting that he was behavioral therapist. He could not use his brain to make the decision due to unavailability of time. It was amygdala hijack moment. Being a police officer and since he had passed the police training I can assume that he was neutral that means he didn’t have any pleasure or pain associated with it. Though it was repetitive work for him but time was so less that mind lost its expert decision making abilities so he made the judgement on the basis of first impression that he received from the mind and that was a black person might be criminal (Apartheid still prevails) and he shot Charles Kinsey.

We are prone to make biased judgement. Our mind is designed in such a way and it’s nothing to do with intelligence, knowledge, experience or time. In my next article, I will explain the difference among, intelligence, rationality and wisdom and how to make unbiased judgement.

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The Biased Thinking - II

As explained in previous chapters we have two decision making units in our head. One is brain and another is mind. Brain is a gross entity and responsible for logical decision making. Brain stores the information in memory as fact and figures and when we need to make some judgement through brain then it retrieve the information from memory and process that information and present the suitable judgment. This retrieving the information process of brain is time consuming and energy consuming. On the other side mind store the information as impressions and whenever mind store any information it attaché some emotions with that impressions. Emotions are the byproduct of cognitive process of mind. So whenever mind process any information it attaché some emotions with that information and store the information as impression in subconscious mind that is memory of mind. Mind is a subtle processor. You can’t see it. You can’t find it but it controls your automatic reactions, It control your internal processes like heart rate, endocrine system, respiratory system etc. 

Unlike brain where it need to retrieve the information from memory mind doesn’t need to retrieve the information from subconscious mind because subconscious mind keep sending the information stored as impression to mind and mind keep executing it again and again and every time keep attaching emotions with them. So mind’s process is automatic. It keep running 24x7 and you can’t turned it off so if you see something horrible then impression stored with horrible things automatically comes in our mind and emotions attached with horrible thing (in the case fear) automatically comes in your mind and everything happens automatically that means you cant control it. Mind keep working automatically 24x7 while for brain you have to use it that means it works on demand.

All of the emotions can be classified in two categories- one that make you feel pleasure and other that make you feel pain. So whenever mind receive any information and store that information as impression in subconscious mind it attaché some emotions that may be pleasure emotions and painful emotion. So if you see a beautiful girl you store her in your mind with pleasure emotions so when you close your eyes and think about her you feel pleasure. Same with your favorite food, your best friend, your happy moments, in all these cases you feel pleasure and the things you don’t like you attaché painful emotions so whenever you recall something dirty, some tragic incidents you feel pain. 

Pain and pleasure plays very important role in understanding the judgments made by mind. Mind makes only those judgments where it feels pleasure and where it avoids pain. Mind likes pleasure and Mind doesn't like pain. Basically pain and pleasure are nothing but hormones in our brain. Certain emotions induce pleasure hormones and certain emotions induce pain hormones. Our behavior is controlled by our hormones. Hormones are responsible for everything that happens in our body and influence our behavior.  Hormones are used to communicate between organs and tissues for physiological regulation and behavioral activities, such as digestion, metabolism, respiration, tissue function, sensory perception, sleep, stress and our mood. Hormones are controlled by our emotions, emotions are attached with our thoughts and thoughts are processed by mind so basically hormones controls the mind and mind controls our decision making.  

Namita just had a painful break up with her boyfriend. She is an independent girl, good looking, educated and employed in a good company at New Delhi. She was in a relationship with a guy from last three years and recently came out from relationship. She wanted to forget all painful memories of past and wanted to have fresh start. Speed dating is gaining popularity in Indian metro cities these days where two youths of opposite sex meets particularly in restaurant and spend some time, talks and if both find it suitable then proceed further in relationship. Through speed dating Namita met to three boys and now she wanted to make judgment that with whom she wanted to proceed further. I talked to her and asked the details of all the three boys. Let’s name them A B and C. After listening details of all those three boys and as much I know about her likes and preferences I predicted that she must have selected B but at my surprise she told me that she rejected B and now confused between A and C. That was big surprise for me since logically B was best choice then why she rejected B and after lot of discussion I got to know very surprising reason. At the time of dating with Namita, B ordered Pineapple shack and Pineapple shack was favorite beverage of Namita’s old boyfriend so it reminds her about painful memories of old boyfriend so she rejected B. Her boyfriend used to like Pineapple shack. He was bad for her so can we generalize that all the guys who like Pineapple shack will be bad with Namita ? Answer is No. It will be biased judgement if we think in this manner but this is the way by which we all most of the decisions.

We make judgements by using both processors – Brain and Mind. Normally when details are available and there is sufficient time then brain takes the lead and makes the decision. Brain goes through all the possible alternative solutions and check the facts and present the suitable solution and mind doesn’t interfere in it but if there is any alternative among available all alternatives in which mind has associated pain or pleasure then mind automatically takes control on brain and present that solution that induce pleasure in mind or reject those solution that induce pain in mind. For example if I ask you today is a soccer match between Portugal and Greece and who will win it. If both the teams are equal for you that mean you don’t have associated any pain or pleasure with both of the countries then probably you would go through their past performance, their team combination and you will give the logical answer. That answer will be by your brain, an unbiased judgement and most probably it will be right judgement but suppose you are die-hard fan of Greece or Portugal then probably you will overlook all the details and if someone asks you who will win the match you would probably answer not on the basis on “Which team is better” but on the basis of “Which team do you like” and in that case that answer will be from your mind. It would be a biased judgement and there is very high probability that it will be wrong. We don’t make the judgement on the basis of what is right while we make the judgement what do we like, what pleases us, what gives us immediate sensual gratification. So the real culprit is pleasure hormone that control our all decisions.

When it is about Soccer then people all around the world loves Argentina since  Most of the sports journalist who were covering 2014 world cup soccer were those who  born between 1965 – 1980. 80s was the decade when Argentina’s greatest player Diego Mara Dona ruled the international Soccer so from the childhood all those persons who born in 70s have some attachment with Argentina. Many soccer fans believes that Messy is second Mara Dona and he had guts to do same that Mara Dona did in 1986 so lot of the soccer fans were thinking that 2014 world cup soccer would be the rematch of 1986 world cup final where due to magic of Mara Dona Argentina defeated Germany and lifted the cup. Messy have lot of similarities like Mara Dona. He is good looking like Mara Dona, energetic, enthusiastic. His game is classy and stylish and more important he is apple of the eye of Media. In 2014 he was the highest paid sports person of the world and undoubtedly the best footballer of the world. People love Messy and have unconsciously associated pleasure hormone in their mind. 2014 world cup final was billed as Messy vs Germany. So when the question was asked to major sports journalists and football fans then actually they were supposed to analyze about both the team’s strengths and weaknesses and then supposed to present the judgement but they were ditched by their mind. They were unaware that they had unconsciously attached pleasure hormones with Argentina and Messy and when they were asked the question who would win the final their mind immediately controlled their judgement making and told them the answer Argentina. It made them feel pleasurable. They didn’t answer the question who would win the final they answered to whom they would want to see wining and it was obviously Argentina. It was biased judgement then ultimately went wrong and Germany defeated Argentina and won the cup. Its ok with common people but ultimate question is how experts failed in prediction? 

Mind is very powerful. It doesn’t matter how intelligent you are or how experienced you are. Important is what is the state of your mind at the time of decision making. How much control do you have on you mind. Everything happens unconsciously in our mind and we even could not realize that we were wrong. We live under illusion of mind. Biasness is in our inherent nature but it doesn’t mean that everyone went wrong in the prediction of 2014 cup final.

“I would love to have Paul the octopus to help me, but he already died, poor thing. So I cannot predict anything for this Final.”

This was the reaction of Shakira, the Colombian musical mega-star when asked about predicting the world cup final winners and she was very right since for her it was the decision under uncertainty because she doesn’t know much about football she gave very judiciously reply. Football is not the game of single person; it is dependent on other variables also. There were computer programs also that were predicting the world cup results. Google, Microsoft and Baidu (among several others) have put in their data analysis and cloud capabilities to predict the world cup 2014 battles. While Google's Cloud Platform has got 13 out of 15 predictions correct, Baidu trends and Microsoft's Cortana have proved to be a little more accurate with 14 out of 15 predictions setting right. While most of the experts were predicting victory of Argentina over Germany, Google’s cloud algorithm predicted the victory of Germany with 55% chances. As per Google cloud – “Both teams have had excellent tournaments so far, but the model favors Germany for a number of factors. Thus far in the tournament, they’ve had better passing in the attacking half of their field, a higher number of shots (64 vs. 61) and a higher number of goals scored (17 vs. 8)”. Google cloud’s prediction was accurately right. Match was almost equal throughout the match and Germany won the match in extra time. Microsoft's artificially intelligent digital assistant, Cortana responses to "who will win the Germany Argentina match" include: It's too early to say for sure, but I'd give Germany the edge over Argentina. Germany seems to have a slight edge. But don't card me if I'm wrong", and "Probably Germany. But you never known what can happen in the beautiful game. Baidu trends shows that Germany has 58.6% chances of lifting the trophy as compared to 41.4% of that of Argentina.

 When experts failed in prediction, almost all the software made excellent prediction why did it happen? Reason is computer program doesn’t have mind. They are free from hormonal biasedness. So they don’t make the decision that please them they make the decision as per available data. As Google explained the methodology used for predictions, "Using data from Opta covering multiple seasons of professional soccer leagues as well as the group stage of the World Cup, we were able to examine how activity in previous games predicted performance in subsequent ones. We combined this modeling with a power ranking of relative team strength developed by one of our engineers, as well as a metric to stand in for home team advantage based on fan enthusiasm and the number of fans who had traveled to Brazil. We used a whole bunch of Google Cloud Platform products to build this model, including Google Cloud Dataflow to import all the data and Google BigQuery to analyze it."

........to be continued  Click here to read Part III

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