[img via Benchilada]
You may or may not be aware that I'm scheduled to write for the 3six5 project in about a month. I had a pretty insightful thought this morning relevent to what I'll be writing about so I set up a google calendar alert to remind myself about it. Those of you who know me know I'm of the "memory is nothing close to our typical conception of it" camp, so I do things like this all the time. I set alerts constantly, and I always have a pad of paper and pen on my person. If I could say one thing about why I believe so strongly in irrationality, it would be because I'm so aware of our cognitive limitations. Of those limitations, memory seems to be a relatively benign and acceptable one to us (though entirely pervasive), but it's our other limitations that make irrationality a dirty word. I could go on and on about these limitations (see this list of how you could be completely wrong about everything) but suffice to say that if you tell anyone they are fundamentally irrational and far less in control of their deceisions than they think, they're inclined to argue you down about it. This is because we tend to think of "control" and volition in terms of the things that the prefrontal cortex consciously determines, which is absurd given the ridiculously small amount of influence the PFC actually has.
Here's what's strange to me: if I tell someone that I can influence their ability to grab a box just by placing it high on a shelf where they can't reach it, they seem to be fine with that.
The point being that I find it a little silly/humorous that we completely accept our physical limitations, but adamantly deny that we have cognitive ones as well.
