Are we truly in control of our decisions? Dan Ariely, a behavioural economist, illustrates how flawed our intuition can become sometimes. Often our decisions are dictated not by our cognition, but by the availability of options given to us. This flaw can lead us into making some surprisingly stupid decisions.
[...] who are not trained or prepared to make an intelligent decision. Whilst Dan Ariely talked about irrational decision making, Barry Schwartz illustrates how having choices end up limiting individuals rather than empowering [...]
ah, the plague of “too many___,” fill in the blank. it questions just what exactly do we want. do the numbers of choices affect choice? or, perhaps, it brings out a still truer truth that given infinite possibilities, one may not know what s/he wants? do we need to be limited for the convenience of free-willing only within certain boundaries? – then we can always blame fate that those boundaries were imposed…
Which is why critical thinking is essential: to question the boundaries imposed upon us, or those we seemingly impose on ourselves.
Oh, and the role of the subconscious, by the way. The subconscious, where most of our untracked hang ups are stored, has every power to sabotage one’s good (healthy) sense.
Consdering of course that the ’subconscious’ is still a theoretical/conceptual construct that is as yet unprovable.
I can appreciate varying levels of awareness or understanding–but subconscious as a separate thing/being from the conscious sounds suspiciously similar to supernatural phenomena (i.e. soul, spirit, etc.)–and would be outside the bounds of rationality/irrationality.
you have a point, although it’s so far been useful, and now considered more advanced as a point of reference to something than mere observation of behavior. as they say, “in the beginning was the deed,” which has led to fake morality, suppression, and all sorts of other tyrannies. what tail whips now at the back? it used to be the demon, the scapegoat, what a pity. today it’s called “thought” and with thought is a subconscious.
perhaps it’s called something else that will mean differently soon. others say we just don’t use the full capacity of our brains, even our eyes tend to focus on a few things at a time, allowing only a few thoughts, and, in some, only a few functions. I don’t think what’s usually called supernatural is supernatural.