The Grand Theory of Human Mind
Tuesday, November 24, 2009 by simpleblob
Or, my little model of human mind I just thought up myself during my train ride home -- without any evidence to support the model. (well, I haven't looked it up yet)
OK, my belief is that our mind has 2 parts: the conscious-logical mind, and the jungle-like pattern matching unconscious mind. These two are separated physically, but not in a clear cut way like left & right brain.
1st part is responsible for aceing the IQ test, doing math, and critical thinking. Anything that is reasoning and "careful" logical thinking. I stressed careful because that implies you have to be fully conscious when you are using this part of the brain. Most scientist-types are proficient in using it. As you can tell, it is most suitable for analyzing information and making "perfect" decision. The downside is time. You need to consider everything, slowly.
[Programmer talk: This is like a deterministic algorithm. Can find optimal conclusion, but computationally expensive]
2nd part, this one is interesting. It does pattern-matching for you without you knowing what's going on, hence operating (mostly) unconsciously. What you usually get is a "hunch". Ex: Something is off about this guy. I don't like him. This place is somehow odd, I'm not sure I wanna rent it. And many more example. The people who has the most advanced form of this part are the intuitive type -- usually women. They are great at guessing things, but they can't tell you why they "think" that way.
Most people downplay the importance of this 2nd part. It actually is another form of intelligence. Very useful for quite a few things -- Like interpersonal skills. Most salesperson use it to read the customer and react accordingly -- without knowing it themselves. It's fast, almost instant. The decision is good, but not the best. Mostly "good enough"
[Programmer talk: This is a heuristics part. Plenty fast and cheap. but might stuck in local maxima]
This is why scientists can't sell and salesmen can't do science! Their brains are completely different! (Well, to be more accurate, they only like to use one part of their brain and try to use it to solve every type of problems. When you're a hammer, everything you see is a nail.)
I'm a scientist type. Everyday, I try to approach the people-problem using the analytical part of my mind. I think I gain some insights, but it's usually too slow, and so DAMN tiring. With people, it's like solving 3 differential equations at the same time without knowing the variables. I can see the benefit of the "ituitive" brain, but I don't know how to use (or activate) it. I'll be researching more of this.
Hoo boy, I'm taking a brain dump here. It's hard to write something coherent when you're tired, and this is especially a hard concept to explain. Hope I can read it later and still gets it.
