Wow. I've learned a lot in the last few weeks, and for brevity (which is clearly my strong-suit), I will resort to an itemized format-Top Three Things I've learned this week.
1. Stanford (Men's Basketball) is going to have an entertaining season. Okay, maybe this shouldn't be first, but they JUST lost to a buzzer-beating shot...and it's very, very painful :(.
2. From Cog-Sci (and then a little more from NPR): Our decisions are influenced by a number of non-logical, non-rational factors. Things such as whether we hold a warm or a cold cup of coffee for just a second or two can heavily influence things like whether we judge a person, based on a few sentence description, friendly or non-friendly. There are likely tens of thousands (that's just a made up estimate, but it sounds impressively accurate) of these seemingly bizarre correlations, ingrained by evolution (and quirk effects of evolution), and we are unlikely to discover all of them in my mind. To find out more, including why holding a cup of warm coffee might be correlated with friendship I highly recommend the NPR Radiolab program on decisions: you can find all of Radiolabs programs at http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/ (product placement for NPR baby!) Some people have suggested this strongly challenges the notion of conscious free-will (since there are so many of these correlations that are unknowingly and strongly influencing our decisions). I take a much more moderate approach. For many decisions, I know am not fully and rationally thinking about why I make them--and I think it is quite likely that these 'heuristics' are influencing my decisions in non-rational ways--and I am not overly concerned. I know my choice of cereal is a matter of non-rational, emotional love--it's not conscious free-will, it's destiny! I nonetheless believe, however, that for more significant decisions, while some of these heuristics are nonetheless influential, rationality and consciousness can be the most influential components. At a minimum, our own consciousness of rationality suggests it plays at least a partial role (unless it is a post-fact phenomenon, but I doubt this, but I'll leave that topic out for now). Further, I think by learning some of these heuristics, we can be aware and attenuate their impact (if it is harmful) in our more important decisions.
3. From Constitution Class (section): The official Washington D.C. License Plate has the moniker "taxation without representation." My prediction: this stuff is going to be more popular than tickle-me-elmo was in 2001 this holliday season.
I think that's going to do for tonight. Much more to come tomorrow night
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