Thinking 101

Over the summer break between freshman and sophomore year, I read Woo-kyoung Ahn's "Thinking 101." It was an interesting book resembling a lot of the points I previously read about in Dr. Bloom's books, but they were more heavily focused on thought mechanisms and biases. This was really refreshing because it taught me that maybe I'm not the owner of my thoughts, and that maybe my thoughts are the results of an intricate compilation of coincidences.

These coincidences can range anything from unconscious things like the day's weather to the clothes I'm wearing, to conscious things like my mood or how I see other people. I believe that these factors influencing thoughts and choices is rather inevitable. Although I think it's impossible to avoid them completely, I do think it would be important to look at our thoughts, inferences, or conclusions in another angle or at another time. That way, what we come up with in our brains might not be optimal in a rational sense, but it could be optimal among what we could have came up with.

I believe that humans and their thoughts are not fully rational, and that they are easily swayed. However, what keeps us from being fully irrational is that at least we are aware of the fact that we can be irrational. This makes us partially irrational: we make mistakes, but at least we know we make them. This helps us explore ways to make the most out of what we have, and thus do a better job in thinking per se, rather than having thinking solely as a means to an end.