The Pinged Hobbit

Common knowledge has us believe that the best desicions are those made when time is allowed to consider all the facts and conditions surrounding the available choices. That a good choice can only be made after a good deal of effort has been put into thinking about the possible outcomes of the choice we are about to make. As if the chances of making the right choice are proportional to the amount of time spend considering the problem. What if this is a misconception, what if the idea that the only way to make an accurate or ‘correct’ choice can only be made after a period of reflection is wrong? There is plenty of evidence that this might be the case, how many times do we see people in a situation make choices on the fly that turn out to be correct. The whole of human instinct is basiced around this ability to take a single glance at a given situation and come to some kind of conclusion about it. The fact that we do not completely trust our instincts make the conclusions they derive no less valid.

The fact of the matter is that we all make snap decisions numerous times during the day we just don’t realise it. Through out the day we are bombared with so much information that if our conscious mind had to process all the information we would come to a stop. Nothing would get done because people would be too busy processing all the choices and caculations involved in something as natural as getting out of bed or if we had to remember to breath in and out. The human brain has developed in such a way that it operates on two levels. One is the conscious mind, that part that thinks of itself as ‘I’, this is part that dominates the part of our brain that is us. The other is the sub conscious. This sub conscious is not the same as the one Freud which was filled with the represed fantasies, thoughts and dreams that we would not even admit to ourself. This sub conscious is more like an autopilot, it is the part of the brain that deals with the day to day running of a human body. The part that makes sure you remember to breath, the part that tells your muscles to flex and tense to balance you as you walk.

This part is less dominat than the other, it doesn’t have the casting vote in the decision making process but it is the part that also deals with our instinct. The part of us that can look at a situation for a split second and see what needs to be done, or what the problem is. When this part of the brain suggests something it comes more as a gut feeling than actually knowing. When asked why a person feels something is wrong in a given situation, if it is instinct that has come to this conclusion they will probably be unable to give a clear answer of why they see it that way. In essence the thinking regarding this choice takes place behind a closed door in our brains. We do not see the reasoning or the working out, we just see the answer to the sum.

This probably developed as a survival trait, there are times when choices need to be made quickly, or when danger needs to be spotted in an instant. I am sure there were times when our ancestors needed to respond quickly to some half realised threat. When the human race was just primates, hunted by other animals they will have relied upon this instinctive response much more than we do now. The last thing you need when being chased by a larger, faster predator is conscious thought getting in the way it is much better to listen to your instinct about which way to run and when to duck. I am not saying that snap decisions are always right, far from it they are just as prone to coming back with the wrong answers as a cognative choice is. But they can just as easily be right, if the right information is processed they can be more right than they are wrong. It’s just a matter of listening to your instincts. Don’t just dismiss a feeling about something because you can find no concrete evidence to back it up, sometimes it is enough just to be unable to find evidence to disprove it.

Part 2 can be found (here)