How We Think

Despite what we think, we don’t usually react to the world around us. The ‘real world’. We react to the unique model of the world we have in our heads. Our experiences help build that model, as do any ideas and dogmas we adopt. We program our brains and then our brains react to events through that programming. This is the reason why people of different political persuasions can look at the same world and see it so differently, and why some believe in wild conspiracy theories that cannot withstand careful examination. We are, each of us, a world unto ourselves. There are some benefits to thinking as we do. We can process things faster without having to minutely analyze each bit of information in realtime. But it is critically important that we take care to evaluate ideas, especially those that appeal to our emotions, before accepting them, and if others have ideas which conflict with our own, we should listen and evaluate them to determine if we need to update our model.