Slashdot Mirror
Why Don't You Sleep On It?
thefirelane wrote to mention a New Scientist study that indicates your subconscious mind is a better decision maker than you are. From the article: "The research suggests the conscious mind should be trusted only with simple decisions, such as selecting a brand of oven glove. Sleeping on a big decision, such as buying a car or house, is more likely to produce a result people remain happy with than consciously weighing up the pros and cons of the problem, the researchers say. Thinking hard about a complex decision that rests on multiple factors appears to bamboozle the conscious mind so that people only consider a subset of information, which they weight inappropriately, resulting in an unsatisfactory choice. In contrast, the unconscious mind appears able to ponder over all the information and produce a decision that most people remain satisfied with."
I was going to say "first post" but decided to sleep on it. Not first post!
Never thought about that...
I was going to post a rebuttal to this article, but I think I'll have a nap first.
So the famous step:
2. ???
Should actually be
2. Sleep
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
Hmmm... do I wan the first post on slashdot? Maybe I'll sleep on it..
Is this really due to the brain "working on" problems in your sleep? Or is this because the hours after waking are when the brain is at its operational best and it is easier to process large amounts of information at that time?
End of lesson. You may press the button.
Honest Boss, I wasn't sleeping on the job... actually I was, but it was helping me figure out how to tackle this project. Can't argue with science!
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Wait for my +5 insightful post tomorrow.
Sleep... sleep... sounds familiar, but can't remember he last time I had any. I remember it was good though...
Seriously, I think it's a great discovery but for those of us who do not get the requisite amount of REM every night, I wonder if that would have an effect on these results?
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
Obviously they came to that decision while wide awake – therefore, I refuse to believe any of this nonsense until they've let their unconscious mind think it over and make the "correct" decision!
Creative misinterpretation is your friend.
The conscious mind tends to miss details. We spend so much time on the big issues that we don't notice little things. The problem is that we control our thoughts a little too well...if we don't see immediate relevance in something, we drop it. Our subconscious can take everything into account.
I'm quite fond of telling people that they think too much, or are overthinking a problem. They spend so much time fretting about how difficult the problem is that they don't actually devote any time to solving it.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
ConsultingFair.com
I am gonna install a cot in my cubical now! "But I *was* working on the new database architecture."
Somehow this strikes me as seeming really true, even if just from my own experience.
I wonder if this has anything to do with the fact that when I take a shower (and go into a more relaxed state), I am hit with great ideas and solutions for problems. This is a very strong, repeated experience for me. I sometimes think I should bathroom tile my work cube, but this "subconscious thinking" thing makes way more sense.
P.S. C'mon, no jokes about what one may do in the shower to be relaxed. I preemptively strike at you!
Reminds me of the parallel in quantum computing where it's more energy efficient to have a quantum computer factor a large near-prime than to have vast arrays of normal computers bruteforce their way through...
Should I post or not? Better sleep on it.
How does that work with sleep being for the weak and the dead?
Wait a second, here--
.
.
.
Most Geeks rarely sleep.
That explains so very much about slashdot...
Here is a very well written article that offers more in-depth theories on how people make conscious decisions: Decision Making and Problem Solving
The best theory offered to relate to this article IMO is the prespective theory. It hints on the idea that when faced with a problem consciously, humans try to use various decision making heuristics that are more geared towards simple such as a "right/wrong" problem. However, the world is complex with different value systems, different perspectives, and a lot of other variables that must be taken into consideration. Our "simple" decision-making algorithms tend to break down when faced with higher level choices. Maybe on some unconscious level, we actually use methods more befitting to complexity.
Capitalism: When it uses the carrot, it's called democracy. When it uses the stick, it's called fascism.
That's why I like to sleep to 2pm and then work till midnight. I really feel much more productive that way.
Remarkably often the solution to the problem, or at least a fresh approach for tackling it, would occur to me after only a few minutes.
This after hours of getting no where the night before. Not that the work was wasted - it was probably a necessary precursor.
Sleep definitely reorders your brain.
"In contrast, the unconscious mind appears able to ponder over all the information and produce a decision that most people remain satisfied with."
Ya, riiiight.
Acutally all you are doing is giving the subliminal programming messages more time to take effect on your mind. Once the unconscious takeover is complete the "sheep" no longer complain.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
Here is a shorter version of the article in Spanish.
Aca tienen una version mas resumida en español.
This fits in nicely with another finding that seems amazing when you first hear about it, but is obviously true:
People spend more conscious thinking time on a choice when it doesn't really matter.
Hard to believe, right? You'd think we would think long and hard about things that matter (in the sense that one or the other of the choices will be far better or worse than the other) and not waste time on choices where the outcome is pretty much the same regardless of what we decided. But that's not, in fact, how we operate.
If you give people a choice between, say, being paid a dollar or getting hit with a stick, they make up their minds much quicker than if (to choose an example at the other end of the spectrum) you let them pick a candy out of a box of identical chocolates. You can even induce the effect; people will eat potato chips out of a bag one after another without even looking at them, but if you spread the same chips out on the table and ask "which chip do you want to eat next?" so that it becomes something they have to decide they will generally slow to a crawl.
--MarkusQ
The real conclusion is that if you give someone all the information they need to make a complex decision, then you tell them they're going to have to make a decision after you make them run through a set of distractions... They'll make the right decision.
If they don't know they're going to have to make a choice after their distraction, their subconscious won't do anything special.
This is just the same old story where if you have a problem, go think about something else & your subconscious will work it out for you. It's nice to see scientific proof for something that I've always considered anecdotal.
My last thought: Some people are better at making snap decisions and some people only think they are good at it. It takes a real man to be able to admit he needs to mull things over... which is why high-pressure sales tactics often work.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
I can believe this. I typically will walk away from a big decision or problem, sleep on it overnight, and by morning I usually have the answer. I never put any scientific merit into it, I just assumed it was because I wasn't being bugged by a dozen people or being pressured into a decision on the spot. But it is a practice that I use very often, especially when working on programming problems where I get stumped.
On a side note, where are the jokes about waking up and realizing the mistake next to you?
So.... score one for the narcoleptics?
Happy Friday.
I think that the overall accuracy of a slept-upon decision may be also partly to do with the attenuation of some emotional factors in the decision making process- we're probably a bit less passionate about a decision like buying a car or a house when we've had some distance and a chance to sleep on it. Logic would have more of an influence in the decision making process, which should result in better decisions.
Of course, like a lot of other posters to this thread, if you let me sleep on it, I may come back to you with a better decision.
When the posters fear their moderators, there is tyranny; when the moderators fears the posters, there is liberty.
More proof that Mother was right all along...
What they are saying is that regardless of its preferred mode, either rational or emotional, your subconscious mind can weigh more factors into the descision than you conscious mind can.
So even if you are a normally rational descision maker, it's better to sleep on a big descision than not to.
Using the best knowledge of today to create the problems of tomorrow.
For the past three years or so, I've been keeping a diary of all my dreams that I can remember on waking. Mostly, they're pretty garbled, but sometimes there is some resonance with a real world problem.
Not explicitly, of course; it tends to be on a metaphorical level. Dreaming of spiders usually means I'm distressed or under pressure, for example, since spiders give me the wiggins; any dream involving people who are masked or whose faces are otherwise occluded means I feel threatened.
So... is dreaming part of the decision-making process?
I recently read Blink : The Power of Thinking Without Thinking which discusses this in more detail. Basically, people with a great deal of experience in a subject develop a gut feeling that is most likely accurate and much faster than trying to analyze why they came to that conclusion. Much of this does happen at a subconscious level, whether awake or asleep.
It seems that all my best ideas and clear thinking occur during my morning shower.
Maybe this is the manifestation of all the great thinking I've done while I've been sleeping.
I've noticed that when I'm really struggling with a decision it's usually because I intuitively feel that one choice is right, but I'm trying to figure out how to make a more attractive choice be the right one. Sleeping on it gives me a chance to let go of the emotional attachment.
You never really know how close to the edge you can go until you fall off.
I don't think I'd better use this approach, based on what my dreams are like. The people I work with aren't going to be too receptive to ideas like, "Okay, to fix the problem with the network, we need to take all the computer outside and have my dead grandparents carry them like babies through the elementary school I attended where the underground bunker has mice for parents"...
This sig, aah-ah, is comin' like a ghost-sig...
"the conscious mind should be trusted only with simple decisions, such as selecting a brand of oven glove."
Yes but just think how good a job you could do picking out the right oven glove if you slept on it? The mind boggles.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
I agree with this wholeheartedly. Many people misunderstand or underestimate the power of the subconscious mind. Your conscious being is only a small fraction of who you really are. Just as the human brain has unmeasured amounts of unrealized potential, similarly the subconscious mind has an almost immeasurable effect on your conscious decision making.
Lucid dreaming is one of the most concrete examples of the subconscious mind at work - people have solved waking problems such as phobias or unresolved stresses by encountering and questioning dream figures. It's a well-documented scientific phenomenon.
This page has some general information about lucidity and use of the subconscious.
I'll start with a personal story. I tend to take a long time to purchase an automobile. In 1998, for example, I decided it was time to buy a new car. The automobile I owned was 7 years old and starting to show problems. I began by doing some reading. GM gave me the opportunity to briefly test drive a number of models at one time. After doing that, I reviewed automotive literature (e.g., Car and Driver) about what was available and what the staff thought of various automobiles. I was beginning to be inclined to a moderately economical sports model. C&D said nice things about the Camaro. Months passed. I read some more. Looked at a Toyota and a Honda. They were a bit more than I wanted to spend. Finally, a local dealer was running a sale. I showed up and found out I could get an even bigger discount because my company was a nonautomotive GM subsidiary. I wound up with a new Camaro at a great price. Over the next five years my mechanic told me the car, with proper maintenance, would last 200K miles. I was a bit surprised at that. Anyway, the automobile was more than satisfactory.
Then in 2004 I was rear ended -- badly by a truck. The car was declared a total loss. Since I hadn't even been thinking of buying a new vehicle, I was thrown for a loop. The other guy's insurance company gave me three days to get a replacement vehicle. I asked friends what to do. They advised me to buy a second hand Camaro from a reputable dealer. That's what I did. I'm still happy with the replacement. Still, though, I think I would be happier if the insurance company had given me more time to think about what I would do. I could see myself going with a new Toyota or Honda, rather than an identical vehicle. Since I wasn't given the time, though, I simply repeated my decision of five years earlier.
People in my area (Washington, DC) are stressed out from too much to do and too little sleep. I see people making all sorts of decisions that are at best unwise, at worst destructive. Sleeping on a decision, taking the "luxury" of time, both conscious and unconscious, would, I think, improve the quality of decision making around here. Some of us do manage to do that. I can see better results by doing that rather than the mode where people are always "on." 24/7 looks like folly, not dedication.
"Beer is proof God loves us and wants us to be happy." -- B. Franklin
It would be interesting to see if there are any similarities between sleep and deep meditation in relation to problem solving. Of course that would mean that science would have to concede an actual benefit to alternative medicine. Can't have that now, can we?
Because teenage pranks are fun when you're about to die!
At least for me, this is always the way. After a certain point, there is nothing to be gained from continuing to bach away at something. Do something else; play with something; get some sleep and look at it fresh in the morning. I always like to have a couple of background projects at work for just this purpose. Some of them have actually turned out to be useful.
Reminds me of the job offer that produced my current position. I told my boss-to-be that the offer was good and I was inclined to accept it. But on general principles I would sleep on it and make it official the next morning.
Reminds me also of a spectral analysis simulation I did in one of my grad courses. One part of it just didn't work. The results were nonsensical, but I had a deadline, wrote it up anyway, and included a mention that the results in one section were suspect. I then did other things over the weekend, looked at it again, saw the problem immediately, reran the simulation, got good results, wrote them up and handed them in. The professor was pleased, saying that this was just what a grad student should do. I got an A in the course.
...laura
Screw rationality "Use the Force Luke! Let Go!"
Seems like its not that the subconcious mind makes better decisions, but that the subconcious mind can make your life miserable if it disagrees.
-- 3 events that reshaped the world in the 20th century: WW1, WW2, and WWW
I find that in the mornings I'm prepared for all out war. Take on the big fish, sue the bastards who need suing, fight for every last dime that's mine, buy low sell high, haggle with the insurance company for lower premiums, uphold civil liberties, take the principled stand.
At night? Be cautious. Don't make noise. Try to work things out amicably. Or just surrender. Run from the fights. Sure, you can search my bag, officer.
Knowing that I am this way, how can I make any decision at all that I can live with? Just bust a fuck-it, I guess.
That isn't to say you can't figure stuff out while asleep. I'm still glad my brain decided to solve a differential equation while sleeping. I sure wasted enough time working on it awake.
So who know. Maybe it's a constantly changing mix of solving and acceptance.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
...this corresponds with my personal observation that many a difficult programming task has been solved by my brain not as I thought about it but later on, during my shower in the morning. In fact, so many "tough" programming tasks have been solved while I've been not consciously thinking about them that I nowadays don't hardly try to force a solution anymore...I just sort of wait and almost inevitably something comes to me later...
never bring a twinkie to a food fight.
Our ability to focus our attention comes from our ability to suppress competing thoughts. While we are dreaming or in the morning, we are blocking out less thoughts and worries. One theory is that our conscious mind arises from conflicting patterns in our subconscious - so it makes a lot of sense that the majority of solutions to a problem are suppressed in conscious thoughts.
...how WELL a job. Please, proper Angloish.
Be right or not, there are documented examples of people taking right choices or inspirations based on dreams, like i.e. Kekule's dream on benzene structure or other famous cases.
Uh huh... then how come when I go to sleep at 2 in the morning and wake up at 7, my new thoughts are "class isn't important, go back to sleep!"? I never had this idea BEFORE I went to bed, but after I woke up, I don't want to go. Thus, something must have changed over the course of my sleeping that made me want to do the laziest thing in the world, rather than the smartest.
This doesn't sound like the best decision making to me! Am I broken?
A scientific proof that "never do today what can be procrastinated until tomorrow" is the right way of doing things.
We should look at countries that still do afternoon siestas. I bet we'd find better decision making there than in the work, work, work, work until you die United States.
I'd love this type of schedule: In the office at say, 7:30AM then out from noon to 5PM. Work 5PM to 8PM. Talk about efficiency.
I have a knack this, as long as I don't try too hard and just let the names percolate up through my subconscious. Last night I thought of the perfect domain name, and this morning I registered it. It's short, easy to remember, and fits what I want to do with it perfectly.
No, I won't say what it is.
Let the inevitable gay sex jokes from ACs commence.
If the doors of perception are cleansed, things would appear to a man as they truly are - infinite. Go to bed.
I had a psychology teacher who pointed out that the term ``subconscious'' is pretty much a Hollywood popularized word. You're either talking about being conscious or not being conscious, that is, unconscious. The writer of the article seems to agree with her because they don't use the term subconscious. Sorry to nitpick, but the word unconscious communicates the idea more clearly, while the subconscious is vague. Besides, I think it's safe to say that if you're asleep, you're unconscious.
Chuck Norris doesn't sleep -- he waits.
Synchronize your calendar and mobile phone via text messaging.
Beverly: "He's regaining consciousness."
Picard: "Sleep..."
Troi: "It's Captain Picard speaking, not Locutus."
Picard: "Sleep, Data."
Beverly: [To Picard] "You're exhausted."
Data: "Yes, Doctor."
Data: "If I may make a supposition. I do not believe his message was intended to express fatigue, but to suggest a course of action."
Riker: "Mister Crusher, engag--"
Data: "Data to Bridge, standby."
Data: "I am attempting to penetrate the Borg regenerate subcommand path. It is a low priority system that may be accessable."
Riker: "Mister Data, your final report."
Data: "Standby."
Riker: "I *can't*, Mister Data!"
Riker: "Mister Data, what the hell happened?"
Data: "I successfully planted a command into the Borg collective consciousness. It misdirected them to believe that it was time to regenerate. In effect, I put them all to sleep."
Riker: "'Sleep'?"
Data: "Yes, sir."
Oh wait, this article talks about what happens when your subconscious mind goes into action, not what happens when you shut down a Borg cube and thus don't have to ram your ship into it.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Job 33:15-16
15 In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon men, in slumberings upon the bed;
16 Then he openeth the ears of men, and sealeth their instruction,
I would think there are enough geeks here to know that!
This should come as no surprise to most slashdotters. I mean, come on- How many times have you been trying to figure out a way to code a particular function or determine the best way to approach a problem, only to wake up in the middle of the night (or whenever your normal sleep period occurs) with the solution. I've driven multiple roommates insane with what they call "crazy" behavior- Waking up at 3 or 4 AM, covering every scrap of paper I can get my hands on with code, and passing back out.
Roommate: "What's all this?"
Me: "Don't touch that. I have all those pages laid out in a specific order for a reason. I just figured out a better way to do the database interaction for [project] last night."
Roommate: "Dude, you are so freaking wierd."
Fight psychopharmacological mccarthyism. http://www.norml.org/
Haven't people "discovered" this every few years for the past century or so? I'm pretty sure the Surrealists explored this territory.
Marketers have known this for years. Marketing departments spend huge amounts of money exploring ways to nudge people into making the 'impulse buy' and trick them into unwise decisions. Grocery stores line their queues with trinkets and small items. Best buy is even worse- forcing people to wind their way through a twisty aisle made of boxes of small, inexpensive items to get to the checkout counter. Once, when shopping for a car, the salesman asked me 'What would it take for you to buy this car today?'. The list goes on... and, it seems to me, we are making worse and less informed decisions as time goes on.
Trying to find real information on a product is sometimes very difficult. Instead of making better products, companies make a cheaper product and spend a little more on marketing to promote it.
blah blah blah... im getting offtopic...
I think it's an issue of context. I don't think it's that you're sleeping on it, but rather you are thinking about the issue outside the context of marketing and environmental pressures. Removing something from context generally allows you to see that thing more clearly.
That's ok, Jesus likes me anyway.
Obviously she has to have the opportunity to "sleep on it"
Which does leave me an "out" for impulse buys! (not that there are many of those)
This is a very interesting concept. Before I make any decisions about using this technique in the future, I better sleep on it.
Slashdot.. where people join together in deliberate ignorance.
I experience this often when I'm going to the bathroom during work. I'll have one or more problems, go to the bathroom, and end up solving one or more of said problems before getting back in front of my computer. I'm pretty sure it's because I'm getting my mind off my work. In addition, I often innovate (small and large) when I'm not trying to. Although I couldn't find the site I visited a year or three ago, I remember reading that Richard Feynman advocating keeping multiple problems going in your head that you try to solve now and again. I'll bet he know about his brain's subconcsious processing abilities; perhaps he only know about it subconsciously! I pretty much did what Feynman suggested before I read about him; I definitely try to do it more, and because of this scientific study, I will recommend that others do this as well! ("Drink more water, it helps you think better... indirectly" ;] )
If only people would sleep on it before posting on /. ...
The real problem is that most people do not know how to identify the best solution to a complex problem, where complex problem is defined as having multiple criteria where some are competing against each other.
One of the best courses that I have completed was a US Army one. It was CAS3 (Combined Arms and Services Staff School). They taught a formal method which deals with identifying possible solutions, identifying screening criteria (which removes solutions that are not viable), identifying evaluation criteria (which allows you to compare one aspect of a solution to another solution), weighting the evaluation criteria, and determining the best solution.
This is a method where it is possible to avoid comparing apples to oranges, and compare apples to apples, i.e. Car A is cheaper than Car B, but Car B has better fuel economy. You compare the cost of Car A to Car B and the fuel economy of Car A to Car B. Furthermore, because you have identified fuel economy as more important than cost, Car B should be the winner (absent any other evaluation criteria).
It is a little more complicated that that, but that is the Reader's Digest version. While this is not the only method to solve complex problems (including non-military ones), it is one that is not too difficult to use (with practice) and it works.
For further reading, see FM 5-0 (Chapter 2 covers it, but not in much detail) or, if you can find it, "52d Infantry Division & Fort Riley Staff Officer's Guide" (Chapter 5, Decision Briefing Example covers the steps of the analysis quite well).
There's been many a time where I'm confronted with a pile of work after midnight.
:(
It's easy to estimate how long it will take to complete the task; "I can get this done and still get two hours of sleep."
I set my alarm for 2AM, so I can finish up before I head to work. Sure enough, when I finally wake up, it's 6AM, I feel miserable, and nothing is done. Subconciously hit the snooze button for 4 hours; leaving me with just enough time to call in and make up some excuse.
You subconcious mind does make the right decision, if you consider getting fired and looking for a new job a proper decision.
Boardroom in top floor of building in Manhatten, Pointy-haired boss: "Alright we need to figure out a new marketing strategy to expand our presence in Asia, I want you guys hit the sack and we'll discuss this in five hours" Larry: *SNORE* Pointy-haired boss: "I wish I had more hard workers like Larry over there" Betty mutters: "brown noser"
first post, but I was sleeping.
I dreamt about misspelling "first post", it was not in my better judgement.
>he hours after waking are when the brain is at its operational best and it is easier to process large amounts of information at that time?
There's nothing inherently wrong with being a morning person, it's just one human type.
Please hand in your geek license and pocket protector now. You can begin dating immediately.
I recall reading somewhere (back in the day) that in some ancient tribal culture (Bedouin?), when dealing with something important, the parties would first negotiate in a social situation in the evening around the campfire (IIRC smoking something was involved, but maybe that was just me!), and make the decision. But no decision was not final until the next day, when the question was reviewed thoroughly in the "cold light of day".
In this way, a person could get to know the potential business partner or in-law, learn how they do things when their guard was down at least a bit, and find out whether they can get along as people; and get the basic facts and factors of the decision.
Then, after sleeping on it and 'digesting' the information, they could use their more analytical daytime-brain to go over what they might not have thought of the night before. In the end, one might say that each side of their brain had the chance to contribute to the decision. (Since the two hemispheres of male brains as a generality are be less well connected than those of females, I would argue that this strategy may be especially useful for men.
I wish I recalled more detail but it was just a page or so of a book or article, and I don't even recall what the book was about.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
Hmm.. Since research involves considering a lot of factors while making a decision or arriving at a conclusion.. I wonder if this research is done consciouly or subconsciously..
You will never have experience until after you needed it.
You had to fill each cell with a number from 1 through 8. The challenge was to place the numbers such that no consecutive numbers were adjacent to each other in the horizontal, vertical, or diagonal directions.
Well, sort of.
.01 (death from falling) + .99 (fun) .99 (small number)
A complex decision is a whole bunch of trade-offs, profit-and-loss variables. Each variable has a probability associated with it, and they can cascade together. I use a system of "expected value" summations, and it works pretty well.
For instance, in buying a car there is the price (and the 100% likelihood that you'll have to pay it), a set of features, and a set of unknown costs (maintenance), and a set of emotional value points (prestige, convenience, dependability). Each of the costs has a probability that you'll incur it, and each of the values has a probability that you'll receive it. Some of them are related, and may need to be refactored to make the math work out for you.
You multiply each of the costs and outcomes (positive and negative) with their value to you (on some scale of your choosing) and their probability of occurring, and sum them all up. That choice gets a score.
Compare the score from all of the other choices you could make, and your decision is made.
The nice thing about this system is that by breaking down the fuzzy-factor "value" for each outcome and pairing it with a probability, you see the real cost for each while simultaneously hiding the answer from yourself. Subconciously you will tend to favor the choice you want to make, but be careful that you don't fudge the probabilities.
As a simple example, consider recreational sky-diving. The value you get from jumping -- a rush, some prestige, and maybe some sex out of it somehow -- compares with a (call it) 99% probability of landing safely and a (call it) 1% probability of landing with a splat.
For me, I assign a pretty high value to keeping my skin intact. How much would I pay someone not to flatten my skull?
stay on ground = free + 0 (death from falling) + 0 (fun)
= 0
skydiving = -$50 +
= -$50 - 1/100 (very big number) +
= (probably something negative, and I have to pay 50 bucks).
As a side note, you can see that the resultant costs of a decision and the cost to make it happen are just two labels for the same thing. That is, whether something is a cost or benefit is just the sign on the term.
sigs, as if you care.
There is an old adage in French that goes "La nuit porte conseil", which literally means " The night brings counsel".
...so, did America go to war with Iraq after Bush slept on it, or was he awake?
Similar mechanisms are at work during the process of insight, as shown in a recent PLOS biology paper (summary here). According to this research, insight is primarily a right-hemispheric process involving very "holistic" thinking about a problem. Interestingly, it is accompanied by suppression of incoming activity from the environment, as though giving the brain free reign to free-associate, we are able to more efficiently search the entire solution space.
> a New Scientist study that indicates your subconscious
> mind is a better decision maker than you are.
I knew there was more to my dream of a mule with Natalie Portman's head ramming me in the @$$ with a Beowulf cluster than at first glance!
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/hypnosis/articles/Halligan200 0a.pdf
"Neuropsychologists and researchers studying certain types of brain damage have come to the conclusion that many of our actions and perceptions are carried out by unconscious parts of our brains (New Scientist , 5 September 1998, p 30) . For example, if you want to reach out and pick up an object, you don't need to be conscious of the exact size and
shape of it, or what each of your muscles needs to do.
But surely it's not like that for higher level mental activities, such as our thoughts and
feelings? Most people--and many researchers--consider that these originate within the realms of consciousness. We don't agree.
We suggest that all the thoughts, ideas, feelings, attitudes and beliefs traditionally considered to be the contents of consciousness are produced by unconscious processes--just like actions and perceptions. It's only later that we become aware of them as outputs when they enter our consciousness. As pointed out by Jeffrey Grey of the Institute of Psychiatry in London--consciousness occurs too late to affect the outcomes of the mental processes that it is apparently linked to.
You may prefer the notion that you are in charge of your own mind. But where did that idea come from? If you stop to think about it, you'll probably find that it just popped into your head--like all your thoughts. Perhaps you have decided to read the rest of this article. But did "you" really make that choice? Keep reading, if you can. You may never
think of "yourself" in quite the same way again."
Which is what many meditative traditions have been saying for quite a long time. For more, see Libet's work on the "delay" of what is termed "normal consciousness" in decision making.
This research doesn't seem to have accounted for the effects of cognitive dissonance. A person might be very unsure when they make a decision - but immediately after making it, they become much more confident. Measuring the correctness of the decision by happiness with the decision is likely a bad practice.
...it always seems like a good idea to sleep with a girl, but somehow it doesn't seem like such a good idea when I wake up in the morning next to her... Commence with the "c'mon, he's lying, this is /. and noone gets laid" jokes:
Her: But do you love me?
:-(
Meat Loaf: Baby, baby let me sleep on it and I'll tell you in the morning.
He should have waited until morning to decide about home plate as well as his profession of undying love, but....
Unfortunately, as the song plays out, he doesn't sleep on it and regrets his decision almost immediately
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
Using your subconscience to make decisions for you.... http://www.lucidity.com/
"Since the two hemispheres of male brains as a generality are be less well connected than those of females"
You are not a real man, the correct sentence is "Since the two hemispheres of male brains as a generality are better separated than those of females"
*RUN AND HIDE*
Have you ever had one of these?
They always happen to me after a really late night working and leaving work frustrated about some unsolved problem.
My dreams those nights are filled with circular logic and frustrating scenarios. Nothing is accomplished, and the sleep is quite restless.
2) Shoot a man in the face
3) Sleep on it
4) Interview with the police in the morning
5) Avoid prosecution (profit!)
...and she should've waited for an answer in the morning.
That's why I sleep at my desk.
there's no place like ~
Of course, one problem you should never sleep on is another man's wife. :(
It seems to me that they evaluated good decisions based on how happy people were with them after a period of time.
Was the sleeping on it relevant? Isn't this just showing that people took longer to come to the decision? To me it seems rather common sense that you are more likely to be happy with your decision if you don't rush into it.
There is more to the subconcious mind than just sleeping on it.
When I am programming, usually my subconcious mind takes over and does all the calculations or logical references and storage of variables. What goes where and what are the possible outcomes of a bunch of different paths etc. But then I get out of my subconcious state and try to figure out what I did, its like WTH.. how did I even think about that?
I started to realize this when I started to play chess, when I started keeping track of different moves and possible outcomes for each move etc.
The subconcious mind works wonders IMHO.
I just read the original Science article referenced in the New Scientist article. For the purpose of the research performed, the efficacy or correctness of the choice was guaged by whether an individual "felt good about their choice". An obvious flaw with this metric is that there are some choices that are objectively better than others. For example, if you choose a car that turns out to be a "lemon", then you've made the wrong choice. And just because you "felt good" about your choice doesn't matter ... Oh well ...
Anyone who has heard audio from his lectures or read his books has heard him talking about the difference between the spotlight (conscious attention) and the floodlight (unconscious thought). He often said that most people could not handle more than 3 variables at the same time without using a pencil, and most real-life decisions involve considerably more variables than that. Therefore, it makes perfect sense that for most people a decision made without directly using conscious thought would be superior to one "thought through". The anecdotes /.ers have related above only help reinforce this.
Oh, the irony...
Go with your gut. That's been sage advice for longer than any of us have been alive. I guess now there's research to back it up.
It seems that the more I concentrate on solving a problem, the more difficult it tends to become. I think too far into it, and get a bad case of the "what if's". It ends up so that I can't see the forest through the trees.
To come up with a plan for attacking a problem, it's always seemed to me that the unconscious mind is the best for generating a general plan of attack, because it doesn't confuse itself with too many details. Concentration is for the "sit down and get it done" part, which comes after you've figured out your plan. That's where you worry about the one-off's and special cases.
I guess that's why I tend have my ah-hah moments at the most inopportune times -- riding the train, taking a shower, watching TV, sometimes even in my dreams... Those are the times that I tend to solve the bigger problems I'm facing at work: when I'm not even there.
I remember one thing that Jung said was that extremely creative people were very close to their subconcious. That is the well from which much brain activity springs forth into consciousness. Thus if you are very bright, your subconcious is even brighter. Less creative people (but realize they DO have the potential to be creative) are usually those running on autopilot and their consciousness is just too busy to be taking clues from the subconscious.
I wish I could provide specific references to Jung's work, but the stuff is incredibly dense. I have many of his works. Perhaps someone else more familiar with the material can provide the specific references.
your conscious and subconscious mind will merge and integrate.
It's actually quite nice, really, but it also means you don't really remember a lot of your dreams.
And then, you start into Tao, cause Zen is really lacking in a sense of humor, which is the only way to Truly See The World.
Me, I prefer the Tao of Piglet
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
If I see a hot babe, I can decide instantly whether or not I'd like to pork her. Problem is like the vast majority of slashdotters that ain't gonna happen...
...I'll be in my bunk.
I can't count the number of times that it wasn't until I woke up that I realized sleeping with the girl I thought was hot at the bar wasn't quite as hot as I originally thought.
Sometimes I use a very elaborate, conscious decision-making method, but at some point I realized that its real purpose is to tap into the subconscious.
:)
What I'm talking about is the 'spreadsheet' method, where you write your choices on each row, and rate them 0-10 according to various factors. For example, when choosing what university to attend, one might consider location, size of student body, academic reputation, student/faculty ratio, etc. Rate your choices according to all these factors, and then compute a weighted average score for each. (Maybe location counts for half of academic reputation, etc.)
Then, sort the choices by their weighted average. Very often you will find that you are surprised, or perhaps not quite happy with the results, so you adjust the weights a little and sort them again. Continue adjusting the weights (and possibly the ratings) until you feel satisfied with the result.
So, my hypothesis about this method is that the actual ratings and weights you come up with are not that meaningful; statistically the whole process is basically "Garbage In, Garbage Out." However, through the process you were able to tap into what your subconscious mind actually thinks about all your choices, and come up with a satisfying decision.
.. this guy must be quite stupid then
"" How about taking the safety labels off everything, and let the stupidity-problem solve itself? """
3 PM: Take Modern Geometry final. Struggle with one proof that would be so easy if parallel lines could be assumed.
2 AM: Wake up with the entire proof in my mind as plain as day. Wake wife up to explain it to her.
2:05 AM: Go back to sleep with black eye.
Anytime I need to make a complex purchase choice, I make a spreadsheet.
Stay in my current Apartment, or buy a House
Buy a car or take the bus to work
Take Whey protein or weight gainer.
I think it's a way of off loading the mental task on something else
Oh yah and Never ever impulse buy
--meh--
I tend to believe the notion from Words of Wisdom called Wisdom's Theory of Instantaneous Outcome, which states that there is no mulling over decisions. They're always instantly made and what we consider the act of ruminating over which way to decide is really our conscious mind rationalizing the decision our subconscious mind has made already.
Flip a coin. If you feel hesistant to comply with the decision chosen by the coin, pick the other option. It's that simple.
As you may or may not know, a human brain is composed of three distinct layers: the "reptilian" (R-Complex), the "mammalian" (limbic system), and the simian/human (the frontal/temporal/parietal/occipital lobes). Each of these strata are distinct and capapble of hijacking behavior in the right circumstances.
As you also may or may not be aware, every brain structure is duplicated on the right and left side with the exception of the pitumen. These mirror structures are not identical - the right lobes have much longer dendrites than the left, for example.
IMHO, it is unwise to eschew the processing of any layer. Evolution put these processing centers within you for a reason - discount them at your peril.
I don't know. If I logic something out, I can justify my reasoning to myself and others after the fact.
Plus, I see a lot of people hold beliefs I disagree with strongly, because it "feels right". I mean a ton of people believe firmly in all sorts of mutually incompatible relgious belief because it just feels right to them-- I guess the thing is it's hard to seperate our subconcious reasoning from our deeply-instilled prejudices and habits. In the long run, that kind of groupthink probably benefits from the whole "wisdom of crowds" kind of thing, but in the short run it seems like it presents a lot of problems.
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
"In contrast, the unconscious mind appears able to ponder over all the information and produce a decision that most people remain satisfied with." To reach a permanent solution to the problem: Get them all to watch TV then quickly switch to, say , a documentary about life as a blogger. Instantaneous sleep, reflection on the news reel they saw before, and ultimately peace.
Purely anecdotal and highly unscientific evidence follows.
During my gaming years, I often thrived on fast-paced action-oriented games. We used to call them "twitch" games. Titles like Street Fighter II, Quake1-3, WipeOut XL. With some practice, I was always pretty good at these, despite being a relatively slow thinker. Not a slow learner, but a slow thinker in that it usually takes me a minute or two to come up with the best solution for some IT problem while my cow-orkers will usually arrive at the same solution almost instantly.
Anyway, like I said, I had a knack for twitch games for some reason, but I always found that I did poorly when I tried to concentrate on the game itself and my reactions to what was happening on-screen. Imagine my surprise when I found that I did *significantly* better in these games when I put about 60% of my attention into some other task and just sorta played the game in the "backgound," if you will. Tasks like mentally disassembling the in-game music into separate instruments, reviewing the plot of my favorite movie, marvelling at the excellent background art or clever level design, or deciding what to have for lunch. Even with this tactic, I never quite achieved Video Game Superhuman Powers, but usually landed comfortably in 2nd or 3rd place in a room full of expert Quake players, for instance.
All that would come to an end, however, if the thought entered my head, "Man, I gotta concentrate on this," because then I would suddenly find myself beaten, fragged, or crashed more often than not.
people truly into Buddhism all know that the Buddha taught something similar to this. Basically, our mind are like mirrors, thoughts are dust. If we keep our mind busy with thoughts, just like the mirror with dust cannot reflect things clearly and exactly the way they are (we always look at things with values: right or wrong, good or bad ...).
...). Look like there are several ways to knowledge. Buddha is any people who archive the purest mind, and just look at all the knowledge of Buddha, I guess there is no limit for a purest mind.
That's why there is meditation to purify your mind, to help you regconize thoughts and mind, not to involve with them, and to sense things as they are without bias. With a pure mind, a lot problems can be solved effectively much more than you can think of. Yet, this is an incorrect reason to come to Buddism. Buddism is not just problem solving.
It's a funny thing that although I'm not talking science (sound like religious), science is gradually proving what the Buddha said are true (brain scanning of meditating monks
Or is it because you decide one day, and if you still hold the same opinion the next day, it's better than a one-day opinion?
Actually, I've dreamt of the solutions to computer problems before, so I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the possibility. Wasn't there a previous study that showed we don't actually need sleep to be physically refreshed? If that's true, then we must surely need it for re-classifying or re-thinking our knowledge. If not, then most of the animals on earth spend large parts of the day unconscious, putting themselves in great risk of attack, for no big evolutionary benefit.
It's probably related: I've found that when I take people out to Moab, Utah, and ride the Slickrock trail on my bike, it works MUCH better for first-timers if we get there in the evening, go out and ride a short segment, go eat dinner, and go ride the whole thing the next day, than if they just try and ride the whole thing in the morning, at the same time they would've without the intro. It gives the brain a chance to prepare. That's just the most obvious example I've noticed, but I've seen the same thing in teaching fencing and in learning some flying stuff: do something easy but related, sleep, then go back and try it again and the improvement is really amazing, much moreso than if you tried something in the morning and then again that evening.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
How you make decisions depends on how well you are wired for the domain. Consider all the type so problem that you have to solve on a regular basis. You solve those problem right away, don't you?
Now you get your self in an unfamiliar situation. You don't have the patterns worked out. If you give your brain a moment to rearrange, you have a chance of making a good choice.
I forget which book i was reading, probably "The Tao of Personal Leadership" which maintained that the proper way to accomplish any weighty task is to familiarize yourself with it. Dig in deep. Then do nothing. At a later time, reproach it and the task will go far more smoothly. Once I read that I realized that in the past several years of profesional development, I had done just that. I don't just sit down and code as if I were running a marathon. I think about it all, then I "mull it over". This mulling really involves little. Just a little directed consciousness and everything falls into place without deliverate thought. As the years slip under my belt, I do less and less directed thinking and the results are always better than the last.
This is the way of the Tao.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
A few years ago, Dr. Herbert Benson came out with his book "The Breakout Principle" which describes and explains what this article is about. Basically, interrupting or changing context (go for a walk, solve unrelated puzzles, visit the gym, meditate) when you've reached a sticking point in a project will increase your effectiveness when you return to your task. Benson attributes this to bursts of nitric oxide in your brain, IIRC.
When we consider how much really occurs inside us without conscious thought, is this any surprise? Try walking up and down the stairs while consciously thinking about how you're doing it. Or how about language- your comprehension and speaking of your native tongue is largely unconscious as well.
Next time you're stuck in a coding problem, try it out. Go enjoy some absorbing activity for perhaps as little as 15 minutes, making sure to change conscious contexts, and then come back to your original task with a fresh viewpoint.
. . . is that sleeping at work actually increases my productivity (by making good decisions)! Seriously, while I respect my subconscious, I don't think I'll trust it with a lot of things, judging by the things it worries about in my dreams I remember.
Nathan's blog
If you're into this topic I just finished a book that I highly recommend. It's a fairly quick read and touches on various facets of snap-judgements to get you informed and whet your appetite for analyzing your own decision making.
Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
Meatlof should be happy with this finding.
- I'll give you an answer in the morning.
When making big decisions, I sometimes make exhaustive analytical charts in which I list factors making a choice, numerically weight factors in relationship to each other, and assign values for how each option satisfies that factor.... and then sit back and watch myself tweak and adjust the weights and values. Almost inevitably, I catch myself fudging the data to favor one option over the others; that's the option I choose. So I do genuinely evaluate objective criteria as I consider the question, but I give my subjective intuition the final say. And I've always been reasonably satisfied with the choices I've made this way.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
to tell the salesman you're not ready to buy.
My wife and I have a rule that we will wait at least 24 hours before buying something over $100.
It really does come in handy when the salesperson knows one of us is ready to buy and directs the conversation to that person. Before it gets too far along one of us will say, "Okay, let's come back tomorrow then." The salesperson is often surprised how quickly they've lost their perceived momentum. There reaction also provides a clue as to whether we should buy it from them.
This saved us $1500 when we bought a used car. But I am sure it's also saved us thousands in smaller purchases.
It helps in realizing that what might feel like an immediate need isn't.
I find there is a difference between trying to do a conscious cost-benefit analysis and simply envisioning different outcomes - the latter can be much easier and more direct.
For example in trying to balance my 401k portfolio it is tempting to attempt to balance risk and reward numerically. I think this can be done with a lot of effort, especially by the professionals who have all the tools and training. However as a first approximation, I found it rewarding to build a few extreme examples and just see how I feel about them. For example - US Equities take a massive hammering, US Equities have a 10 year bull run. Equities globally collapse vs. fixed income, cash etc. I discovered I was very upset in any scenario where I lost 30% or more of what I already have. I'm more risk averse than I thought, and not so ready to keep my money in assets that can simply disappear in some accounting scandal. So I moved half of my portfolio into cash and diversified international stocks. Now to lose 30% of my total holdings from one event is near impossible on the side of the assets I moved, and similarly the assets still in US stocks would have to go down 60%. And even if I got double whammied, the amount in cash would keep me off the streets for a good while when I retire.
Similarly, I bought a car a few years ago which was the sensible choice - it was new and therefore had plenty of warrany left, and was Japanese so the value on paper and feature were good. Thinking back, though, if I'd ever really envisioned myself owning that car, putting up with the looks, the flimsy feeling build quality etc, the turbo lag etc it might have been quite obvious to me I need to stick to what I like (namely german cars).
I'm not sure what to think about this result. But I'll sleep on it and decide tomorrow...
Maybe you'd better patent the idea so you can charge people for sleeping on a big decision.
1) Try to figure out the second step.
2) (sleep on the question so subconcious can solve)
3) Patent the second step.
4) Profit!
Wait, maybe you should sleep on the idea of patenting this to make sure it's the right thing to do.
I took the Silva Method Seminar and their goal is to teach you how to operate at alpha (a relaxed state of mind where most of your brain is oscilating at alpha brainwaves). They claim that you should "think in alpha and act on beta" and you learn how to make your brain enter alpha at will and use this for self-improvement.
HTML is obsolete. It's time for a new, simpler and richer markup language.
My /. posts would never get read if I took that long to decide!
Good luck with this sort of thing and realtors. Bought my first house two years ago - one realtor sat in the front seat of their van with us in the back, our only shelter from the pouring rain, after spending 30 minutes going thru a house, filled out the papers for us and handed it to us with a pen and said we had to make an offer on this house before we left the driveway because it might not be available after that.
No. It's amazing they want you to take minutes to decide on something you'll spend 30 years in.
I said yes to the house that didn't have me walking up startled / worrying about it the morning after we saw it.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Have a look at the Six Thinking Hats technique. It seeks to reduce confusion by examining only one aspect of a decision at any one time.
I've been trying to explain that I think better when I'm sleeping to my boss for ages now. Finally I have proof!
"he drew his sword Ringil that glittered like ice... and he wounded Morgoth with seven wounds..."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This explains why all the greatest human discoveries were made by the comatose.
Why didn't we realize this sooner?
Ok, sedate me, I'm gonna go cure cancer.
"Sleeping on a big decision, such as buying a car or house, is more likely to produce a result people remain happy with"
Obviously. We can place our decisions on inner desires or whats objectively good for us. Going with your gut feeling will make you happier... ask the mid-income guy with the ferrari.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
Ha! Morvo is amused by the puny human brains which can only make decisions when they are asleep. We shall attack the earth and destroy you while you sleep on the decision of how to react! Bwah-hahahahahah!
I see in this result the inevitable effect of a generation raised on TV ads and trained to buy on impulse in order to increase consumption and stimulate the economy. It is taken as axiomatic these days that surrender to ones emotions and whims is a virtue, and self-control is seen as a neurosis. No wonder people can only make decisions in their sleep. They have never learned to suppress their feelings in order to think logically. A nation of hyperactive, short attetnion span, self-indulgent, easily manipulated sheep; incapable of reasoning their way through any decision more complex than "Would you like fries with that?" The sooner the ice caps melt and destroy this civilization, the better.
"Sic Semper Path of Least Resistance"
I would have thought that this was common knowledge. I always think better 'when I'm not thinking', if you can put it that way. Thinking consciously is great for math and other problems when you need the answer straight away, but for big decisions and epiphanies it's absolutely no good.
The shower (or nice warm Japanese style tub) is an excellent place for your muscles to relax and let your mind wander. Also, I've found that my mind is also busy just before and after I go to bed, as well as working out some interesting ideas during the night. I've had a great many good ideas simply by not thinking about the subject I'm trying to generate the good ideas for - until they pop into my head...
This could be a symptom of depression and anxiety manifested as a kind of compulsive worrying. Therapy/drugs can help.
Good money, I am a well paid IT consultant. But I mastered my unconscious to work while I'm awake; many many times I come to a customer, to help them on a problem they have been strugling with for some time, sometimes over 500 man-hours. They tell me the problem, and without thinking I know the answer. Or more simple, a person is messing hours on something, I look at it and often I tell them within a minute what's wrong, causing many unbelievable looks at faces when they realize I'm right. "How on earth did he know it so fast!". The scary part is that I'm afraid it will stop sometime; like a writer who is scared of writers block: once a writer has to think about what to write, the stories are mediocre at best. When my fast analytical brain stops working, I don't think my answers will be any good!
I need to take a nap before deciding whether to read such a long and over-thought post.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
your subconscious mind is a better decision maker than you are
I think that our conscious mind is more like a floating point processor than a cpu. It's very good at certain specialized problems, and very weak at most other things. Anybody who has tried to learn any kind of athletic skill knows that the conscious mind is simply lousy at controlling the body.
I also think that most of the time, our conscious mind is like the little kids you sometimes see in an arcade happily jerking the joystick around playing a video game--except that he never put in a quarter, and he's really "playing" the attract mode. I suspect that very often, what we perceive as our motivation is little more than an educated guess, made by a neural subsystem that has very little access to the ancient parts of our brain that actually motivate most of our actions.
Wegner makes the case that the conscious mind does not really make decisions, and that the experience of conscious decision making is an illusion, a kind of event tagging by which our brain distinguishes between those events that we are (probably) responsible for and those that are outside our control.
All my dreams are either way psychedelic, or of killing people or of having sex. There is no way these are going to help me make workplace decisions!
"I just can't sit while people are saying nonsense in a meeting without saying it's nonsense" J Watson, Sci Am 288:(4)51
Thinking hard about a complex decision that rests on multiple factors appears to bamboozle the conscious mind so that people only consider a subset of information, which they weight inappropriately, resulting in an unsatisfactory choice.
Speak for yourself, buster. Those of us not stuck in the popular but wrong "calculator" view of reason (as divorced from the subconscious) don't have that problem.
A known trait of successful individuals is their so-called "intuition" that enables them to quickly get a "sense" of the right choice quickly, sometimes immediately before the conscious mind even gets going.
If you see intuition as being something separate from and often opposed to/conflicting with conscious reasoning, then this nonsensical idea will appeal to you.
But if you learn to make use of both your immediate reasoning process *and* your acquired "intuition" of past experience and past thought, you don't need to take a nap at all -- you can have your "Eureka moment" right when you need it.
Sleeping on things is best used to clear out any interfering emotional states that might already be present.... it's hard to be on your best thinking game after you were involved in a big car accident that morning, and are still amazed that you are alive.
Over the years, my wife has learned to recognise the symptoms. If she hears me cursing the machine in frustration, she gently prods me that it's time to rest my brain. She's always right, even though at the time, I'm so absorbed in the problem that I can't pull back and see what's wrong.
Sleep on it... You might change your mind about opening a Hotmail account.
Optimist: The thumb drive is half empty! Pessimist: The thumb drive is half full...
This is very true.I got to where i could see the future in my dreams.The problem with this is that the future may not look very nice.But if you dont take any sides and just observe,you will notice that all life is conected and moving ahead .Taking no sides is very important in understanding the big picture.looking at everything equally goes against our genetic belief systems.If you tweek your genetic belif systems too much the world will eat you up.
In my dreams I dont see a penta quark, and all electrons have three types of spin.We are all doomed.99.999% of the population are just breeders.Even though all the elections are fixed the results are the same.No sighns of any space elevator in the near future.The weather we are having is part of a cycle made worse by pollution of the air and the oceans.The thin layer of oil and carbon we put on the oceans, is warming the surface layer.Weather forcasting has a fundemental piece of the puzzle missing, and I know what it is.This is not the only universe.There is so much that we still dont understand in this universe,This is why we have science,religion and poitics.remove any one of the three and you will see.The three wrongs that make a right.This is how a speicies adapts to a changing planet and solar system.Time I go throw another wad of bills into the wood burning stove.
That explains zealots, fanaticism, self righteousness and why policies always fail given enough time. There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. And your new sweater is ugly.
"Boycott Google - Everything you've ever searched for is permanently associated with your IP address. Fun!" It's not associated with your IP address - that could change over time (dialup), or apply to many people (corporate proxy). It's worse than that - it's associated with your PC. Your cookie is sent to Google whenever you use it (google.com, gmaail, maps.google.com, etc). They don't just tie it in with your IP, it's your PC, and whatever Google services you access with that PC. If you're going to be paranoid, get the paranoia right! :-)
Author, Shell Scripting : Expert Re
of unconscious minds... It could solve so many problems ;-)
"It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is."