Rafael Hansen

“But Stanovich sees it differently. In his book, What Intelligence Tests Miss: The Psychology of Rational Thought, he coined the term “dysrationalia”—the inability to think and behave rationally despite having high intelligence. Research in cognitive psychology suggests there are two principal causes of dysrationalia. The first is a processing problem. The second is a content problem. Stanovich believes we process poorly. When solving a problem, he says, people have several different cognitive mechanisms to choose from. At one end of the spectrum are mechanisms with great computational power, but they are slow and require a great deal of concentration. At the opposite end of the spectrum are mechanisms that have low computational power, require very little concentration, and make quick action possible. “Humans are cognitive misers,” Stanovich writes, “because our basic tendency is to default to the processing mechanisms that require less computational effort, even if they are less accurate.”9 In a word, humans are lazy thinkers. They take the easy way out when solving problems and as a result, their solutions are often illogical. The second cause of dysrationalia is the lack of adequate content. Psychologists who study decision making refer to content deficiency as a “mindware gap.” First articulated by David Perkins, a Harvard cognitive scientist, mindware refers to the rules, strategies, procedures, and knowledge people have at their mental disposal to help solve a problem. “Just as kitchenware consists in tools for working in the kitchen, and software consists in tools for working with your computer, mindware consists in the tools for the mind,” explains Perkins. “A piece of mindware is anything a person can learn that extends the person’s general powers to think critically and creatively.”
― Robert G. Hagstrom, Investing: The Last Liberal Art

“Thoughts are like gold fish in a bowl; the real Self is like the water. The real Self is the space between the thoughts, or more exactly, the field of silent awareness underneath all thoughts.”
― David R. Hawkins, Letting Go: The Pathway of Surrender

“How illusory our powers, vulnerable our agency, and fleeting our time.”
― Mark Helprin, The Oceans and the Stars: A Sea Story, A War Story, A Love Story

“But what actually happens is that this overvaluing of your existence gives rise to an unrealistic definition of what it would mean to use your finite time well. It sets the bar much too high. It suggests that in order to count as having been “well spent,” your life needs to involve deeply impressive accomplishments, or that it should have a lasting impact on future generations—or at the very least that it must, in the words of the philosopher Iddo Landau, “transcend the common and the mundane.” Clearly, it can’t just be ordinary: After all, if your life is as significant in the scheme of things as you tend to believe, how could you not feel obliged to do something truly remarkable with it?”
― Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals