How We Think!

In this article, we’ll discuss how the human brain works i.e basically how we think.

it is very important as it applies in our day to day life. we always think about something, but we don’t know how it works. if we do know about it then we can be more honest with ourselves and that will lead us toward a more satisfactory life.

All the things which we’ll discuss basically based on only two absolute points.

1- Everything in this world is continuous in nature. whether it is color, shape, sound, length, emotions, everything.

2- But the human brain only can think in categories. we take a continua thing, break them into categories and label them. because thinking in category makes things easier, it will be easy to remember, easy to evaluate. and our brain loves easy stuff, it doesn’t want you to get torture.

Now let's take some examples.

1- Lenght spectrum — Tell me what is the length of this strip…

about a foot, 8 inches, 18 cm whatever the number is, it is not that important, important is why you guessed that number. there is the infinite number of options available in length spectrum then why you guessed that only.

because in your head you have built different categories for length on top of length spectrum. these you have built by your own observations, your own experience of length measurements. Now whenever you have to measure length of something, you compare it with those categories you have built in your mind and choose which falls into it.

More observations you get for length measurement, more categories you will make for lengths and then more precise you will tell the length measures.

2- Color Spectrum-

Rainbow is the continuous spectrum of colors, so it contains an infinite number of colors in it. It is a lot of information, our brain cannot remember it so to understand this domain properly in starting class teachers divide it into 7 different parts each representing a different color

So we have made 7 different categories on top of the infinite color spectrum.

But as we grow we observe that is not entirely true, there are more colors than just 7 types. like if we consider only Red color then there is a light red and a dark red. and If we pay more attention then we can further discretize dark red as saying marron red and cherry red.

Now if I ask what is the color of this given block

you may say its marron and someone may say its red. Then who is right…

both are right but you are more specific, you have a better understanding of colors. So if the time comes, you will be in a better position of making more correct decision rather than being confused.

You are more precise because you have discretized the color spectrum in your mind more than others.

So the more we discretized the knowledge, the better we will understand that thing. It is like coding, the more sharp knowledge we have, more robust our code will be against the failure. If we have shallow knowledge in some case it will pass but in others, it will fail.

Note- There is no such thing correct and incorrect decision. there are only two things- more correct and less correct answer and their position vary on situations to situations.

e.g for our exam, taking pi value up to 3.14 would be sufficient for all calculations, we’ll get the right answer. so here it is the correct choice but if we take the same 3.14 value in some Satelite orbiting mission calculation then it’ll change the whole trajectory. so here we require more precise value i.e. 3.14 is not sufficiently correct value here.

Now if we consider our life in this perspective, then it's up to us how much precise we want to be while making a decision of our life. if you think an event is not so important for you then being less precise would be fine for you but if there is some important event like choosing your career path or choosing life partner then its better to be as precise as possible. because you are gonna spend most of your prime time (25yr — 70yr) with these two decisions you are gonna make.

so ask yourself, if this job really satisfying you, do you find your career domain meaningful, did you really find your true love, are you really in love or just a companion of loneliness because if you are in a relationship but have some serious feeling for someone else deep down in your heart that means that there may be everything in your relationship e.g attachment, sex, compatibility but not love.

Now having a lot of observations, having a lot of exposure to a particular domain facilitate us to discretized the knowledge further, facilitate us to built sharp and small categories on top of that knowledge spectrum. But is it the only thing or there something else.

we’ll discuss it in the second part…

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