Brain laziness

How our Mind Deceives Itself for the sake of energy conservation

Nikita Lanskoy, "Scientific Russia"

Let's start with a small task. It is known that all cats are animals. My pet Sharik, by the way, is also an animal. So my pet is a cat, isn't it? Many readers are already ready to point out the mistake: "Yes, cats are really animals. But animals are dogs, parrots, elephants, and many others. So the conclusion is incorrect and the Ball is not a cat."

Well, my conclusion was indeed wrong. But did you notice? The error crept into the response logic. Yes, from the fact that all cats are animals, it does not follow that the Ball is also a cat. But there is no way to prove the opposite. He can still be her, because he's an animal. From the fact that my statement was erroneous, the "conclusion-antipode" did not automatically become true. This is a cognitive distortion.

Our brain makes such mistakes all the time. Notices patterns where there are none, loses sight of obvious details, makes false conclusions that seem indisputable. Everyone is subject to cognitive distortions, regardless of the development of intelligence, although some of them are characteristic of different ages to a greater or lesser extent.

Mindfulness test: Count how many times players in white jerseys will pass a basketball to each other.

Our brain can not be called a "bad computing machine." So far, no supercomputer has matched it in power. The reason for such errors lies not in its underdevelopment, but on the contrary — in a very advanced energy saving system. Simply put, our mind is lazy. In most cases, he prefers the shortest path to solving the next problem, even if the result is likely to be erroneous.

In total, there are four main problems that our brain constantly faces and which lead to cognitive distortions.

• An overabundance of information. No matter how powerful the brain is, it is not able to read and process all the information that comes to us. Because of this, he constantly has to cut off the "unnecessary".
• Difficulty of understanding. The information already collected needs to be processed, and sometimes the task turns out to be too difficult. The brain stitches together disparate pieces of knowledge "on a whim", based on previous experience.
• The need for a quick reaction. We are limited not only by information, but also by time. To survive, decisions must be made quickly, and therefore the brain begins to predict events and try to model the future.
• Limited memory. We can't remember everything, and even if we could, it would make it difficult to quickly access really important memories. So the brain has to constantly decide what to leave and what to forget.

Thanks to this system, we can make decisions almost at lightning speed and rarely find ourselves "in a stupor" because of a new situation or event. After all, the brain is perfectly designed to work on one main task: survival. However, this approach invariably leads to errors. What is it?

Overabundance of information

How to choose from an endless stream of new thoughts, images, and events the ones that are really important? The brain has several ways. Have you noticed that the more often you think about a subject, the more you notice things related to it in the world around you? A fashion designer pays attention to clothes, an auto mechanic — to cars. This is called a systematic attention error, because by preferring familiar images, we cut off everything unfamiliar, even if it could be valuable.

At the same time, our brain is attracted by oddities, outstanding cases, while the familiar almost does not linger in our thoughts: "pa, ni, 48, mi, os, yes, 12, il, va." Isn't it true that in the above series numbers attract more attention than syllables? The contrast effect also works here, drawing our attention to itself.

Contrast effect. The upper rectangle seems lighter than the lower one, although their color is the same. Source: Wikipedia

Finally, we are happy to highlight information that confirms what we already have. If you've ever bought something you don't need at all, you may have noticed how easily you convince yourself that there will definitely be a use for it. We do not like to feel flaws in ourselves, but we are happy to notice them in others.

Difficulty of understanding

Survivor's mistake. The holes on the returned planes show places whose damage is not fatal.  Authorship: Martin Grandjean (vector), McGeddon (picture), Cameron Moll (concept). Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0

What happens when the brain has already collected information, but it is not enough to compile a complete and reliable picture of the world? Any anecdote about racial stereotypes will be the answer. If we don't know something about a person, then we are very likely to start drawing conclusions from generalizations and our past experience. Or according to rumors, even if you are not sure of their justice: if one stranger tells you that another stranger is a thief, you will willy—nilly begin to beware of the second.

The brain constantly, and sometimes completely indiscriminately, calculates costs, quality and probabilities. The "systematic survivor's mistake" is precisely related to this problem: the brain draws conclusions from "successes" without taking into account "failures". The "group attractiveness effect" also belongs to the same category of cognitive distortions — the faces of people in a group seem more beautiful due to the fact that the brain pays less attention to people's individual shortcomings.

In addition, for the sake of simplicity of calculations, the brain takes it for a fact that people around us think the same way as we do. But anyone who has ever played charades knows how difficult it is to explain something to another person through a seemingly obvious association. Moreover, we project our modern way of thinking onto ourselves in the past and future, calling something "obvious" in hindsight, although at that moment it did not seem so to us.

The need for a quick reaction

If every time we faced difficulties or new information, we began to calculate all possible solutions to problems, then as a species we would not last long. For this reason, the brain has developed several simple strategies that push us to action. And the first is the illusion of control. In order to act, we must believe that we can change reality, even if in fact our decisions have little effect on anything.

The human mind prefers quick and visible results, rather than playing for a long time. However, if we have already started something once, we will persistently develop, spend time and effort, even if in fact it would be more profitable to stop. Even furniture assembled with our own hands seems to us more valuable than exactly the same, in which, however, we have not invested any effort.

But the brain likes not just quick solutions, but also safe ones. Therefore, in many situations where risk could bring greater dividends than maintaining the status quo, we still prefer stability. The reliable and familiar ensures our survival as a species, while non-trivial actions can lead to death.

Limited memory

It is impossible to remember everything. But how to understand what to remember in this case? Obviously, the brain prefers things that may be useful in the future. Generalizations are more profitable than specifics, many particulars are filtered out, leaving only a few curious cases.

Even what we seem to have already memorized is easily affected and changed. Has it ever happened to you that your own idea suddenly turned out to have been invented by someone for a long time? Yes, a variant of a simple accident is possible. But most often our brain just forgets that it has learned the idea somewhere, and begins to perceive it as its own.

If the brain needs to memorize an array of disparate data, then it is more likely to pay attention to several outstanding elements of the list. The brain will keep the most interesting examples in memory, and everything else will be eliminated as insignificant. Subsequently, the brain will build a memory of an array of data based on these "examples". Do you remember Chekhov's "Horse Name"? This story describes much the same effect.

Consequences of cognitive distortions

Although cognitive distortions in themselves are rather useful, you need to understand that over time they can lead to some problems. By constantly cutting off information, we sometimes lose valuable and necessary things. Trying all the time to complete the picture of the world from scraps of data, we can easily draw the wrong conclusions. Quick decisions don't always lead to good results. And finally, our memory sometimes only reinforces our own mistakes.

We cannot get rid of cognitive distortions: our brain is amazing, but not perfect. However, we are able to turn them to our advantage. If you study them more carefully, pay attention to them more often, then soon the brain will get used to watching its own mistakes, as it gets used to many other things. Using our brain as a tool, we will be able to better understand ourselves — with all the advantages and disadvantages.

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