BellaOnline Forums Religion and Spirituality Philosophy How Clever Are We?

Hello

It always fascinates me how we think and make decisions. We think that the choices we make are reasoned, however, it is as if we are on automatic pilot make decisions from our past bias.

How Clever Are We?

Tracy

Hi Tracy!

Thanks for hosting this forum!

In looking at making decisions, we often make a few assumptions that E. Stone mentions in her Paradox of Policy Analysis book regarding influencing those deciding factors - among them, that we are all rational beings, that we will be flexible in our thinking, and that we are all united for the common good. Even more interesting and to your point - for those who believe in past lives (spiritual, physical, or otherwise), does the influence on how we make decisions stem even further back than we can imagine?

Hi Justin,

Thanks for your message. Philosophy is a fascinating subject. It's how we we make decisions based on erroneous information too. If someone shows you say a bottle of Champagne and assigns a price to it, you value it from that price. The same bottle could be shown to different people with a different price on it, and the decision will be made based on the figure presented - whether it is a correct figure or not.

I'm interested in how we can filter things out so much that we really don't see what is in front of us because we are so focused on what we are doing.

Perhaps our thoughts/thinking process is rooted in the past and even in our genes so we are unconsciously doing and saying whatever is running automatically. I would tend to lean towards your thoughts that decisions are probably influenced beyond our comprehension/imagination.

Good to connect with you :)welcome aboard,it looks like you are a new editor here.

Tracy