Posted by: Marius Constantinescu
"The experience of conscious will is often an illusion akin to the ‘third variable’ problem in correlation data. We often experience a thought followed by an action, and assume it was the thought that caused that action. In fact a third variable, a nonconscious intention, might have produced both the conscious thought and the action. [...] Wegner and Wheatley acknowledge that conscious will is not always an illusion, just that it can be." (from "Strangers to Ourselves - Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious" by Timothy D. Wilson)
"Some years ago, the psychologist Timothy Wilson wrote a book with the evocative title 'Strangers to Ourselves'. You have now been introduced to that stranger in you, which may be in control of much of what you do, although you rarely have a glimpse of it. System 1 provides the impressions that often turn into your beliefs, and is the source of the impulses that often become your choices and your actions. It offers a tacit interpretation of what happens to you and around you, linking the present with the recent past and with expectations about the near future. It contains the model of the world that instantly evaluates events as normal or surprising. It is the source of your rapid and often precise intuitive judgments. And it does most of this without your conscious awareness of its activities. System 1 is also [...] the origin of many of the systematic errors in your intuitions." (from "Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman - winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics)
“We usually think of ourselves as sitting the driver's seat, with ultimate control over the decisions we made and the direction our life takes; but, alas, this perception has more to do with our desires - with how we want to view ourselves - than with reality.” (from "Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions" by Dan Ariely)
"Perhaps the best use of consciousness is to put ourselves in situations in which our adaptive unconscious can work smoothly. This is the best achieved by recognizing what our unconscious needs and traits are and plan accordingly. But how do we recognize what our unconscious needs and motives are? That is the million-dollar question." (from "Strangers to Ourselves - Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious" by Timothy D. Wilson)
