Snipped from SciAm.com.

Well, here we are again, reminded of how our “thinking” gets in the way of, well, our thinking. It seems as if our conscious effort to make a good decision lowers the likely-hood that we actually make the best one.

Back in 2007, I wrote an article titled “Can We “Think” Outside of Our Consciousness?” where I make this assumption on the basis of a phenomenon called blind-sight. In it, I wrote about how this blind-in-one-eye (due to a brain injury) patient was consistently more right when guessing the location of a flashed image using his blind eye compared to his “good” eye. I then postulated that one could be more accurate in making decisions of all types if we could process more information outside of our consciousness. This would eliminate the evil of logic — emotion.

Here is a small portion of the article backing up my claim back in 2007:

We humans don’t always make the best choices. But now a study in the journal Neuron demonstrates that maybe our brains do make the best possible decisions—but only if it’s done unconsciously. Alex Pouget at the University of Rochester takes a look at unconscious information gathering. He says a lot of our good decisions—like stopping at a red light—are unconscious ones.

Subjects stared at dots moving around in random patterns on a screen. A controlled number were heading towards either the right or left of the screen. The subjects were asked if the dots were moving left or right. The longer subjects stared at the screen, the more sure they became of the answer.

Read Full Article Here!