What "future" do we want?

Saturday, January 08, 2005

Irrational choices

The Edge, a Web site devoted to science, posts an end-of-year question for a list of distinguished scientists. The end of 2004 question was: "What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it?"

I was struck by the response of Roger Schank, Psychologist and computer scientist; author of "Designing World-Class E-Learning, who said:
"People believe that are behaving rationally and have thought things out, of course, but when major decisions are made - who to marry, where to live, what career to pursue, what college to attend, people's minds simply cannot cope with the complexity. When they try to rationally analyze potential options, their unconscious, emotional thoughts take over and make the choice for them."
Dr. Schank may not feel he can prove this assertion as a general principle, but there is plenty of corroborating evidence in the everyday behavior of many consumers. It follows that, if we are going to create a future we want to live in, we must learn to become more thoughtful about our purchase and consumption decisions. A reasonable question is: how are we going to do that? What steps can we take to resist our natural tendency to decide based on (not always conscious) emotion rather than thought?
Murph 10:23 AM

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