ON Chiropractic
C
hances are you said 100.
Now think about it a little
longer. The correct answer
is 5. Try not to feel badly if
you got the answer wrong
the first time. Most people do. When we are
asked to think quickly, we usually rely on
our intuition to guide us in the right direction. In this example our intuition hears
5-5-5-5 then 100-100-100, and assumes the
next number in the sequences will be 100.
When we slow down and do the math,
it becomes clear that the correct answer is
5. In this example it takes 5 minutes to produce each widget. Whether 1, 100 or 1,000
widgets are being produced, each one will
always take 5 minutes to produce.
T
his example highlights the
difference between intuitive and
rational thinking. Dr. Aaron
Barth, a professor of critical thinking and
consultant on its application in business
settings, calls it “fast” and “slow” thinking.
His work is based on years of his own
scholarship and decades of research by
his colleagues. What he teaches is how to
harness the power of both types of thinking
by learning to apply them in their most
appropriate settings.
There are times when each is very helpful. Do not assume because your fast thinking led you to an incorrect response in the
widget example that it is frequently wrong
and not to be trusted. In fact, we trust our
fast thinking most of the time. We just tend
not to notice that we are doing it.
Fast or intuitive thinking is sometimes
thought of as “unconscious” thinking. Like
the operating system on our computers,
this type of thinking is going on in the
background. And, just like we can’t turn off
Windows without turning off our computers, our fast thinking is working away whenever we are awake.
How do we know it’s working? Imagine
you are in a crowded room and you hear a
loud bang. What is the first thing you will
do? Without hesitation you will determine the direction from which the sound
came. Next you will turn in that direction
and attempt to identify the source of the
sound and its cause. We are hardwired to
take these actions. Our brains cannot help
themselves. And it is a good thing too. With
little or no effort at all, our minds are taking
in a vast amount of data over the course
of a day and helping us adjust our actions
accordingly. Identifying the potential hazard
associated with a loud, abrupt noise is just
one example of this process at work.
L
et’s look at how our minds consume
data and draw conclusions. If
someone handed you a Tim Hortons
coffee cup and asked you to drink it down
quickly, would you? Of course you wouldn’t
because liquid in Tim Hortons cups is very
hot. In reality, the majority of the time the
liquid in a Tim Hortons cup is hot coffee.
So it is only natural to predict that any given
Tim Hortons cup will be holding hot coffee.
Reasoning in this manner is known as
patterning. Our minds identify familiar data
points in their environments constantly and
then predict what those data points might
lead to or mean. We are very, very good at
it. In fact, we frequently convince ourselves
that the patterns we see in the world are
true, even when compelling evidence to the
contrary is presented.
If someone you trust walked toward
you holding that Tim Hortons cup and said
“This cup is empty,” th