Mental Shortcuts Quotes

Mind is a machine for jumping to conclusions

We’re not used to calculating large amounts of data. Our brains think anecdotally.

Of course, analysis can sometimes give more accurate results than intuition but usually it’s just a lot of work. I normally do what my intuition tells me to do. Most of the time spent thinking is just to double-check.

An idea or a fact is not worth more merely because it's more available to you.

The trouble is that what we colloquially call “intuition” carries no label telling you where it came from. It can be based on expertise built over years. But sometimes it’s a cognitive bias. And sometimes it’s just fear.

An idea is a method of evading, circumventing or surmounting through reflection, obstacles that otherwise would have to be attacked by brute force.

Many of us develop different flavors of cynicism that we work hard to resist because they can be lazy mental shortcuts.

... sometimes when you are asked a question that is difficult, the mind doesn't stay silent if it doesn't have the answer. The mind produces something, and what it produces very characteristically is the answer to an easier but related question.

There is always the option of being emotionally lazy, that is, of quoting.

Intellectual labor is a common technique for the avoidance of thinking.

There are many people who reach their conclusions about life like schoolboys: they cheat their master by copying the answer out of a book without having worked the sum out for themselves.

People who face a difficult question often answer an easier one instead, without realizing it.

You do remember things that people say in movies. You remember particular lines and things that are funny. But, you also remember really strong images. Images have a way of bypassing your brain and hitting you emotionally.

It's always easy to describe something complex by applying to it an already known label.

It's the way the human brain works: when enough events occur in a pattern, we stop thinking and go into macro mode.

Dad always warned that it was misleading when one imagined people, when one sas them in the Mind's Eye, because one never remembered them as they really were, with as many inconsistencies as there were hairs on a human head (100,000 to 200,000). Instead, the mind used a lazy shorthand, smoothed the person over into their most dominating characteristic--their pessimism or insecurity (something really being lazy, turning them into either Nice or Mean)--and one made the mistake of judging them from this basis alone and risked, on a subsequent encounter, being dangerously surprised.

People negotiate their way around how a human mind works and find blind points. That's how people steal effectively.

A quotation is a handy thing to have about, saving one the trouble of thinking for oneself, always a laborious business.

There's nothing the world loves more than a ready-made description which they can hang on to a man, and so save themselves all trouble in future.

It's very attractive to people to be a victim. Instead of having to think out the whole situation, about history and your group and what you are doing... if you begin from the point of view of being a victim, you've got it half-made. I mean intellectually.

That's the way most everyone gets here. It's really quite simple: every time you decide something without having a good reason, you jump to Conclusions whether you like it or not. It's such an easy trip to make that I've been here hundreds of times.

Stupidity and unconscious bias often work more damage than venality.

Our minds have the need to know. When we dont know we make assumptions - they make us feel safer than not knowing. And we are pretty much always making assumptions.

You cannot avoid making judgements but you can become more conscious of the way in which you make them. This is critically important because once we judge someone or something we tend to stop thinking about them or it.

Far from being a loathsome aberration that ought to be purged from our behavior, it turns out that stereotypes are essential life tools, are accurate much more often than not.