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Brain-Based Transformational Solutions

Sudoku, Provisional Assessments,
and the Space of Possibilities

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I enjoy working Sudoku puzzles, especially the hard or challenger level, and I always look forward to the super challenger puzzles on the back pages of Dell’s Crazy for Sudoku books that take days to complete. (They look like the puzzle pictured above.)

A friend once said that she’d completed a Sudoku puzzle and, having solved it, did not see a point in doing it again. Certainly completing a puzzle successfully is one point of Sudoku, but for me it’s the incomplete puzzle that’s juicy, especially if I’m struggling with it and not sure I’ll be able to solve it.

Sudoku puzzles are a great example of one of the aspects of existential troublesome knowledge I talked about in the last blog post: what we don’t know exceeds and is more important than what we know. The numbers that are not filled in are more important than the numbers that are filled in. And there’s no way to know at the outset which numbers go in which blank spaces. You can only find out by taking action. As you fill in more numbers, you get more information, and eventually you solve the puzzle. This is a life lesson some of us struggle to learn.

There’s always a point where I feel stuck, at least with some hard or challenger level puzzles. I can’t find a next number to fill in. I used to get frustrated when I was stuck, but after going through this process so many times, I’m quite familiar with it and am no longer frustrated by it. I think Sudoku has trained my brain to recognize that being stuck is a temporary condition and so I actually appreciate the experience now.

I don’t know if or how I will solve the puzzle, but I now appreciate the space of not knowing, of uncertainty, because it’s also the space of possibilities. This is the same space I get into when I’m grappling with a conceptual problem or puzzle. And in both Sudoku and conceptual problem-solving, one is more likely to arrive at a “solution,” by trying different approaches.

If the only puzzles I have available are easy or medium level, I create “rules” to make them at least a little bit more challenging. I would never, for example, start by filling in all the 1s, 5s, or 9s I can fill in because that’s too easy. But in a challenger level puzzle, I would definitely start that way in order to get at least a few spaces filled in.

In Sudoku, there is only one correct solution to the puzzle. The same isn’t necessarily so for conceptual puzzles where my aim is usually to arrive at a provisional assessment rather than a definitive conclusion because in the conceptual world we never have all the information. But I don’t think this difference is particularly significant, and I heartily recommend activities like Sudoku to train the brain to appreciate uncertainty and to sort of force ourselves to recognize how much we don’t know—and how neither condition is either fatal or even undesirable.

Moving around Inside the Space of Possibilities

The fact that what we don’t know is more important than what we know has been a subject of discussion in classes, workshops, and individual meetings. I asked a couple of different groups to consider, write about, and summarize their responses to statements that described different aspects of our lack of knowledge. Here’s what they had to say. (The statements they are responding to are in italics.)

Our predictions about the future are constrained by the present.

When we try to imagine our future, we can only see a small slice of possibility—based on our current mental model.  The same is true about understanding our past—we do so based on who we are in the present.  When we move to a different rock, we see new things and, to some extent, lose sight of what we saw before. —Susie

We are driven to make sense of the world, whether or not the world makes sense.

It never occurred to me that one would not be able to make sense of the world. Why, all one has to do is work hard enough, read, listen, observe, and have the intelligence to integrate all the available information, and understanding will come. Right? I’ve long assumed that the world not making much sense (in many ways) was a failure on my part (I’m obviously not getting it all, nor fast enough) because of course all things must be understandable, given the right type and amount of information/instruction etc. —Lisa

Our brain habitually constructs coherent and compelling stories—tailor-made for each of us—based on the information available and our mental model of the world.

We seem to live in some illusion of reality or a unique reality to each of us that is constantly shifting towards a pre-existing story that the brain has developed.  We aren’t aware of the information that the brain is picking, discarding, ignoring or overlooking until after the fact.  How to consciously participate in this story of our own reality?  If it’s based on the information available to us and on our mental model of the world then it’s necessary to expand both, to become aware of what the brain is choosing to add to the stories. —Imelda

We prioritize cause-and-effect explanations and discount randomness (because we can’t account for it).”

How can we imagine a future without our history? Can I only imagine a future rooted in my past or can I possibly imagine a future untold? To understand that we are not divining our future but to accept that randomness plays a role in a possible eventuality serves up the possibility for change.  —Sammie

Each of us is weaving stories, not uncovering absolute truth. 

There are facts. 2+2=4. Truths are when we try to assign meanings to our perceptions of something that happened. Each of us has our own way of assigning meanings so no truths can be absolute, or shared by everyone. So we might as well weave beautiful stories, or at least useful ones. —Ann

We mistake perception for reality.

My perceptions seem to be more on the trees and not the forest. Actions and thoughts seem to be driven by a false narrative of what I perceive to be true. I can base life itself on little discussion and shoot from the hip decisions made in the small dark damp room on my shoulders, without much input from “me.” —Kelly

Our predictions about the future are constrained by coherence.

The future is way more exciting with those blinders noted. I am not even confined by my imagined trajectory! Why not create? —Adam

Onward

I invite you to consider these statements for yourself, along with the comments prompted by them. Where do they take you?

Asking ourselves what we don’t know in a given situation is useful even if we can’t answer that question just because it’s a reminder that we are always—100% of the time—operating based on limited information. Could there be something we don’t know, the knowing of which would change everything?

Existential Troublesome Knowledge

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There’s troublesome knowledge—and then there’s existential troublesome knowledge.

The concept of troublesome knowledge was developed in academia and has since been applied and utilized in many academic and non-academic areas including scientific exploration, mathematics, politics, finance, history, and even writing.

To refresh, knowledge is troublesome when it:

  • conflicts with preexisting beliefs, especially if those beliefs are deeply held
  • is counterintuitive or seems illogical
  • is complex or difficult to understand
  • is disconcerting
  • requires a (transformational) change in self-perception

Troublesome knowledge within a field of inquiry or endeavor is one thing. But troublesome knowledge about the very nature of how we as humans function and our experience in and of the world—i.e., existential troublesome knowledge—is something else altogether. It’s troublesomeness squared, at the very least.

Many of our most basic assumptions about ourselves…are false. —Leonard Mlodinow, Subliminal

Phenomenal Individualism and Its Implications

The pursuit of existential troublesome knowledge leads us to a number of inescapable conclusions that point in the direction of what has been called phenomenal individualism.

  1. Our experience is not an accurate reflection of reality, which means things are not as they seem.
  2. We cannot fully know or access the experience of any other person or creature.
  3. What we don’t know far exceeds what we know, and no matter how much we learn, this will always be the case; yet we operate as if what we see is all there is (WYSIATI).
  4. Not only is everything everywhere in motion all the time, but everything (including each of us) is a process, and everything is an interpretation.
  5. Rather than being, or resembling, a mechanical system, each of us is a complex adaptive system, physically, mentally, and emotionally.
  6. These factors all constrain our experience of being in the world—and there is no way out of these constraints—but they also create a space of possibilities, including the possibility of creating transformational change.

I believe the fact that our experience is not an accurate reflection of reality is the foundational threshold concept that we must get (incorporate into our mental model) in order to grasp the nature of our existence and experience: our space of possibilities.

You may recall that threshold concepts are likely to be, among other things:

  • Transformative: they lead to a significant shift in perspective that alters our sense of who we are as well as what we see, the way we see it, and how we feel and think about it.
  • Irreversible: they involve crossing a “threshold,” after which our previous understanding is no longer readily accessible.
  • Integrated: they reveal relationships and connections of aspects and ideas that were previously seen as unrelated.
  • Troublesome: they are difficult concepts to grasp and are therefore troublesome (see troublesome knowledge above).
The Space of Possibilities

What you or I make of the characteristics that circumscribe our existence—how we interpret them and work with them—depends on our mental model of the world, which includes our personality and our beliefs.

Do you find the idea that things are not only not as they seem, but never as they seem disturbing, confusing, trivial, or intriguing?

Is the idea that the extent of what we don’t know will always be far greater than the extent of what we know frustrating, obvious, or expansive?

Does knowing that everything you experience is the result of your brain’s interpretation of data that other brains are very likely interpreting differently make you curious or does it feel unnerving or even threatening?

The Thin Slice

It has become clear that our brains sample just a small bit of the surrounding physical world. —David Eagleman, Incognito

Although what Eagleman says is true, and it’s possible to grasp the concept intellectually, it is simply impossible for us to experience. That’s because our brain is continuously assessing and interpreting the data it has access to as if it is all the data there is. How else could it operate?

If we really understand and acknowledge this aspect of reality—that we are always working with limited information we treat as if it is all the information—we must realize that a likely majority of the conclusions and explanations we take for granted are inaccurate, sometimes extremely so. Our brain can’t take into account factors of which it is unaware. Yet there are always factors that affect us of which we and our brain are unaware.

The conclusions and explanations we arrive at daily are often good enough for us to get by—not so erroneous they threaten our survival. But that isn’t always the case. And even if they don’t threaten our survival, they can modify our mental model in ways that lead to maladaptive perceptions of our internal and external world. Taking all of our perceptions for granted can have detrimental effects on our experience and therefore on our actions in and reactions to the world, as well as our wellbeing, and our relationships with others.

We are not significantly different from humans of the past who didn’t believe in the existence of germs or bacteria because they couldn’t see them with the naked eye. Or humans who believed the earth was the center of the solar system. Or that the brain was a useless organ—or that we only use 10% of it. Or that our memories are accurate, and eye-witness accounts are reliable.

When more information was obtained, we modified our understanding of germs and the solar system and the brain and memory and eye-witness accounts. We have enough information now to modify our understanding of how we operate and how our experience is based on our interpretations.

If we don’t, or don’t want to, understand this thing called phenomenal individualism, we will constantly be at the effect of our mistaken beliefs, locked into a perceptual and experiential system within which we have very little room to maneuver and no room at all to create transformational change.

On the other hand, we can step into and take an active role within this space of possibilities.

More to come!

Born to Make Snap Judgments
—and Run with Them

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The brain is all about the action. It wants to know what’s going on with and around us so it can figure out what to do about it. Uncertainty only gets in the way of its imperative to always know and to always have an answer. Thus, the brain could be considered to be allergic to uncertainty and to the very idea of randomness.

Not only is the brain trying to figure out what’s going to happen next, it’s also trying to identify patterns to speed up and (hopefully) improve the process in the future.

In short, as far as the brain is concerned: randomness is bad; patterns are good.

Association

The part of the brain that is focused on what to do next operates via associative thinking rather than logical, linear thinking. Associative thinking (or learning) is based on finding patterns, making connections, and categorizing.  Associative thinking is fast and nonlinear, and we always have access to it.

Associative thinking takes place automatically. We can’t stop our brain from doing it, which is a good thing; if the brain wasn’t able to find patterns, make connections, and categorize things, our chances of survival would be diminished, and it would take us a lot longer to learn anything. Logical, linear thinking, which is used by the conscious part of the brain (System 2), is slow, effortful, and limited.

Since associative thinking puts a premium on speed rather than accuracy, however, it makes mistakes. If errors are not corrected, they can turn into beliefs or habits of thinking, just like habits of behavior, and become part of our mental model. The more frequently we encounter an apparent pattern or connection, the likelier we are to believe it is true and accurate. That’s also the case with classification and categorization.

Snap to It

Stereotype: fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing. (Oxford Dictionary)

We are born to judge others by how they look: our brains come hardwired with a specific face-processing area, and even shortly after birth, babies would rather look at a human face than anything else. Within their first year, they become more discerning, and are more likely to crawl towards friendly looking faces than those who look a bit shifty. By the time we reach adulthood, we are snap-judgement specialists, jumping to conclusions about a person’s character and status after seeing their face for just a tenth of a second. And we shun considered assessments of others in favour of simple shortcuts—for example, we judge a baby-faced individual as more trustworthy, and associate a chiselled jaw with dominance. —Kate Douglas, New Scientist

Other research indicates that these conclusions we begin jumping to in infancy can develop into stereotypes that then influence future interpretations as well as behavior. It’s highly likely that the brain generates all kinds of stereotypes as mental shortcuts to identify things, people, situations, etc.

Categorization

Categorization: the act of sorting and organizing things according to group, class, or, as you might expect, category. (vocabulary.com)

Categorizing is an automatic System 1 (unconscious) process. That means it’s easy; eventually tracks laid down in the brain carry us along effortlessly. We rarely question our perceptions because confirmation bias makes them feel right. While it is relatively easy—and requires no conscious attention—to lay down these tracks, the same cannot be said for changing them.

Recognizing the differences between things (distinguishing), on the other hand, is a System 2 (conscious) process that requires intention, attention, and effort. Those, in turn, require logical, linear thinking. Making distinctions can be difficult and often generates cognitive dissonance, which is uncomfortable.

Pattern Detection

Pattern recognition/detection: the imposition of identity on input data, such as speech, images, or a stream of text, by the recognition and delineation of patterns it contains and their relationships. (Brittanica, pattern recognition in computer science)

Patternicity: the tendency to find meaningful patterns in meaningless noise. (Michael Shermer)

We use our brain’s pattern-detection processes all the time: when driving a motor vehicle, listening to music, observing someone’s behavior, following a story, running experiments, playing games or sports, etc. The brain’s attempts to identify a pattern or determine if a pattern is present generate activity in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, which is part of the reward system. That means pattern-detection is reinforced by the brain.

It’s not a stretch to imagine that most if not all of perception is a result of pattern-detection. And given that pattern-detection operates unconsciously, in the part of the brain that values speed over accuracy, it’s also not a stretch to recognize how likely it is to be fallible.

According to Jamie Hale, in PsychCentral:

Our pattern-detecting ability serves us well in many instances, but it also can lead to seeing something when there is nothing there. In the words of Rudolf Flesch:

“Instead of the black and-white, single-track, everyone-knows-that-this-is-due-to-that approach, get used to the idea that this is a world of multiple causes, imperfect correlations, and sheer, unpredictable chance. It is true that the scientists, with their statistics and their probabilities, have made a stab at the harnessing of chance. But they know very well that certainty is unattainable. A high degree of probability is the best we can ever get.”

The brain lulls us into believing that we have a good grasp of what’s happening, that certainty is attainable, and that our snap judgments are accurate perceptions of reality. However, things are not as they seem.

Books to Change Your Mind,
Your Brain, and Your Self

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Here are brief summaries of a dozen books I consider foundational for understanding brain, mind, and behavior. Most of them were published between 2010 and 2012. There are plenty of books that have been published since then—and a couple I’m eagerly awaiting that will be out later this year—but these remain the most salient.

If you were to read all of them, you would see that some cross-reference each other in one way or another. That repetition is extremely useful! You would also get schooled in the extent to which we are wrong, which is also extremely useful.

Each summary includes a quote from the book, my take on what the book has to offer, and a link to a related blog post on my website. The books are listed roughly in order of importance.

Incognito | David Eagleman | 2011

Our brains run mostly on autopilot, and the conscious mind has little access to the giant and mysterious factory that runs below it.

It’s silent and dark inside the brain. So what happens in there to give us the rich visual and auditory perception of the external world we seem to have? How often do we mistake illusions for reality? Is the brain even focused on attempting to accurately represent reality or is it actively making things up? To what extent can you trust your sense of time? Is time real? How confident are you in your answers to any of those questions?

This was the threshold book for me: the book that didn’t just show me why and how the way we think about things is wrong, but also opened up so many possibilities. It left me with a big question: what is the best use of consciousness and conscious attention?

Blog post: Z Is for Zombie Systems

Thinking, Fast and Slow | Daniel Kahneman | 2011

A mind that follows WYSIATI (What You See Is All There Is) will achieve high confidence much too easily by ignoring what it does not know. It is therefore not surprising that many of us are prone to have high confidence in unfounded intuitions.

Here’s everything you wanted to know about System 1 (the unconscious) and System 2 (consciousness). I sometimes refer to these two parts of the brain as Smart Hamster (S2, the slow thinker) and Strong Hamster (S1, the fast thinker). Kahneman details the benefits and shortcomings of both types of thinking.

He also explains the basis of intuition and when it is—or is not—likely to be reliable, as well as some of the many cognitive biases System 1 uses in order to arrive at its quick judgments and conclusions. Overall assessment: mind-boggling.

Blog post: Intuition: Knowing Without Knowing How We Know

Self Comes to Mind | Antonio Damasio | 2010

The narrative of mind and consciousness that I am presenting here does not conform to the requirements of fiction. It is actually counterintuitive. It upsets traditional human storytelling. It repeatedly denies long-held assumptions and not a few expectations. But none of this makes the account any less likely.

Many of the books on my list contain what’s known as troublesome knowledge; Damasio admits upfront that his is one of them. He takes us on a trip from single-celled nonconscious organisms to us: many-celled conscious organisms with a sense of self and multiple selves.

I put off reading this for a long time, but it was worth the effort to get through the science to get to the issue of what it’s like to live with consciousness. As Damasio says, our conscious deliberation is circumscribed by numerous unconscious processes, some of which we can affect and some of which we can’t.

One surprising conclusion is that the unconscious is capable of making much higher-level decisions than we give it credit for—that is, if we have trained it well.

Blog post: Are You a Fictional Character?

The Ego Trick | Julian Baggini | 2011

The self is a construction of the mind, one flexible enough to withstand constant renovation, partial demolition and reconstruction, but one that can be brought down if the foundations are undermined.

Baggini, a philosopher, tackles a big question: If each of us has an enduring essence that makes us the same person throughout our lives (or even after), where and what is it? He attempts to answer the question via philosophy, neuroscience, psychology, and spirituality.

He says that the self is an illusion but that he does not mean it isn’t real, just that it isn’t what we think it is. That is the so-called “ego trick.” If there is no “true self,” we can, to a certain extent, create ourselves. His emphasis on action and agency make this a must-read, I think, for anyone interested in transformational change.

Blog post: Time to Let Go of the Myth of the True Self

What Makes Your Brain Happy and Why You Should Do the Opposite | David DiSalvo | 2011

I believe that the new wave of cognitive research actually undercuts a great deal of self-help advice, and will continue to do so in the years ahead by showing just how vacuous, groundless, and fraudulent much of that advice really is. We do not need more self-help—we need more science help.

The brain is “happy” when it is avoiding loss, lessening risk, and averting harm. While these protective tendencies can be quite useful, they can also get in the way of creativity, innovation, and living a satisfying and meaningful life.

The brain is also happy when it can connect the dots, whatever those dots may be: experiences, symbols, words, images, sounds. It does not like randomness, but it does like patterns. It doesn’t like questions; it likes answers.

As Disalvo says, we have a big brain capable of greatness with hardwiring for survival. And as I’ve said, learn how to use your brain instead of letting it use you.

Blog post: Are You Living the Good Life?

Stumbling on Happiness | Daniel Gilbert | 2006

Because it is so much easier for me to remember the past than to generate new possibilities, I will tend to compare the present with the past even when I ought to be comparing it with the possible.

We are really bad at affective forecasting (predicting how we will feel in the future or about a future event).

For a variety of reasons, making decisions about what to pursue in life based on what we think will make us happy in the future is largely a recipe for unhappiness. Where and how do we go wrong? Gilbert might say, Let me count the ways. In addition to exposing our wrongheadedness about happiness, he relates a considerable amount of research about a myriad of things we take for granted—and about which we are also wrong.

Note: You can skip the last chapter.

Blog post: Miswanting: The Problem with Affective Forecasting

The Storytelling Animal | Jonathan Gottschall | 2012

We are the great masterworks of our own storytelling minds—figments of our own imaginations. … And like a novel in process, our life stories are always changing and evolving, being edited, rewritten, and embellished by an unreliable narrator.

Stories permeate both our waking and sleeping lives. We are so addicted to stories that, even when the body goes to sleep, the mind stays up all night telling stories. Why do we find stories so compelling that we easily suspend disbelief? Why are we so compelled to turn everything into a story? And why should we question our—and others’—stories far more than we do?

Gottschall provides many fascinating stories about stories, including the stories of our lives, which are based on that most unreliable source of material: our memories.

Blog post: Consciousness Is a Narrative Process

The Hidden Brain | Shankar Vedantam | 2010

Nearly all our social, political, and economic institutions are based on an assumption of how human beings behave that is at best incomplete and at worst fundamentally wrong. The mistakes are so fundamental to the way we think about the world that we have enshrined them in international treaties and in constitutions.

What are the broader-scale effects of our assumptions, cognitive biases, and other errors in thinking? How do they affect our interactions with others and the ways in which we set up and run our social institutions, such as the criminal justice system?

Vedantam, who is the host of The Hidden Brain podcast on NPR, describes how our erroneous beliefs about the way we operate contribute to so many of the problems in the world. By becoming aware of them, we can begin to mitigate some of their negative effects.

Blog post: Success: Is It Random or Predictable?

On Being Certain | Richard Burton | 2008

To be effective powerful rewards, some of these sensations such as the feeling of knowing and the feeling of conviction must feel like conscious and deliberate conclusions. As a result, the brain has developed a constellation of mental sensations that feel like thoughts but aren’t.

As far as the brain is concerned feeling right is identical to being right. And we are persuaded by feelings more than we’re persuaded by facts. We don’t like being or feeling wrong—or being or feeling uncertain. This matters because the more certain we feel, the less likely we are to question our beliefs, judgments, or conclusions.

Among many other things, Burton talks about how feeling certain might, in some cases, serve an evolutionary purpose, what rewards have to do with certainty, and how seeing—or experiencing—should not equate with believing.

Blog post: I Could Be Wrong

Mind over Mind | Chris Berdik | 2012

Exploring the vast influence of expectations brings up humbling, even frightening possibilities. We might discover just how little contact we truly have with bedrock reality, and how much of our time, effort, and emotion we devote to watching and worrying over shadows. On the other hand, the power of expectations makes our reality coherent, meaningful, and open to the possibility of change, if we put our minds to it.

We can’t not have expectations, although we have often been advised to try. One reason is that our brain is in the business of predicting what’s going to happen next, and we have no control over that. We just go along for the ride.

Berdik explains what expectations have to do with—among other things—the placebo effect, addictions of all kinds, and athletic performance. Not surprisingly, the brain’s reward system plays a significant role in our responses to what are, first and foremost, our brain’s expectations.

Blog post: X Is for eXpectations

The Power of Habit | Charles Duhigg | 2012

Habits, scientists say, emerge because the brain is constantly looking for ways to save effort. Left to its own devices, the brain will try to make almost any routine into a habit, because habits allow our minds to ramp down more often.

From the brain’s perspective, habits are an energy-saving device. Duhigg tells us everything we need to know about them from the science behind them to practical application.

There are three parts to the so-called habit loop: a cue, a routine (the behavior), and a reward. Once a habit gets created, we can’t just eliminate it, but if we identify the cue and the reward, we can change the behavior. Similarly, if we want to create a new habit, we also have to determine what the cue and the reward will be.

Blog post: Is There a Blueprint for Habit Change?

Brain Rules | John Medina | 2014

The brain appears to be designed to (1) solve problems (2) related to surviving (3) in an unstable outdoor environment, and (4) to do so in nearly constant motion.* I call this the brain’s performance envelope.

Medina does in fact provide “rules” (which are more like recommendations) in 12 different areas: survival, exercise, sleep, stress, wiring, attention, memory, sensory integration, vision, music, gender, and exploration. He supports his recommendation with lots of data and examples.

In the chapter on wiring, he states that every brain is wired differently, but goes on to talk about what’s so for everyone (the “experience-independent” parts: much of the structure and function) as well as what’s so for individuals (the “experience-dependent” parts that are unique to each person). Our wiring is altered by what we do and what we learn.

*The book would have made my Top 12 list for this quote alone.

Blog post: 31 Ways to Be Good to Your Brain

Randomness Does Not Compute

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Have you noticed that the brain has an answer for almost everything? Not only does it work overtime to predict what’s going to happen next, it works nearly as hard to explain what happened after the fact.

The associative machinery of the brain seeks causes.

When something unexpected occurs, the brain tries to explain it and incorporate that explanation into our mental model. Random acts or events, however, are impossible to anticipate and account for.

A random act or event is one that is governed by or dependent upon chance.

Synonyms are: stray, accidental, arbitrary, indiscriminate, haphazard, unplanned, fortuitous, aimless, desultory, hit or miss, unpremeditated, purposeless, adventitious, chance, unintentional, and unexpected.

We’re continually nudged in this direction and then that one by random events. As a result, although statistical regularities can be found in social data, the future of particular individuals is impossible to predict, and for our particular achievements, our jobs, our friends, our finances, we all owe more to chance than many people realize. … In all except the simplest real-life endeavors unforeseeable or unpredictable forces cannot be avoided, and moreover those random forces and our reactions to them account for much of what constitutes our particular path in life. —Leonard Mlodinow, The Drunkard’s Walk

After the fact, everything seems inevitable. After the fact, the past appears coherent as a result of our storytelling mind imposing order on it. After the fact, we have a sense of having had far more control over the direction of our lives than we actually had. But a story is still a story, and there’s no such thing as a “true story.”

Hindsight bias is the tendency to construct one’s memory after the fact (or interpret the meaning of something in the past) according to currently known facts and one’s current beliefs. In this way, one appears to make the past consistent with the present and more predictive or predictable than it actually was.  —Robert Todd Carroll, The Critical Thinker’s Dictionary

The brain makes post-hoc dot connections.

It’s not surprising that when the brain looks back, it can construct a neat cause-and-effect explanation for an event that was not expected. The hindsight bias helps all of us maintain the illusion of control by seeming to eliminate randomness. But it’s only possible to clearly and accurately separate the signals from the noise—and connect the dots—after an event has occurred and the outcome is known. Even then, our explanations are going to be coming from our brain, which means our experiences, our point of view, our beliefs, and our biases.

Our brain looks for patterns in order to explain unexpected events so it will be better prepared to predict and respond to them the next time they occur. But no matter how good it may be at figuring out and responding to a single unexpected event that has occurred, it will never be able to predict truly random events.

The question is would you want it to?

Can you recognize a random act and accept it as such or are you more comfortable having an explanation for it even if that explanation isn’t true?

The photo at the top of the post is from the movie Stranger Than Fiction. Author Karen Eiffel (Emma Thompson) has been trying to decide how to kill off the main character in her novel. She finally figures it out when she notices an apple fall onto the sidewalk and roll away.

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