You Are Not So Smart

Future-you will give in, and then you’ll go back to being now-you and feel weak and ashamed.

The trick is to accept that the now-you will not be the person facing those choices, it will be the future-you—a person who

Thinking about thinking—this is the key.

If you see lots of shark attacks in the news, you think, “Gosh, sharks are out of control.” What you should think is “Gosh, the news loves to cover shark attacks.”

When it comes to explaining why you like the things you like, you are not so smart, and the very act of having to explain yourself can change your attitudes.

According to Wilson, when you are faced with a decision in which you are forced to think about your rationale, you start to turn the volume in your emotional brain down and the volume in your logical brain up

you quickly redact your past so you can feel the comfort of always being right.

It all starts with your brain’s desire to fill in the gaps.

The emotional brain, Lehrer argues, is older and thus more evolved than the rational brain. It is better suited for complex decisions and automatic processing of very complex operations like somersaults and break dancing, singing on key and shuffling cards.

This is why the invention of written language was such an important step in your history—it allowed you to take notes and preserve data outside the limited capacity of the rational mind.