Intuitive Decision MakingThe Abrupt Decision. William James described the intuitive decision making processes of the mind. He wrote of a person, getting up from a warm bed on a cold winter morning. Cozy warmth under the blanket competed with shivering cold signaling the day's drudgery. The lad lay unable to brace himself to get out of bed. Then a sudden decision was made. William James called it a lucky idea, which "awakens no contradictory or paralyzing suggestions, and consequently produces immediately its appropriate motor effects...." Abruptly, negative feelings were stilled and he got quickly out of bed. James called it a shift from "wish" to an act of "will." How does the mind make a swift intuitive decision?
 The ActorsYour mind contains an assembly of intelligences, in a triune brain accumulated by nature over millions of years.Medical research suggests that these entities function in a manner similar to the governing processes of a country. At the lowest levels, individual actors make their own decisions. Higher level decisions are made by the communities, by the state governments and finally, by the central government. Homeostasis Experiments on the "homeostasis" of animals revealed the roles of these actors. Homeostasis is the achievement of equilibrium by the organs (the actors) within the body, in a changeable environment. Individual actors supervised various sensing, feedback and control systems. By studying the effect of destroying localized target regions in animals, science identified the pivotal roles of these actors. Intuitive Decision Making - The Role Of Emotions As higher levels were included with the spinal cord below the cut off section, the system made more effective decisions. Within the triune brain, the mammalian and reptilian brains managed adequately, even if the human level prefrontal region was cut off. The real you, RI, exists in this region, above the thalamus. But, your emotions, triggered from the levels below, generally make the decisions, which manage your life. The homeostasis experiments revealed that if the (RI) levels above the thalamus were cut off, the intelligences below could manage a wide range of activities including “feeding, drinking, apparent satiation and copulatory responses” in a broad range of adverse conditions. Evidently, RI, (you) in the prefrontal region, plays a minor role in intuitive decision making. The system can manage quite well without you! Intuitive Decision Making - The Kezwer Approach Since there are no established theories about intuitive decision making, it is useful to look into your own mind to see how your mind makes its decisions. Glen Kezwer advocated using your own mind as a research lab to study experience. "The cost to the government exchequer and the people is nil, no research grants need be applied for, no progress reports are necessary and there is no need to be concerned about the renewal of funding. There is also no pressure to publish papers, technical reports or books on the experiment." This article suggests that you could try a few of these mental experiments to understand intuitive decision making. Intuitive Decision Making - RI Does Not Decide You are RI. Normally, you believe that you make the decisions of your mind. You think you can raise your arm, using your will. As soon as you will it, your arm goes up. But, suppose you are in an elevator with other passengers. Then, it is inappropriate to raise your arms. If you will this action in that situation, it will not happen. Actually, your intention will be overruled if your action is not Worthwhile, Appropriate, Safe, or Practical (WASP). Many of your good intentions are ignored by your mind on the Worthwhile consideration - like reading a report, when you are sleepy. Appropriate - you will not wink at a stranger. Safe - Not jump off the high diving board. Practical - attempt to learn Greek. In every WASP case, your mind has overruled your will. So, obviously you do not make the final decisions of your mind. Intuitive Decision Making - A Single Emotion Cannot Decide When you carry out your WASP tasks in life, many emotions compete in your subconscious. Have you not sometimes been seething with anger below, while being polite outside? Have you not had the urge to go off on a holiday, while going to work? Your actions are controlled at any point by one of many emotions. Fear, sadness, disgust, contempt, curiosity, surprise, love, pleasure, embarrassment, guilt, and shame are some of the major emotions which impact your behavior. Your emotions compete with each other. Each has a blinkered view. Anger cannot respond, if the action is not appropriate. With its deep wisdom, nature evaluates priorities and grants control to a single emotion at a time.  The Limbic SystemYour emotions are triggered from the mammalian region of your brain. Also called the limbic system, it contains a ring of interconnected neurons with over a million fibers connecting the thalamus, the hippocampus, the septal areas, the amygdaloid body and the insulae. These regions prioritize and trigger your emotions and feelings. The ring of fibers, which connect these organs shares a common feature with your spinal cord. Both make complex and interdependent decisions. Both these massive neuron channels have feed forward and feedback links. That feature provides the answer to the decision making processes of the mind. Intuitive Decision Making - The Spinal Cord The spinal cord fine tunes the final decisions of 60,000 motor neurons, which control your movements. Muscles can only contract. When one muscle relaxes, an opposing one contracts to open your finger, or to bend your elbow. Thus, when you sit down in your chair, your movements are controlled by muscles, which contract, or relax, upto 10,000 times a second. Each motor neuron in the spinal cord has upto 20,000 interneurons, which report to it the movements of other muscles. These are feed back and feed forward links. Feedback links inform the muscle of actions already taken and feed forward links, of actions about to be taken. Intuitive pattern recognition enables the spinal cord to coordinate these complex interactions, where all muscles contract, or relax in harmony. Intuitive Decision Making - Evolutionary Adaptation The spinal cord has a neural mechanism, which can finely coordinate complex and opposing neural interactions. The limbic system has a million fibers, which carry a massive range of complex emotions. Emotions essentially fall into two opposing categories - agreeable, or disagreeable. Nature required a system, which could finely coordinate opposing impulses to deliver a smooth output. Francois Jacob had noted one unique quality of evolution. “In contrast to the engineer, evolution does not produce innovations from scratch. It works on what already exists, either transforming a system to give it a new function or combining several systems to produce a more complex one.” Nature uses the feed forward, feedback links in the spinal cord again in the limbic system to decide your current emotion. Intuitive Decision Making - Combinatorial Memories If an animal felt both hunger and thirst, it could not stop undecided between its urge to eat and its need to drink. A single decision to act was indispensable. The final emotion decided the action. The decisions of the limbic system depended on massive memories. Codes, which could fill cubic miles of 500 page books inform the limbic system of thousands of priorities in decision making. Any action, which is not WASP (worthwhile, appropriate, safe, or practical) is to be instantly inhibited. A searing emotion indicates a serious problem for the system. That emotion is immediately assigned control. Paul Eckman, the famous emotions scientist wrote "We become aware a quarter, or half second after the emotion begins. I do not choose to have an emotion, to become afraid, or to become angry. I am suddenly angry. I can usually figure out later what someone did that caused the emotion." The limbic system decides, whether you should be angry, or afraid. No "Ghost Within"Does this article suggest there is no free will? Surely people have the powerful ability to initiate, cause, activate, begin, create events? Is that amazing competence merely pattern recognition by nerve cells? Who initiates all this activity? Is there not a consciousness, an “I” with a free will, which controls his/her actions? NO! Conveyor Decisions Engineers who program a production line are familiar with automated decision making. A machine picks components from a conveyor. It identifies each component and deposits it in its proper bin. The machine makes its choices and acts. Because it is designed to make choices and act as long as it is switched on. Free will is just an automatic mechanism which triggers the next highest priority activity of the system, while the system is awake. The "initiation" is merely a switching process by the limbic system, which selects the most powerful emotion as the current motor control option. And, you cannot move a muscle, or even focus your attention, if the system decides otherwise. Intuitive Decision Making – Errors In Interpretation Emotional interpretations by the limbic system depend on the final evaluation of an event. Often, there are conflicts in internal recognition messages. In such cases, the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) has been noted to become active. Such activity has been observed in the ACC, when a subject solves recognition conflicts in the “Stroop Task.” In this task, a subject is required to name the color of the ink for the word “RED,” written in blue. Here color recognition conflicts with word recognition. ACC is believed to evaluate and settle such conflicts. The system has to decide whether a garden hose, or a snake, is seen behind the bush, before triggering the fear emotion. Emotions are triggered after the resolution of such conflicts at higher levels. It is ACC, which settles the conflict and switches off fear at its roots, if the object is actually a garden hose. Such error detection and resolution does not involve executive functions. Lesions in the ACC do not cause a loss of executive functions. Intuitive Decision Making - Calm Control By RI Located in the prefrontal regions, RI is the real you, the unemotional rational human level intelligence. With its vast inherited and acquired wisdom, it knows what is right for you. When RI is in control, you have effective mind control. Unfortunately, a more primitive mammalian brain, the limbic system, decides who should take control. Its priority is the most vociferous emotion. The limbic system is the powerful decision making part of the human brain. It stands between RI and a rational world. Will power usually fails. So, raw animal emotions rule a tragically large part of human activity. Wise men across history sought ways to still emotions. Only a still and calm mind can put RI in charge. This website suggests Mind Control Tips to still emotions and place you in charge. Back To Top Return from Intuitive Decision Making To Effective Mind Control Home Page E-Mail Me Your Comments |
Science suggests that the nervous system contains a hierarchy of intelligent decision systems. Homeostasis experiments revealed the existence of these independent and cooperative self governing entities.
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Effective Mind Control
Mind Control Tips
Steps to reach your highest RI level of consciousness.
A Self Improvement Plan
A life plan for effective stress relief.
Developing Self awareness
The process can take the sting out of your fears and frustrations.
Eugene Gendlin Focusing
About Eugene Gendlin's steps to achieve self awareness.
Who Am I?
The great sage Ramana Maharshi advised his pupil to ask this question.
How To Relax At Work
Steps to help you to relax quickly while at work.
Breathing Exercises
Conscious breathing stills disturbing emotions.
Visceral Reaction
An exercise to subdue the impact of a visceral reaction.
Mindfulness Exercises
Your ability to recognize patterns can improve the quality of your life.
Coping With Stress
How to "Accept the things you cannot change."
About Will Power
Will power has nothing to do with a free will.
The Startle Response
On dealing with unwanted surprises in life.
Your Hidden Emotions
Your Hidden Emotions
How to uncover and regulate your hidden emotions.
When Life Has No Meaning
Finding the meaning of life has little to do with your happiness.
Overcoming Shyness
It is all about being comfortable with people.
Developing Intuition
Enrich your life by gaining timely and helpful insights.
A Cure For Boredom
Permanently cure the boredom malady.
The EFT Way To Be Happy
Be rid of your bad feelings through acupressure.
I Am So Sad
Not a mild, momentary unhappiness, but afeeling of intense grief.
Make Life Meaningful
Can 15 year old Angie make life meaningful?
What Causes Fear
A potential for pain, or an unrecognizable event, causes fear.
Dealing With Severe Guilt
A few years back, Ann swung out on to the outer lane to overtake...
Controlling Anger
Achieve a measure of control and your mind will not revert.
On Swallowing Your Pride
All about avoiding embarrassment.
The Power Of Gratitude
While it brings a sense of well-being, is it justified?
Social Comparison
A relentless and often troubling drive within you.
Overcoming Low Self Esteem
Learn to rid yourself of a painful habit.
Respect
Respect is a herd emotion, which helps you to jump the queue.
What Is Trust?
Trust is a positive emotion, which makes people rely on others.
Contempt
The word "contempt" implies either disgust, or disrespect. The two are different.
The Power Of Expectation
Hidden expectations become self-fulfilling prophesies
Pessimist To Optimist
Switch off pessimism and improve your health.
A View Of The Mind
How The Mind Works
Pattern recognition explains the brilliant wisdom of the mind.
The Triune Brain
The three guiding objectives of nature's control systems.
Consciousness & Soul
Your consciousness occasionally mirrors your soul.
Levels of consciousness
Evolution created different levels of consciousness.
What Causes Emotions?
The neural signals, which control behavior.
The Secret Of Intuition
Intuition is a pattern recognition algorithm.
The Subconscious Mind
The troubling drives within your subconscious mind.
What Is Intelligence?
A 2004 Nobel Prize refers to the central secret of human and animal intelligence.
Human Memory Capacity
About the immense capacity of human memory.
The Olfactory Sense
The olfactory sense has used a specific coding principle for hundreds of millions of years.
How Do We Remember?
Nerve cells recognize your current emotion and recall related images.
Long Term Potentiation
LTP is not the basis for human memory, but merely assists memory retrieval.
Behavior Pattern Recognition
Enables the mind to understand events.
Memory Research
Science has not focused on its huge capacity and precision.
Amygdala & Emotions
The amygdala triggers your emotions faster than your conscious awareness.
Insular Cortex & Social Emotions
The insular cortex grants you self awareness, empathy and social discipline.
Mirror Neurons
How can a group of neurons generate a subtle experience like empathy?
Stress Relief & Attention
Focusing attention inwards is the secret of effective mind control.
Theory of Mind
The knowledge, which enables you to predict and manipulate the behavior of others.
Meditation Benefits
Understand why it works.
A Theory Of Motivation
Motivation levels are regulated by neural pattern recognition events.
Acupuncture - How it Works
Acupuncture utilizes the capacity of the mind to sense combinatorial patterns.
Daniel Amen
How he links brain images to behavioral problems is inexplicable to many scientists.
Determinism vs Free Will
Free will loses in the determinism vs free will debate.
Define Common Sense
Science cannot clearly define common sense.
Intuitive Decision Making
Intuition can hand over control to fear, or make wise decisions.
Organ Transplants
Behavior transfer after organ transplants.
The Limbic System
The limbic system makes the behavioral choices of the human mind.
Artificial Intelligence
The AI disadvantage
AI lacks the real tools needed to succeed. It has one now!
Uncertainty & Expert Systems
Uncertainty can assist Expert Systems to diagnose problems.
Future Computers And Robotics
The Evolution Of Computers
The next stage is pattern recognition, leading to true artificial intelligence.
Robots In Our Future
They will, one day, be able to read and understand this article.
Kurzweil Singularity
Singularity will not be the end of human understanding.
Watson Computer - Finally, Strong AI!
UIMA, a program that can read and understand this article.
A View Of Management
Motivation Techniques
Motivation techniques should be humane and help people to achieve excellence.
Stress Free Career Success
Stress free career success is possible even if you are not a millionaire.
Practice Love and Compassion
Practice love and compassion as your life strategy and flow with the tide of nature.
NLP For Dummies
NLP is for dummies.
Living In The Now
A way of blocking out bad thoughts and finding joy.
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