Many saw the recent article in the WSJ that shows our mind is often made up before we are conscious of it. We’re only beginning to unravel the mysteries of neuroscience thanks to new innovations like functional MRI.
There’s something eerie but also satisfying about this new research. Commonly held ideas around “sleeping on a decision” or “having too much time to think about it” have a scientific basis.
If scientists are right we would be better off letting the flow of ideas, decisions and energies we are getting from our subconscious direct or actions and output. It appears that the conscious parts of our brain are only a tiny fraction of our processing power. Even though it’s not exactly scientific one of our favorite authors, Arnold Patent, talked about the one use of the conscious mind is to make the decision not to use it!
Turning back to technology it’s interesting to note that most endeavors that we know about seem to center around a single reasoning or processing model for success. Even the most intriguing like Hierarchical Temporal Memory (HTM) works essentially as a single model.
It feels as if it makes sense to have multiple versions of multiple models being brought to bear on decision making. In addition it is clear that many sensory and data inputs are inexact and incomplete yet very high quality decisions can still be made. In the mundane realm of business intelligence and decision support we probably spend way too much time on getting precise data and normalized formats. Knowing relative values, rates of change or even simply direction may be far more useful in making decisions than “clean” data and accurate data models.
It’s all a strong reminder that we are still very early in coming up with effective approaches for decison making and information management. Investors have much to look forward to.
