I had heard that Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error was a good book that was well-written and it seems to be exactly that. Further, it is one of those books that seems to get deeper and more valuable the more I read it. I am interested in tricks and biases of the human mind but the other day, the author Kathryn Schultz went through a neat demo that convinced me that our minds are built for good thinking AND good thinking requires that we use methods that can lead to errors. She gives a simple multiple choice test that humans can easily and quickly pass while computers and strictly logical thinkers might require great amounts of time and searching. She convinced me that we use the simplest likely answer, based on little evidence and our experience.
I am still thinking about the "biases" of our minds but I am doing so with a new respect for their possible value. Consider the instance of a woman in Elizabeth Gilbert's ashram who tends to exclaim, "Oh, this is so beautiful! I want to come back here some day!" Gilbert says she tried to emphasize to her friend that the woman was there NOW and presumably should enjoy the beauty NOW. That certainly makes sense but this emphasis on the now as opposed to the future has severe limits. It is possible to differentiate the animals from the humans by the human thought for future needs and desires. The old tale of the ant and the grasshopper stresses the value of storing food for the winter so it will be ready in that stressful season. It is only human and it is smart to try to lay aside supplies and funds for more trying times. Heck, even squirrels do it.
It is true that we can fall into wanting more: lust, gluttony, avarice. These are three famous sins. Beyond that, no matter how delicious the bed, the table or the checkbook, we will, as Gilbert says of us all, have difficulty sustaining contentment, not to mention delight and high pleasure. We know that the 2nd time, the 2nd bite, the 2nd million is not going to be as uplifting as the first was. The old law of diminishing returns, the habit of habituation is there to fix continuing experiences so they are simply less entrancing that the first ones. But that reality makes at least thinking about storing up, about possessing love, feasts, sights all the more logical. If not now, if we have satiated ourselves, what could be more logical than at least considering storing something away for a future visit or pleasure?
