Unthink - Chris Paley

'Why you don't think the way you think you think' these words almost made me think that who ever wrote em is definitely high. I must warn you reading this book also gives a similar feeling.

Though I wasn't convinced with most of the stuff dealt in the book especially parts where he tries to explain unconscious and conscious mind games and vouches that it always happens 'his way'. But there are some amazing one liner statements which I loved and I thought it should be shared. Each one liner has a story to unfold.. Any case this is no book review..

Thought alone cannot tell us what thought is for

We can only understand ourselves through experiments on other people.

Imitation is sincerest form of flattery.

We live through metaphors and metaphors live through us.

Remembering something doesn’t mean it happened.

We like things more the more we see them.

We do what we imagine others do.

Finding a rational justification for moral decisions isn’t easy.

Our moral decisions are primarily emotional decisions.

Moral reasoning is for defending choices not making them.

We make better lawyers than judges

When something’s really bad, we have to blame someone, even if it’s the victim.

We re-use the tools that are lying around in the brain rather than invent new ones.

People who don’t believe in free will choose to be bad.

We have an emotional attachment to the rational nature of our irrational choices.

Art and philosophy are how we think about things that haven’t yet become a science.

Most people put more time into learning things than understanding how their minds work.

The unconscious does what the conscious thinks the conscious does

We don’t need to be conscious to do the things we are conscious of.

The way we think of learning is due to the way we are taught rather than the way we learn.

Our unconscious can read and it is taught to understand value of money.

The unconscious rules and it determines the way we behave.

If the brain is a library, the mind is a lazy reader.

Your hand’s eye is more accurate than your mind’s eye.

You might think it’s what’s inside that count. But your brain constructs inside from the inside from the outside, whether you’re looking at someone else – or yourself.

We don’t choose something because we like it, we like it because we choose it.

You invent the method used to solve a problem after you’ve solved the problem.

We believe we want to do what we are doing, otherwise how would we explain to others why we are doing it?

Culture is possible because we do what others do and believe we want to do what we do.

We can see without being conscious of seeing, but we can only explain what we see with consciousness.

Arguments are used for defending choices, not making them.

Minds don’t exist, but they are still useful

To understand ourselves, we have to understand how we understand other people.

To make predictions about other people, we need to model them. We don’t know how we or other people work; we can only model minds.

A model doesn’t have to be right to be useful.

Animals can behave socially without knowing anything about minds.

Once we’ve mastered a skill it is the decision to use this skill rather than the mechanical details that are interesting.

We are aware about conflicts because they are interesting.

Getting ourselves right is harder – and less important – than getting other people right.

Minds are hard to study because we have them.

Consciousness is to the brain what a PR agent is to a company. And it is for understanding other people, not ourselves.

Consciousness is only one of many advisers in the brain, and it can be made more or less influential

Consciousness is just one adviser in the brain, and it doesn’t the strongest one.

Exercise strengthens your mental muscles as well as your physical muscles.

If we look after our brain it will allow us to do more of what we want to do.

Knowing that you are trapped in an illusion doesn’t help you to escape.