

Your subconscious is smarter than you might think - Findlaynarmoa
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150217-how-smart-is-your-subconscious

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juanre
Here's a wonderful description by Henry Poincaré (Science et Méthode, 1908) of
how mathematics can indeed be done by parts of your brain you are not aware
of:

"À ce moment, je quittai Caen, où j'habitais alors, pour prendre part à une
course géologique entreprise par l'Ecole des Mines. Les péripéties du voyage
me firent vite oublier mes travaux mathématiques ; arrivés à Coutances, nous
montâmes dans un omnibus pour je ne sais quelle promenade ; au moment où je
mettais le pied sur le marchepied, l'idée me vint, sans que rien dans mes
pensées mathématiques parût m'y avoir préparé, que les transformations dont
j'avais fait usage pour définir les fonctions fuchsiennes étaient identiques à
celles de la géométrie non euclidienne."

An English translation:

"At that time, I left Caen, where I was then living, to take part in a
geological excursion under the School of Mines. The vicissitudes of the
journey made ​​me quickly forget my mathematical work; reached Coutances, we
entered an omnibus to drive somewhere; when I set foot on the step it occurred
to me, without anything in my mathematical thoughts having prepared me for it,
that the transformations I had used to define the Fuchsian functions were
identical to those of non-Euclidean geometry."

------
tannerc
Researching creative thinking processes over the last decade, this is a no-
brainer (pun not intended).

There is so much complexity to the brain that it's hard to imagine a time when
we, as human beings, will ever really understand how much of it works. It's no
surprise there's a lot going on "behind the veil" of consciousness, and I'm
glad researchers continue to show this is the case.

Similar studies have shown that the subconscious can recognize ambigious
shapes without the subject consciously becoming aware, solve problems
completely before raising solutions to the consciousness, and more.

How exciting to be driven by (or driving, depending on what you believe) such
a vastly complex thing.

~~~
electromagnetic
I'm a writer. As much as I work on my craft, when I sit down and put my
fingers on the keys I'm not doing any of it. 95% of what I write I have no
conscious decision in making.

I remember completely scrapping a 1500 word piece, rewriting the whole piece
and resubmitting it to my editor. He was amazed I did it so quickly, I was
quite disturbed I'd written the whole thing with barely an iota of conscious
thought going into it.

I don't think I'm riding shotgun for my consciousness, I think I'm a kid in
the back of the wagon.

~~~
Stoo
Also a writer. The first time I was given a writing prompt as a timed exercise
I was surprised by what I came up with. If I'd sat and thought of what to
write I never would have written what I wrote in a five minute unthinking
flurry.

~~~
tannerc
This is arguably true for most writers I think. Not all writing types, of
course, but for many. I created an iOS app around this very topic if you're
interested, it's fittingly called: Prompts.

~~~
Stoo
Sounds interesting, I'll check it out.

------
threatofrain
You guys may also be interested in reading Daniel Kahneman's Bounded
Rationality, or Dual Process of Cognition. It talks about the relationship
between two systems, one of which correlates to what we're talking about.

[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_process_theory#System_1](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_process_theory#System_1)

~~~
harperlee
I'm currently reading "Thinking, fast and slow" by Daniel Kahneman himself and
I couldn't recommend it enough.

One point he makes early in his book, though, is that when he talks about
"System 1" and "System 2", it is merely a figure of speech, that he talks
about two systems, two minds, precisely because of how we tend to relate to
each one of them as an agent. But he wants to be clear that reality, as far as
his research goes, is not "two systems". Or at least that's what I got from
it!

------
visakanv
I really liked this idea– I think by Robin Sharma [1], but by many thinkers,
really– that your subconscious is way smarter than you (where you = your
conscious, thinking self. The spotlight of your mind). It has more bandwidth
than you. It processes a lot more information than you.

Many, many great athletes, musicians, thinkers, etc– (there's a quote by Plato
in Plato's Republic where he talks about how while you can create conditions
for people to learn, the actual learning is a sort of madness) describe how
their performance is something almost out of their control. They control the
practice schedules, they do the hard training. The actual performance is
something they surrender to.

So in life, generally speaking, if you want to "live fully" (harnessing all
your abilities, perceptions, judgements, 'power'), you need to get your
subconscious involved.

Dan and Chip Heath used an elephant-and-rider analogy [2]. You are the
elephant rider. Your subconscious is the elephant. If you want to achieve
great things, you have to enlist the elephant. To do that you need to get
acquainted with it. Understand what it likes, dislikes, what it wants, etc.

And a very humbling and inspiring realization (for me, at least) is that the
subconscious is harder to bullshit. If you're spouting bullshit, it doesn't
get involved. It shuts off and stays quiet. For you to get your subconscious
involved (and now I'm thinking about Elizabeth Gilbert's TED talk [3] about
the muse, the genius, inspiration), you have to earn its respect.

You have to do the work, show up every day (also read– Stephen Pressfield's
The War Of Art [4]). Winning over your subconscious is just as hard– if not
way harder– than winning over other people.

There is really an endless amount of material about this. Charles Duhigg
alludes to it [5] when he talks about the power of habit– we make very few
decisions everyday, and mostly defer to our encoded behaviors.

TLDR:

If you want to do anything substantial, you're going to have to get your
subconscious involved. And this is a very humbling process that the usual
chest-beating motivational bravado tends to overlook.

Also recommended: Paul Graham's essay the Top Idea In Your Mind [6]

–

[1] [http://www.robinsharma.com/blog/04/my-strange-success-
ritual...](http://www.robinsharma.com/blog/04/my-strange-success-rituals/)

[2]
[http://heathbrothers.com/books/switch/](http://heathbrothers.com/books/switch/)

[3]
[http://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius?languag...](http://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius?language=en)

[4] [http://www.stevenpressfield.com/the-war-of-
art/](http://www.stevenpressfield.com/the-war-of-art/)

[5] [http://charlesduhigg.com/the-power-of-
habit/](http://charlesduhigg.com/the-power-of-habit/)

[6] [http://paulgraham.com/top.html](http://paulgraham.com/top.html)

~~~
pixl97
>(there's a quote by Plato in Plato's Republic where he talks about how while
you can create conditions for people to learn, the actual learning is a sort
of madness) describe how their performance is something almost out of their
control. They control the practice schedules, they do the hard training. The
actual performance is something they surrender to.

The conscious mind is like writing code, it's not easy to do, and takes a lot
of thinking to get anything done.

The subconscious mind is like the execution of compiled code.

------
petercooper
As I've gotten older, I've learnt to just accept things for how they seem to
be, rather than how I might "logically" think they _should_ be and this is why
I sleep on things.

More times than I could bear to count, I've stopped deliberating on a (usually
technical) tricky problem and then the next day an elegant solution jumps to
mind at an often unusual time. It's a great way to annoy customers or people
you're collaborating with (who think you're being lazy), but then they enjoy
the end results anyway so I can get over it.

------
jensen123
I'm skeptical. For example, in my bedroom, I have 2 cabinets. A while ago, I
moved my socks and underpants from one cabinet to the other. Afterwards, I
kept going to the "old" cabinet every morning for quite a few days. I'm
wondering if this is an indication how how smart my own subconsciousness is...

~~~
xj9
The brain doesn't rely on computation for intelligence, rather, storing and
identifying patterns. When you change something that is part of a habit, you
have to wait for your brain to rewire itself with the new behavior before it
becomes second nature.

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JoeAltmaier
Another subconscious anecdote: I read new modules quickly, just paging through
and letting my eyes view it, not thinking anything about it. Afterward I can
navigate around the terrain much faster than if I haven't 'walked the
property' first.

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peterbeischmidt
The subconscious also seems smart enough to fool modern medicine into
believing that something's physically wrong with your body when in fact
there's just emotional turmoil in the brain, see TMS.

------
estefan
The User Illusion by Norretranders is a fantastic read on the power of the
subconscious vs consciousness. Well worth a read.

~~~
visakanv
+1 to this. One of the most powerful books I've ever read.

------
jor-el
Possibly this result can explain the notion of wisdom. How people
subconsciously know about things to occur.

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moo
Why not link directly to PNAS article?
[http://www.pnas.org/content/109/48/19614.abstract](http://www.pnas.org/content/109/48/19614.abstract)
Personally I don't like the BBC, if HN is going to censor RT it should censor
rag BBC.

~~~
anigbrowl
Seconded, BBC science articles are dreadful. I am sick of their 1-2 sentence
'paragraphs' and dumbing down of concepts. There is better science writing in
the _Daily Mail_ , which is a depressingly low standard to be beaten by.

~~~
c0n5pir4cy
Agreed, BBC news in general has gotten pretty bad in general lately. It has
gotten much more link bait articles, pointless 2 line pieces and biased
articles that I can't treat it seriously anymore.

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Eye_of_Mordor
Is there such a thing as consciousness at all? Maybe we're just more or less
conscious of different interactions and these tests are really only showing
what we find the most difficult?

Bruce Lee said, "You must be shapeless, formless, like water. When you pour
water in a cup, it becomes the cup. When you pour water in a bottle, it
becomes the bottle. When you pour water in a teapot, it becomes the teapot.
Water can drip and it can crash. Become like water my friend."

Perhaps you mind is best left empty and in this emptiness lies life's greatest
achievement?

~~~
clavalle
I think it is more important to use the consciously rational mind to filter
the water before it fills the vessel. That way you know what you will be
getting when you drink from it later.

~~~
Eye_of_Mordor
Perhaps you don't need to be doing that if your subconcious mind is capable of
doing the same?

Is your concious 'rational' mind at war with your 'irrational' subconcious -
each reaching a different conclusion to the other? Or do they agree?

