Mastermind

But oh how difficult it can be to apply either of these principles—the discounting of emotion or the need to never make exceptions,

you to think and act in a certain fashion. It’s priming at its most basic. Which particular nodes were touched, however, and how the activation spread depends on your own attic and its specific features. If, for instance, you are from a culture that values highly the wisdom of the elderly, while you would have still likely slowed down your walk, yo

And so, our initial impressions tend to hold an outsized impact, no matter the evidence that may follow.

This tendency is a common and powerful one, known as the availability heuristic: we use what is available to the mind at any given point in time.

Sherlock Holmes has illustrated the four elements most likely to allow us to do just that: selectivity, objectivity, inclusivity, and engagement.

To pay Attention means to pay attention to it all, to engage actively, to use all of our senses, to take in everything around us, including those things that don’t appear when they rightly should. It means asking questions and making sure we get answers. (Before I even go to buy that car or cell phone, I should ask: what are the features I care abo

Put differently, it’s like our brains initially see the world as a true/false exam where the default answer is always true.

He must be mindful of even those conclusions that he reached mindlessly,

if you remember Holmes’s early admonitions; you want to keep it as clean as possible.