Why is it that we cannot correct flaws in ourselves that we know we have?  Why can’t we adjust for our own biases and prejudices by sheer force of will?  Why can’t we change priorities and desires simply by wanting to?

Clearly there is a wire missing between our conscious and subconscious minds.  Our subconscious mind can tell us what to do, but we can’t bully our subconscious around in the same way.  Mostly because it’s sub… we don’t know what is going on in there at all. We have a limit to our self-knowledge.

It’s not just psychologists who experience the limitations of self-knowledge. Just consider Harry Markowitz, a Nobel Prize winning economist who practically invented the field of investment portfolio theory. In the early 1950’s, while working at the RAND Corporation, Markowitz became intrigued by a practical financial problem: how much of his savings should he invest in the stock market? Markowitz’s breakthrough was to derive a complicated mathematical equation that could calculate the optimal mix of assets. He had come up with a rational solution to the old problem of risk versus reward.

But Markowitz was incapable of using his own equation. When he divided up his investment portfolio, he ignored the investment advice that had won him the Nobel Prize. Instead of relying on the math, he fell into the familiar trap of loss aversion – this leads people to reject investments that might lead to losses – and he split his portfolio equally between stocks and bonds. Markowitz was so worried about the possibility of losing his savings that he failed to optimize his own retirement account.

via The Limits of Self-Knowledge : The Frontal Cortex.

The best we can do is be on guard to see what our subconscious is doing, and to try to correct anything that is not aligned with our conscious values, goals, desires.  And perhaps that is simply the difference between children and adults… that guard.

Along with the guard come a few tradeoffs.  First reactions.  Unguarded vulnerability.  True, innocent, glee.  And in exchange we get a little control, a little consistency of action and behavior, manners, etiquette, kindness, and fairness.

Is that a fair trade?

This entry was posted by Buster on Monday, October 12th, 2009 at 9:10 pm. It is filed under Responses. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.