Why Does Too Much Logic Create Magic?
Good psychological processing leads to intimacy with ourselves and then with others
Human beings aren’t machines that follow simple good logic. The equal questioning used for designing a car cannot be used for designing a society.
We are a complicated system in which the policies change consistent with context. And we follow a far more developed shape of logic called psycho-logic.
Processing psychological information first means using psycho-logic not linear logic. Psycho-logic is circular because, in the psychological communication network, everything is relational, not causal. Things relate to each other, inform each other, impact each other, and are associated with each other. Spirals are the symbol that best captures the inner world because not only is everything relational but there is no hierarchy, no inequality, and there is no innate hostility. If the integrity of the communication network is maintained, each message is equally legitimate and needs to be considered, reflected on, evaluated, and then given its place. Anything that needs to be dealt with should be dealt with as an outgrowth of the processing.
The purpose of processing information is for discovery, and as the discovery process evolves it should lead to greater understanding, first of ourselves and then of our relationship with others.
Rory Sutherland starts his book Alchemy with a fascinating insight.
Suppose you’re an entrepreneur who has to create a product with a purpose to rival the giant Coca-Cola, what would you do?
Most in all likelihood you’ll consider something like: “This drink ought to taste nicer than Coke, price much less than Coke, and be available in a huge bottle so that humans get first-rate value for money.”
This drink needs to be tastier yet less expensive. And this makes a whole logical feel. Your board individuals would certainly trust you. Unless you have been trolling you would never say something like: “Let’s marketplace a high-priced drink that comes in a tiny can…and tastes disgusting.”
Yet, that is exactly what one employer did. In consumer trials, humans said, “I wouldn’t drink this piss even if you paid me to.”
And but, Red Bull has offered enough cans to rival Coca-Cola and fund a Formula 1 crew on the facet. If you’ve ever tasted Red Bull, you’ll no longer disagree with the patron trials.
This is an interesting tale. But there are not many memories like this because most companies simplistically deal with humans.
They assume that everybody needs matters to be higher and less expensive. This is handiest in part real. What you have to recognize is that humans aren’t logical machines.
The good judgment of a machine doesn’t alternate. But the good judgment and selection of someone relies upon extra on the context than any common rule.
In other words, it’s marred with exceptions. Since logic makes sense inside the physical sciences, we trust it needs to be relevant everywhere — even inside the messy affairs of human psychology.
But what most choice makers don’t apprehend is that in contrast to machines, people are especially complicated beings.
As Rory Sutherland writes, “The human mind does now not run on logic any more than a horse runs on petrol.” Logic is perhaps the best way to reach an argument or a board meeting.
But in case you want to have an edge in enterprise and life, good judgment is not very useful. As a good deal as economists would want us to agree with, humans don’t run on common sense. They run on psycho-logic.
Let’s take an example to apprehend this higher. Why do you suspect we brush our teeth each day? If you assert it is to keep dental fitness and decrease cavities and rot, why do you suspect all toothpaste is mint-flavored? Being rational has its limits.
If I ask you to explain something, you could supply a possible-sounding answer that may seem rational but might not be the real solution. So yes, dental health isn’t the handiest motive why humans brush each day.
In a designed gadget, including a device, one thing commonly serves only one slim reason. But in an advanced and complex gadget along with human behavior, matters could have multiple makes use depending on the context within which they may be considered.
We brush our teeth so that they appear smooth whilst we smile so that our mouth feels fresh (with a minty tingling sensation), and so that there’s no bad breath when we speak.
Dental fitness is crucial, but it’s the least crucial. This chain of reasoning is purely psychological. Businesses that apprehend this understand a way to take advantage of this and create magic.
Why else do you believe you studied they named a toothpaste “Close-Up” and made it gel-primarily based? Real lifestyles are not a traditional technological know-how.
The kind of wondering that works so nicely at the same time as designing a vehicle no longer works so properly even as designing a customer enjoy. The rules of human behavior have many exceptions.
For example, presenting human beings money after they do something for you makes the best feel however paying your pals for placing out with you is the rudest issue you can ever do.
In principle, you couldn’t be too logical, however, in practice, you can. Yet, we by no means appear to agree that it’s far possible for logical solutions to fail. After all, if it makes experience logical, how can it likely be incorrect?
Rory Sutherland writes, “Logic is what makes a successful engineer or mathematician, but psycho-logic is what has made us a hit breed of monkey, that has survived and flourished through the years.
This opportunity common sense emerges from a parallel working device within the human thoughts, which frequently operates unconsciously, and is a way greater effective and pervasive than you recognize.”
You want psycho-logical answers to remedy human problems because human behavior is common sense evidence. Most political, and commercial enterprises, overseas policies, and marital troubles are psychological problems.
There are no person-components for fixing them and more than regularly you aren’t sure the way you solved them even once you do. So, what you want is experimentation and numerous trials to mistakes to hit upon which patterns work.
It’s less complicated to recognize what works than why it works. Knowing why something works is good, but virtually no longer a prerequisite Aspirin, for instance, became recognized in paintings as an analgesic for decades before all of us knew why it worked.
It changed into a discovery made by enjoy and only a great deal later was it explained. Such has to be the technique while managing human behavior as well.
A purpose-first-discovery-later methodology that is practiced by way of coverage- and commercial enterprise choice-makers is wasteful in the extreme.
Not understanding why something works shouldn’t deter something from running. Evolution, as a system, discovers through trial and blunder what can live to tell the tale in a global in which some matters are predictable, but others aren’t.
It works because each gene reaps the rewards and charges from its lucky or unlucky experiments. Evolution works, however, it doesn’t supply a rattling approximately why it works.
The easy lesson is that this: a manageable why has to not constantly be a prerequisite in determining a what about dealing with human behavior.
A better method is to strive a few experiments, come across the patterns, understand the contexts in which they paintings, and apply psycho-common sense. This creates magic — that moment while you sense, “It just works.” Apple merchandise is a terrific instance.
Rory Sutherland calls this technique alchemy — the technology of understanding what pure logic is incorrect about. He writes, “The trick to being an alchemist lies no longer in knowledge established laws, however in recognizing the numerous instances in which those laws do not follow.
It lies no longer in narrow logic but within the similarly important ability to understand when and a way to abandon it. This is why alchemy is more precious today than ever.”
We suppose we’re rational creatures. Economics and commercial enterprise depend on the idea that we make logical decisions based on evidence.
But we aren’t, and we don’t.
