[Choices and Pitfalls of] Decision Making ~~ by TPO

[Choices and Pitfalls of] Decision Making *

======= // =======

<<....  In 2006, J. Edward Russo, a psychologist specializing in decision making at Cornell's Johnson Graduate School of Management, ran a series of experiments to illustrate just how easy it would be to get us to go against our own best interest with just a bit of clever framing.  First, he and his colleagues asked a group of students about their restaurant preferences for two pairs of fictional restaurants that were described according to ten different attributes (atmosphere, daily specials, driving distance, speed of service, and the like).  Two weeks later, they asked  everyone to come in for a follow-up.  This time, the list of attributes was modified and ordered in a very specific way.  The information was identical, but now the characteristic that most favored the inferior restaurant was placed first -- and the less favorable last.  Everyone was next asked to rate the restaurants a second time, and then to say how confident they were of their choices on a scale of zero (uncertain) to one-hundred (completely certain), where fifty represents a toss-up.

This time around, a majority of people -- 62 percent -- favored the previously inferior choices.  The fact that the first attribute supported it skewed all subsequent information.  In fact, after the first attribute alone, a full 76 percent said the inferior choice was the leader.  What's more, they had no idea  they were doing it.  People were choosing a restaurant they would not have naturally liked nearly as much as other options, but they remained equally confident in their choice no matter what option they'd picked.>>
_________________________________________
* Source: "The Confidence Game" by Maria Konnikova (Viking Press, 2016). 
                  ~~ Page 160 ~~

  

"The Don't-Know Mind" [A clean slate] ~~ by Zen Master Seung Sahn Soen-sa

"The Don't-Know Mind" 

[A clean slate] 

 by Zen Master Seung Sahn Soen-sa

Throw away all opinions, all likes and dislikes, and only keep the mind that doesn’t know… Your before-thinking mind, my before-thinking mind, all people’s before-thinking minds are the same. This is your substance. Your substance, my substance, and the substance of the whole universe become one. So the tree, the mountain, the cloud, and you become one… The mind that becomes one with the universe is before thinking. Before thinking there are no words. “Same” and “different” are opposites words; they are from the mind that separates all things.

The Three Pillars of Zen's Don't-Know Mind :
Zen Practice … requires great faith, great courage, and great questioning.
What is great faith? Great faith means that at all times you keep the mind which decided to practice, no matter what. It is like a hen sitting on her eggs. She sits on them constantly, caring for them and giving them warmth, so that they will hatch. If she becomes careless or negligent, the eggs will not hatch and become chicks. So Zen mind means always and everywhere believing in myself….
Great Courage … means bringing all your energy to one point. It is like a cat hunting a mouse. The mouse has retreated into its hole, but the cat waits outside the hole for hours on end without the slightest movement. It is totally concentrated on the mouse-hole. This is Zen mind — cutting off all thinking and directing all your energy to one point.
Great Questioning … If you question with great sincerity, there will only be don’t-know mind.