Strange behaviour of the humans

This is a misanthropic viewpoint. If you don’t like this sort of thing leave now.

I often come across people who make decisions about various things.  A few things that are common to poor decision-makers are as follows:

1. Psychological states: In general they are adversely affected by their own psychological states, which they may or may not be aware of. Stress or some other form of psychological discomfort affects how they approach problems, obstacles or decisions. This means that they may or may not be aware that their decision-making is influenced by such factors. I could probably list 100 psychological factors but that would be of little practical value.
2. Time pressure: this causes people to devote less time and thought to an issue. In addition people become impatient and wish for quick fixes which may be strategically inappropriate.
3. Faulty logic: it is not practical to go into the numerous logical mistakes that people make in coming to decisions. However, the more that factors 1 & 2 above weigh on minds the greater is the probability of applying faulty logic. The humans pride themselves with the ability to think, but most of them will be offended to learn that they don’t know how to think efficiently or effectively. Ask every third human you pass by tomorrow, to name three logical fallacies – or give examples – and they’ll probably look at you as if you’re from another planet.
4. Trapped in the box: I often see people who are welded to the insides of ‘the box’. They follow a script and are unable to modify or significantly deviate. They may tinker with one or two instruction sets but as emotions and time pressure set in, the less chance there is of finding any novel solution that is ‘out of the box’. Getting ‘out of the box’ means dispensing with scripts and reaching for a true problem solving approach – and guess what? We’re back to time pressure and stress – aren’t we? Or we’re into some kind of psychobabble about ‘releasing ones creative energies’ or sumik.
5. Nutting the wall: a lot of the humans bang their heads of walls (oh dear – I have to say that I’m speaking metaphorically, before some fool asks me a dumb question). Either through hope or blind belief they come to think that by nutting the wall for long enough it will give way. Hello!! Nutting a wall causes a headache, it does not bring solutions or good decisions.
6. Intuition: The humans hold this as some sort of cool solution to most things. So when they don’t know what to do they give up on educated guesses and make a wild stab in the dark. Yuh know, intuition is a popular thing, and people are so connected to each other when the odd random ‘intuitive solution’, works. So the humans pat each other on the back for so-called intuitive solutions – and when intuitive solutions fail they simple go ‘Oh well, we’re all human’. I have no problem with real intuition which is largely based on automated skill and assessment that happens rapidly in the minds of true experts. But crap intuition – is.. crap.