Understanding Psychology and Cognition

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From as early as I could possibly remember to about a year or two ago, I've always been a very rational person, frequently seeking logical and rational justifications for my ideas, and evaluating the world around me from a rational point of view. I've always held mathematics and sciences in high regard, and considered scientific and logical truth one of the most important aspects of our reality.

Then around a year or two ago, this completely changed, and my life was basically flipped upside-down. While I did pay attention to what goes on in other people's minds ever since I was a kid, I never really considered the very major implications it had on certain philosophies that I've held onto. I learned that the world is not idealistic in any way, nor will it ever be (which seems obvious but I don't think people really understand the extent of this statement). I learned that everything that we interact with in this universe should be dealt with in moderation. I learned that there is a massive range of human psychologies, from the idiots to the geniuses, from the rational to the artistic, from the conventional to the strange, from the humble to the shocking, and I needed to consider all of these.

This means that while I consider myself rational and logical, not all people do, and we need to create a society that can give the people who are not as rational and logical as me the things they want, that they relate to, that they understand and accept. This was difficult for me to take in at first, because it meant that things I used to reject without a second thought (such as most religious practices, creationism, homeopathy, pseudosciences, etc), I needed to give them a proper chance to credit them where credit is due.

I wish to go into teaching and education reform in the future, and this also means that I need to seriously evaluate these fundamental ideas in order to truly understand my potential future students and be the best teacher I can be. It's easy for me to teach the smart kids, the rational minded ones, because we think alike. It's not easy to do the same for the others. Interestingly enough, this means that paradoxically, in many ways it's actually harder to understand how the less intelligent people think.


So this really isn't a thread strictly about the field of psychology, but in addition includes general philosophies about life, society, people, etc. There are a couple of talking points and ideas I'd like to introduce, but feel free to discuss whatever you like:

- Is the idea that there exists justification for non-rational concepts to be accepted by society difficult for you to accept? For example, I would argue that while homeopathy is pretty much almost universally shown to be falsified through empirical tests, it still plays an important role in societies that have already accepted it (such as the UK). It gives a certain placebo medication widespread knowledge and exposure, and therefore becomes easier for the public to accept, increasing the effectiveness of the placebo effect. Rather than try to get rid of it entirely, we should simply monitor its use in medical professions to prevent clear abuse cases (such as trying to treat AIDS or cancer). If you cannot accept something like this, why not?

- I believe that there is a certain limit to which the mental processes of the brain can be broken down and analyzed. Once you start reaching a particular level, it becomes more and more difficult to separate individual mechanisms because of how complex the organ is, the number of processes occurring at the same time (such as sensation and learning), and the "fuzzy logic" the brain uses. But the question now is where can we start drawing this line? If we were to analyze the mental processes of a less intelligent person who does not necessarily think rationally, to what degree can we understand his/her thinking process? It is plausible that we can come up with experiments and/or demonstrations that give positive empirical results in showing that understanding these kinds of people is possible, but to what degree can they be explained? What possible ways can we categorize cognition and different ways of thinking? What possible methods can we use to analyze a person's thinking process and classify them?