Quotes About Awareness

To get pleasure from eating, for example, you must notice that you are doing it. We found that French and American women spent about the same amount of time eating, but for Frenchwomen, eating was twice as likely to be focal as it was for American women. The Americans were far more prone to combine eating with other activities, and their pleasure from eating was correspondingly diluted.

The best we can do is a compromise: learn to recognize situations in which mistakes are likely and try harder to avoid significant mistakes when the stakes are high.

Thoughts of any aspect of life are more likely to be salient if a contrasting alternative is highly available.

The mistake that people make in the focusing illusion involves attention to selected moments and neglect of what happens at other times.

I call it theory-induced blindness: once you have accepted a theory and used it as a tool in your thinking, it is extraordinarily difficult to notice its flaws.

Most impressions and thoughts arise in your conscious experience without your knowing how they got there.

for System 1 in making routine decisions. The best we can do is a compromise: learn to recognize situations in which mistakes are likely and try harder to avoid significant mistakes when the stakes are high. The premise of this book is that it is easier to recognize other people's mistakes than our own.

Constantly questioning our own thinking would be impossibly tedious, and System 2 is much too slow and inefficient to serve as a substitute for System 1 in making routine decisions. The best we can do is a compromise: learn to recognize situations in which mistakes are likely and try harder to avoid significant mistakes when the stakes are high. The premise of this book is that it is easier to recognize other people's mistakes than our own.

pupils are sensitive indicators of mental effort—

essence of intuitive heuristics: when faced with a difficult question, we often answer an easier one instead, usually without noticing the substitution.

bias is a compelling figure, while noise is the background to which we pay no attention. That is how we remain largely unaware of a large flaw in our judgment.

the essence of intuitive heuristics: when faced with a difficult question, we often answer an easier one instead, usually without noticing the substitution.

I'm in a very good mood today, and my System 2 is weaker than usual. I should be extra careful.

Much like the electricity meter outside your house or apartment, the pupils offer an index of the current rate at which mental energy is used.

Frequently mentioned topics populate the mind even as others slip away from awareness. In turn, what the media choose to report corresponds to their view of what is currently on the public's mind. It is no accident that authoritarian regimes exert substantial pressure on independent media.

For the insurance company, the illusion of agreement was shattered only by the noise audit. How had the leaders of the company remained unaware of their noise problem? There are several possible answers here, but one that seems to play a large role in many settings is simply the discomfort of disagreement.

Everyone has some awareness of the limited capacity of attention, and our social behaviour makes allowances for these limitations

our almost unlimited ability to ignore our ignorance

The mere expo' sure effect does not depend on the conscious experience of familiarity.

That was the moment when he grasped that nobody wanted to use their minds. People wanted peace. They wanted to eat and sleep and have other people be nice to them. What they didn't want to do was think.

Warum er traurig war? [...] Weil die Welt sich so enttäuschend ausnahm, sobald man erkannte, wie dünn ihr Gewebe war, wie grob gestrickt die Illusion, wie laienhaft vernäht ihre Rückseite. Weil nur Geheimnis und Vergessen es erträglich machten. Weil man es ohne den Schlaf, der einen täglich aus der Wirklichkeit riß, nicht aushielt. Nicht Wegsehenkönnen war Traurigkeit. Wachsein war Traurigkeit. Erkennen [...] war Verzweiflung. [...] Weil die Zeit immer verging.

Die Dinge sind, wie sie sind, und wenn wir sie erkennen, sind sie genauso, wie wenn es andere tun oder keiner.

Non si lascia ai margini del proprio cammino un mistero, per quanto insignificante.

Sweat was running down my face. The next turn wasn't too bad, and I noticed an old barn on the roadside, the roof caved-in, the windows empty holes, but I had already been distracted for too long, and the abyss came so close that I cried out. I