Sometimes, one line in a blog post will spark a whole new area of thinking. Boing Boing's David Pescovitz blogs about a Princeton University study about magical thinking. The kind of thinking that you apply when you think that wearing your lucky socks will make the Colts win the Super Bowl (Go Chicago!).
The last line of the blog entry:
The brain, moreover, has evolved to make snap judgments about causation, and will leap to conclusions well before logic can be applied.
makes perfect sense. Ever catch something out of the corner of your eye and jump, only to realize it was a wisp of hair? This snap judgment certainly saved a lot of my ancestors, especially if that "something" was a saber-tooth lion!
But this reaction also applies to ghosts and other paranormal phenomenon. Our bodies react to a strange sound or sight automatically. A conclusion is made in our minds before logic can analyze the sound and figure out it is just a normal creak or the sound of the wind.
I'm going over the nerd cliff-edge when I hypothesize that this automatic reaction is the one that Vulcans have learned to control. But if you can consciously control your automatic reaction, does that mean your reaction times are slower?
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