The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects and despises, or else by some distinction sets aside and rejects, in order that by this great and pernicious predetermination the authority of its former conclusions may remain inviolate.

Once the human mind has favoured certain views, it pulls everything else into agreement with and support for them. Should they be outweighed by more powerful countervailing considerations, it either fails to notice these, or scorns them, or makes fine distinctions in order to neutralize and so reject them.

Our brains work like computers: They input data and process it in accordance with their wiring and programming. Any opinion you have is made up of these two things: the data and your processing or reasoning

Whenever we hear an opinion and believe it, we make an agreement, and it becomes part of our belief system.

Se ha demostrado que la toma de decisiones más se basa en las emociones y en las suposiciones que en la lógica.

The human brain is thus wired by evolution to distrust any information from the outside world and to greatly favor that which originates inside us.

The brain cannot reach its inner conclusions by any logic of certainty. In place of this, the brain must do two things. It must be content to accept less than certain knowledge. And it must have statistical methods which are different in kind from ours, by which it reaches its acceptable level of uncertainty. By these means, the brain constructs a picture of the world which is less than certain yet highly interlocked in its parts.

For the human brain,” Edmond explained, “any answer is better than no answer. We feel enormous discomfort when faced with ‘insufficient data,’ and so our brains invent the data — offering us, at the very least, the illusion of order — creating myriad philosophies, mythologies, and religions to reassure us that there is indeed an order and structure to the unseen world.

Todas las ideas que se nos ocurren cotidianamente, son por lo general una mezcla de ideas previas, experiencias personales, feedback que recibimos por parte de colegas, etc.

The mind, as a defense against the volume of today’s communications, screens and rejects much of the information offered it. In general, the mind accepts only that which matches prior knowledge or experience.

Too often we decide very early whether we agree or disagree with someone or with an idea, without making an effort to truly understand the person or the point. Our public conversations, and especially conversations on social media, often seem like exercises in picking sides and choosing teams. We hear or read something, make a quick call, then dismiss those with whom we disagree as ignorant or evil.

all human cognition begins with intuitions, proceeds from thence to conceptions, and ends with ideas.

Some moments before you are aware of what you will do next — a time in which you subjectively appear to have complete freedom to behave however you please — your brain has already determined what you will do. You then become conscious of this “decision” and believe that you are in the process of making it.

It is very interesting how the human mind works. We have the need to justify everything, to explain and understand everything, in order to feel safe.