FOOD FOR THOUGHT

Our brain weighs just over 2% of our body weight but it consumes 25% of our calorie intake. It’s a very, very expensive bit of kit. Next time you go on a diet think about those 112 billion neurons howling “more food, more food – how can I think if the fuel tank’s dry?”

Well how do you think? The truth is there are lots of good theories but a lot of ignorance. We only think that we know. We have only just discovered that if it was you who had a dog called Fenton chasing deer in Richmond Park two years ago the dog should have responded to your call. Dog’s brains light up just like ours when they hear their master’s voice.

Thinking about thinking is very hard and makes our brains hurt. Marcus du Sautoy, the Professor of Mathematics at Oxford, confessed he could only do an hour or so of maths before stopping. Isaac Newton on the other hand could apparently think for days at a time.

To think like we all think we should be able to think would feel like  a cross between getting into very cold water and climbing a vertiginous rock face. The complexity of thought and the fact we can kill someone for thinking differently to us or have  ‘un coup de foudre’ when we see someone special summarises why being human as opposed to a dog is so exciting.

Our brain roughly comprises a right and left brain or system one and system two – the intuitive bit and the rational bit. The former is impulsive, a bit adolescent, fast thinking, artistic and (mostly) in charge. The latter, our guardian of common-sense is rational, calculating, weighs up odds, is gullible and rather lazy. Our intuition is full of preconceptions and prejudices and is impressed by vivid presentation. In fact Daniel Kahneman, the Nobel winning psychologist discovered in research that respondents preferred the thought of winning $59 in a “big, blue envelope” much more than simply getting the money.

So much for rationality. This proves to me (as though I needed it proving) that good marketing works. We are hard wired to enjoy good and exciting stories. That makes us impressionable and liable to be more in fear of a terrorist attack than of getting diabetes, when the odds of the latter are several thousand per cent more likely to happen.

The realisation that humanity is pretty irrational and sloppy in the way it thinks is demonstrated every time we turn on the news.

But at least we fall in love and do unusually amazing things occasionally – things we didn’t think we could do.
Which is why I’m off for a snack right now; my brain hurts and I think that the reason  it can’t think straight is because it’s starving….not because I’m stupid.

www.colourfulthinkers.co.uk

HURRAY FOR THE SCIENTIST

There was a time when there was a rift between the sciences and the humanities. In his seminal book “The Two Cultures” published in the 1950s CP Snow spoke of it eloquently and caused a bit of a storm with FR Leavis (on the right in the “arts is best” corner.)

Today we are in a world where science is sexy and the darling of the media. Look at Marcus du Sautoy and Brian Cox. Media stars both, enthusiasts and great storytellers. And it’s showing up in research.

I’ve referred before in my blogs to the IPSOS MORI study, the “Veracity Index” every year which checks how much people trust various groups in society. In 2011 for instance Doctors scored 88% and Politicians scored 14% - and someone said to me “as much as 14% - that’s amazing”.

What’s key is scientists overtook clergymen and priests for the first time and will, probably, by now have overtaken judges and professors in terms of trustworthiness.

So science is sexy and trustworthy but it’s also engaged. On Friday I spoke at the splendid Glasgow Science Centre at the Association of Science and Discovery Centre Marketing Conference.

The audience were as bright and enthusiastic a bunch as I’ve come across – scientists, social media experts and marketers. But what I don’t think they’d quite switched on to and one of the speakers before me, the redoubtable Ken Robinson the former head of the Tourism Alliance, certainly passed on from, the fact that science is bullseye centre of 2013 as a topic of news.

Scientists (ironically) are now much more on the side of the angels than the church.

What these champions of the future need to do is to pass on their appetite for life and their bright eyed optimism to the souls who teach the sciences, many so leadenly.

If I were 11 again I’d now want to be a scientist. And yet previously all my life I wanted to be a poet.
And here’s why.

Freeman J. Dyson in his book “The Scientist as Rebel” captures it: –
“From Galileo to today’s amateur astronomers, scientists have been rebels. Like artists and poets, they are free spirits who resist the restrictions their cultures impose on them. In their pursuit of nature’s truths, they are guided as much by imagination as by reason, and their greatest theories have the uniqueness and beauty of great works of art.”

Go to a science centre soon and see if the passion I got on Friday isn’t catching. And reflect on that early rebellious scientist.

www.colourfulthinkers.com

MAYBE WE HAVE ALL GOT A BIT LAZY

My favourite cartoon from years ago was of a guy walking downstairs with a blank expression and a thought bubble from his head saying “What do I think today?” He picks up the Daily Mail from the doormat. The headline screams “It’s a disgrace!” His face breaks into a thunderous frown. “It’s a disgrace!” he cries.

My thesis is that like Mr Daily Mail reader we’ve stopped thinking for ourselves. And some of us have stopped thinking altogether. Melvyn Bragg, one of whose heroes is Isaac Newton, speaks in awe of Newton’s alleged ability to sit and think for hours, days and weeks at a time. Melvyn says he can do three minutes before he has to make a cup of tea to break the monotony. Marcus du Sautoy who is Professor of Mathematics at Oxford says he can only think about maths for an hour or so because it hurts to do it any longer. So we shouldn’t be ashamed at finding thinking hard.

But there’s so much going on now that we do need to think about it….for our own peace of mind.
About sovereign debt, about the Human Rights Act, about our holding the European title for largest % of the population imprisoned, about the level of and justification for top salaries, about English Rugby, about our state educational system, about our likely economic prospects, about what we are going to spend money on this Christmas….

None of these are trivial and all deserve some thought. Just try exploring the pluses and minuses of all of them. Take the last one – only 75 shopping days left. And apparently the fate of the British Economy lies in us emptying our wallets on stuff that we don’t really need or want. So take a long, creative think about how you’d make this Christmas more fun, worthwhile and memorable.

Example: think about those financial instruments none of us understand (but then again that’s because we’ve never tried to.) Let what Hercule Poirot called his “little grey cells” get to work. Think about what’s really going on.

You may not save the world by doing this but you might save you sanity and your career. Because we all need people who can really think right now rather than just reading those headlines.

I THINK THEREFORE I AM

When Descartes wrote this he was creating an anthem for philosophic thought. But if the converse is true - “I do not think therefore I’m not” - we should reflect on the potential for many of us, our lives and our businesses ceasing to exist.

To be blunt, there’s more sound and fury than real thinking going on right now in many places. And with so much changing and the mass and mess of conflicting events, it’s pretty hard to keep up. In this supercharged world the premium is on energy rather than insight.

So how do you think? No, I’m not being funny. How do you actually do it? In a multitasking world it is evident the bit that gets abandoned first is thinking. It’s the juice in the plum that gets spilt when you get to multitasking with that “let’s be busy” knife.

The very clever Isaac Newton, apparently, would sit and think for days at a time…and that’s a terrifying thought. Imagine. No distractions. A twitter-free, iPod-free, PC-free environment.  Imagine a white sheet of paper  with three weeks alone to think and nothing else…in silence.

Relax. Use whatever it takes to help you and for many people silence is a cruel state of being broken only by the insistent sound of a bee buzzing making real concentration impossible. Marcus du Sautoy, Professor of Mathematics at Oxford and one of the people who make me wish I’d become a scientist, says maths is too hard to think about, really think about for more than an hour a day. What’s good enough for Marcus….

But what I really want to talk about are baths. Sue Wilkins who runs Panache PR told me she’d printed off my last blog and read it in the bath. (So this one’s for you, Sue.) If we had more baths we’d think more and better. Do you suppose Archimedes would have had his “eureka” moment under a shower? If only more people lay back in a hot, foaming bath and spent an hour in it just thinking about a few key issues we might be in even better shape.

A case quite simply of “I bath therefore I think”. Try it.