Hey, nobody's perfect. As much as we all (hopefully) strive to be good people, it can be pretty easy to slide into habits that, on the surface, seem to make you a horrible person. Laziness, worrying, selfishness, irrationality and sometimes being a bit economical with the truth, these are all things that we're told are bad, and yet we sometimes can't seem to help ourselves. Well, the good news is that it's not your fault - a lot of the vices that we try in vain to fight against are just a fact of your DNA. Even better news is that a lot of your supposed "flaws" might actually turn out to be beneficial. After all, you evolved this way for a reason. So, it's time to cut yourself a bit of slack, because the science is on your side.
10. You Can Be Irrational
One of the things we pride ourselves on as a species is that man and man alone has the power of rational thought. Unfortunately, we're still pretty terrible at it. Take this for example, try to answer this question as quickly as possible (without a calculator): A bat and ball cost £1.10. The bat costs £1 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost? Chances are you said 10p, most people do (including Harvard graduates) because it seems like the most obvious, rational thing in the world. The correct answer is actually 5p for the ball and £1.05 for the bat. This is because you didn't actually think about it rationally. Your brain took some vague past experiences and smooshed them together to form a quick judgement. We don't just do this with simple mental arithmetic either, you're doing it all the time. Most of our decisions depend on mental shortcuts because to take every variable into account, process them and produce a logically tailored outcome is a hell of a lot of work for your brain. When the brain was evolving, it was much more beneficial to make snap decisions about things like predators or hunting that waste time working from first principles. This is why we make irrational decisions all the time. We smoke, despite the health risks, we buy 2-for-1 deals on stuff we don't even want, all because it's just a little bit easier than having to think about it.
