Alchemy

Thought and logical approach  are naturally very successful in the field of physics, however it seems that the certainty that comes with logical rules has enchanted us to a point where we have decided to apply logic to all areas of our lives so that we can enjoy a false sense of mastery over a world that is actually incredibly complex. Logical thinking certainly has its benefits but these benefits come at a cost: in a completely logical world there is no room for those “magical” solutions that come from intuition and appear not to make any sense. In real life, logic does not dominate and human behaviour is based on two factors: a logical reason and a real reason. Learning to decipher the cryptic reason behind most human behaviour and untangling it from basic logical reason is the key to understanding how behavioural mechanisms work. 

Sometimes the first step towards understanding a certain behaviour is to ask oneself “stupid” (or basic) questions, for example if someone is trying to invent a successful advert for toothpaste, the first thing to do is not an analysis of generic data of past sales but to ask oneself “why do people brush their teeth?”, trying to go deeper than the logical answer. The reason that we don’t ask simple questions is because once our brain has found the logical answer it stops looking for other, better solutions; with a touch of “alchemy” or “magic” we can always come up with more suitable answers.