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 Last Thursday I spent a lot of class saying, "oooh!" and "ahh!" and "wow!" Class was pretty entertaining with all of the optical illusions. But I didn't just enjoy the surprises, I also enjoyed the science and reasoning behind those surprises. Whoever knew how intelligent our unconscious was! Before this class and these discussions, I thought of my unconscious only as the thing that gave me dreams when I was asleep. Ok, I didn't think that dreams were the only thing our unconscious did, but it make up a big part of my understanding about the unconscious. Now do I know better. I find it so fascinating that when we see the graph with the starburst in the middle, the reason we see the lines distorted is because our mind is actually making the prediction that the picture is getting bigger and in order for it to get bigger, the lines need to get bigger, making them looked curved. Did I get that right? Anyways, I proud of my unconscious for it. It analyzes and looks our for my best interest without me even knowing. I just want to metaphorically pat it on the back now. 

Clearly through some of the examples Paul showed us, we're not a complete slave to our unconscious. That's a good thing. I don't think I would like it very much if my unconscious was always making decisions for me and I wasn't able to tell it that sometimes it's actually wrong. Life would probably be chaotic if we were completely at the mercy of our unconscious. 

Talking to Anne last Thursday I realized that I actually have mixed opinions about this topic. I like the mysteriousness of the unconscious, but I also like when we put reason behind the mystery. I think I just like a little mystery and a little reason in my life. It's complicated and contrasting but, that's how I see it.