§7-1.2 How do we choose what we think about?

Every day you encounter vast numbers of things—yet only a few of them ‘get your attention’ enough to change what you’re thinking about—for example, by making you wonder, “Who or what caused that thing to be there?”

One of the wooden doors in my home bears scratches made some decades ago. Our dog Jenny is gone but the scratches remain. I notice them only a few times a year, though I pass by that door several times every day.

Other times, though you have chosen a goal, your plan encounters an obstacle. “I can’t pack all of it into this box—and besides, that would make it too heavy to lift.” In cases like that you may have to stop and deliberate. “It looks like I’ll have to make several trips, but I don’t want to spend that much time on it.”

At yet other times, you have no clear direction; first one thing attracts your attention but that reminds you of something else, and your mind starts to wander from subject to subject. At one moment, you dwell on some social affair; then you search for a way to express some idea; next you reflect on some past event; then you’re beset by a hunger pang, or a mortgage payment that’s overdue, or an impulse to get the faucet-drip fixed, or an urge to tell Charles how you feel about Joan—until some mental ‘Critic’ cuts in with, “This isn’t getting me anywhere,” or “I should try to get more organized.”

marvin minsky, the emotion machine [/] part 7