Mind Hacks to Improve Your Competitive Position
“Warfare is one thing. It is a philosophy of deception.” Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, 1:4:1-2
“We begin by coveting what we see every day. Don't you feel eyes moving over your body, Clarice? And don't your eyes move over the things you want?” Hannibal Lecter, Silence of the Lambs
Competition is a comparison. How do we see each other? How do we compare things. Do we see reality? No. We do not see the reality of anything. We do not see each other, we see an image constructed in the brain. We call this our “strategic position” in the minds of others. Human vision doesn’t show or compare real things. It compare images that are constructed according to certain rules. More than 50% of our brain’s cortex is dedicated to constructing images. The eye is like a camera, gathering data, but the brain is where that data is processed.
In this article, we look at how positions are constructed from limited information. We will look at how the brain compares things. As we will see, there are a number of “holes” in this mental process that we must use in good strategy. This article uses a variety of “optical illusions” to demonstrate how we can leverage how the mind sees and compares things.
Forming a Picture
Competition is comparison. Vision is also a comparison. We form images in our brains by comparing the data gathered by our eyes to other images stored in our memory. To understand how our positions are seen, we must examine what happens when something is “seen.” Our brains process visual information in a very specific and peculiar way.
NOTE: This article displays a series of images that demonstrate how our minds work. It is designed to be scrolled through so you only see one image at a time. Read the text before scrolling to the next image.
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