Metacognition - The mind that thinks about itself thinks better

Max has been saying this for one, two years now. Importance of metacognition is again "stressed" - here:

"Although these perverse thoughts can be irritating — wouldn’t it be nice to be able to fall asleep at will, like a cat? — they also reveal an essential feature of the human mind, which is that it doesn’t just think. It constantly thinks about how it thinks. We’re insufferably self-aware, like some post-modern novel, so that the brain can’t go for more than a few seconds before it starts calling attention to itself, reflecting on its own contents, thoughts, and feelings. This even applies to thoughts we’re trying to avoid, which is why those white bears are so inescapable.

The technical term for this is “metacognition,” and it’s a rather surreal skill. Imagine that M.C. Escher drawing of a hand drawing a hand, or a video camera making a movie of itself. The cortex is the same way, as it constantly transforms the subject at the center of consciousness — you — into yet another object contemplated by consciousness. Of course, like all things meta, the process can quickly spiral out of control. When a mind thinks about metacognition, it’s thinking about how it thinks about how it thinks. And so on.

But metacognition isn’t just a quirk of consciousness: It also has immense practical value, which scientists are only beginning to fully grasp. As the world confronts a series of epic problems, from global warming to the financial crisis, world leaders (including the new American president) will be making a slew of difficult decisions. In addition to weighing their myriad policy options, they could find that reflecting on the decision-making process itself proves an extremely powerful tool. How we decide is normally described in binary terms: There’s rational deliberation or gut instinct, Apollonian logic versus Dionysian feeling, the reptilian brain fighting the frontal lobes. Human nature is reduced to an either/or situation. In recent years, however, scientists have begun to discover that while both of these approaches have distinct advantages, they also have many shortcomings. There is no universal solution to the problem of decision making, for the real world is just too complex. In fact, many scientists now argue that the best predictor of good judgment isn’t intuition or intelligence or even experience. Rather, it’s the willingness to engage in introspection, to cultivate what Philip Tetlock, a psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley, calls “the art of self-overhearing.” The mind that thinks about itself thinks better.

For neuroscientists the next challenge is figuring out how different situations benefit from different kinds of thought. When should we rely on reason? And what decisions are best left to our emotions and instincts? While much remains to be discovered, there’s some preliminary evidence that simple problems — those involving a limited number of variables — are best suited for deliberate thought, so that people don’t make any obvious mistakes. In contrast, complex problems seem to benefit from the processing powers of the unconscious (which generates our emotions), as long as people first take the time to carefully assimilate all the relevant facts. Given the distinct talents of our various cognitive styles, a willingness to think about our own thought processes and to adjust our mode of decision making to the task at hand could transform the way we use the mind. Before we do anything else, we should go meta."