'Commonsense Thinking'-Tendency

 'Commonsense Thinking'-Tendency 

Consider this - 

A gave a ball to B.

B gave the ball to C.

C gave the ball to D.

D gave the ball to E.

E gave the ball to F.

E gave the ball to G.

G gave the ball to H.

Suppose I now ask - where is the ball? The machine would read every sentence and draw an inference at the end of every sentence, and keep iterating, until it reaches the end of data, and then announce - the ball is with H!

Now let's turn to human commonsense - Firstly, it is commonsense that comes in, in tracing the ball. How does the mind think commonsensically that the ball should be with the "last" person in the chain?

We gauge i.e. we have a tendency to gauge the "nets" in any process given to us. This is a fundamental property of the mind. 

When we are told that A gave the ball to B and then told that B gave it to C, we immediately, instinctively, and without any motivation or foreseeable need, draw the inference that the net effect is that it is not with B, now. This continues i.e. it is then not with C (since the process of receive-give repeats at C like at B), then not with D, not with E, not with F...and then you realize automatically that this will end at the "Last" person.  

You don't have to go tracing the ball at every step. You don't need to "examine" every step. Once you know the pattern, you can safely say that the "last" person in the chain will have the ball. *Now one might argue that you do have to read every step-line as a human too, to ensure that it is a pattern like that in the first place. But there are 2 differences - 1) you guess a pattern midway, seeing the "trend" and 2) you hence don't draw a conclusion at the end of every step that the ball is with so and so person (at the end of that step) like a machine would. You start seeing the story more as a kind of CHECKING that - "C got, C gave", "D got, D gave" and then scan your finger to the end. 

(In fact, as an extension of the tendency of gauging nets, you are probably ready with the answer before that question is even asked!)

The pattern detection is the secondary part of the human thinking; the gauging of the net effect at the step of B is what inspires the detection of the pattern, and hence is a more primary part of the human thinking than the actual pattern-detection later.

So the human process follows 3 steps - 

1) Gauging the "NET" at B.

2) a) Inspired, b) look for and confirm the pattern later on.

3) Keep doing 2(b) by measuring the "nets" at the nodes.