It is surprising to discover how thoroughly our basic functions sometimes control our conscious minds. Scientific studies have shown that mice and pigeons, and recently other animals such as cuttlefish, can be taught to react to a specific arbitrary sign with a specific set of behaviors: animals learn to expect food at a sight or sound, and learn to receive food by manipulating a lever, ringing a bell, or pecking a certain spot. Through habituation, they are conditioned to consistently believe that specific phenomena or actions regularly lead to the same specific results.

Even more important, the study shows that once an individual is thoroughly conditioned to trust the sign, they will not search for other variations of possible occurrences similar, but a shade different, to the one in which they are so habituated to believe. So a mouse who has thoroughly got the message that a falling rock means food, and if that incident doesn’t occur, there is no food, he will take it that all other signs except for the falling rock indicate no food. To him there are no other possibilities and he will not look for them.

Having thoroughly mastered one condition, he blocks his mind to any other possibility, even though there may be strong indications there is one. Think about your own experience. Have you ever been jolted into a sudden illuminating thought that had never occurred to you before? Like maybe the group of intelligentsia running our country have no more capability to do so than you do?

It is not unusual that during an evening of poker, a few of the players take a break and chat about the game. During their discussion they zero in on player number four (not present in the break room). They go on about what a lousy player he is and how could he possibly still be in the game. The two players involved in the discussion leave the table to discuss their observations in almost whispering tones and swear each other to secrecy. By sharing their observations, they discover that each had noticed a completely different behavioral tidbit. The first noticed that whenever number four had a good hand, he would place his bet, clench his hands into fists and lay them on the table, never doing this under another situation. While the second one observed that number four, whenever he had a bad hand, would push his chips around noisily, never engaging in this behavior under any other circumstance.

So number four has two actions that betray him. The smug, secretive twosome who consider themselves to be good players, each picked up on only one. Their minds simply stopped discovering at one observation and never reached beyond for further insight.

This is not a trivial realization. In fact, what often distinguishes the best players is their flexibility to learn and keep actively in mind throughout the game a number of each opponent’s tells, classifying each according to importance and plausibility, increasing the possibilities of winning.