Lena Groeger:

Chances are, you probably think your mind works pretty well. It might lead you astray now and then, but usually it helps you make good decisions and remember things reliably. At the very least, you’re probably confident that it doesn’t change depending on the time of day or what you had to eat.

But you’d be wrong. Our brains fool us all the time. And we typically have no idea that it’s happening.

We want so badly to believe we are rational—as though we reflect the unemotional machinery in the technology we gaze into all day. But we will forever be much more orange than clockwork. We are as precise as the chemicals sloshing around between our ears.