Gurdjieff on Centers

I recently came across the Litemind site that had an article on the Top 10 Thinking Traps. Trap #5 was about how you should review your assumptions when given incomplete information for making a decision. The example was: 

Harry is an introverted guy. We know that he is either a librarian or a salesman. Which one do you think he most probably is?

Of course, I said that Henry is a librarian because everyone knows that librarians are introverts and salesmen are extroverts. However, it was explained that salesmen outnumber librarians by 100 to 1 and so if only 1% of salesmen are introverted, the chances are higher that Harry is a salesman.

Even though I understood this intellectually and even have the personal experience of living with an introverted salesman, I couldn't shake the feeling that "librarian" is still the best guess. Litemind explained that we keep mental images, simplifications of reality, that make us jump to conclusions without questioning our assumptions. But still, I wanted to answer librarian. Then I thought about Gurdjieff's teaching on how we are composed of centers - primarily the thinking, feeling and instincitve/moving centers.  He used the image of a horse to convey the speed and strength of the emotional center. He used the image of a dull-witted cabbie to convey the slower and lazier intellectual center. So my intellectual center, with its statistical information, can't override the 'knowing' of my emotions. Or as Sarah Palin 'explains,' "I know what I know what I know."

By the way...I did a Google image search and had to go through several pages to find this nice library cat picture. Do an image search on "librarian" and answer this question: Harriet works part time as a librarian. Her other job is either a porn star or a salesperson. Which one do you think she most probably is?

By the way # 2...Here is how Litemind says to avoid this trap:

• Make your assumptions explicit. Don’t take a problem statement as it is. Keep in mind that for every problem you’re using implicit information — your assumptions. It’s usually not hard to check the validity of assumptions, but first you need to know what they are. -This sounds very Gurdjieffian.
• Always favor hard data over mental simplifications. Our preconceptions — such as stereotypes — can be useful in many situations, but we should always be careful to not over-rely on them. When given the choice, always prefer hard data.

Photo Source: podpocalypse.wordpress.co