Исследование проблемы, близкой к теме осознанности и самовспоминания: почему ум склонен отвлекаться и блуждать.
Высказывается предположение, что от "разбегающихся" мыслей может быть больше пользы, чем вреда. (Хотя есть и понятные исключения - приводится пример, когда мать забывает ребенка в машине).
1) Экономия: жизнь редко требует от нас полного и нераздельного внимания. Многое можно делать на "автопилоте".
2) "Праздношатающиеся" мысли часто только кажутся такими, а на самом деле обычно направлены на планирование будущей деятельности и решение проблем.
3) Мыслительный "белый шум" способствует творческому процессу.
4) Вольно текущий поток сознания позволяет не слишком фокусироваться на неприятных ситуациях, дает возможность "не зацикливаться".
But there's even a more basic question, he said. Why is the brain wired to wander? What could possibly be good about that?
"Mind-wandering is probably more often helpful than harmful," Kane said. For one thing, the cost is low: despite notable exceptions, life usually doesn't demand our full attention.
"A lot of human daily life is autopilot," he said. "There's a whole lot of what we need to do that we can do without thinking about it, from driving to eating .... We do occasionally miss that turn on the way home, but we get through the day pretty well."
Given that, a mechanism that encourages us to devote some idle brain capacity to planning and solving problems "seems like a pretty good use of time," he said.
Schooler is exploring the idea that mind-wandering promotes creativity. "It's unconstrained, it can go anywhere, which is sort of the perfect situation for creative thought," he said.
Mason points out that just because the human brain wanders doesn't necessarily mean there's a good reason for it. Maybe, she said, the mind wanders simply because it can.
But even she sees an upside.
"I can be stuck in my car in traffic and not go absolutely crazy because I'm not stuck in the here and now," she said. "I can think about what happened last night. And that's great."
См. также тему о грезах и контроле:
http://forum.sufism.ru/index.php?topic=6442.0