Loose Units

Some people have what might politely be called a relaxed relationship with thinking.

You know the type. Loud. Cheerful. Firm opinions on everything. Reasoning appears optional. They are not malicious. In fact they are usually quite nice. They simply operate on a conversational model where the mouth begins work several seconds before the brain clocks on for the shift.

Psychology has various clinical ways to describe this. Lower working memory. Lower cognitive reflection. High extraversion. Reduced metacognition. In plain English this means the first thought that arrives is immediately broadcast to the room without any tiresome internal quality control.

Some people find this unbearable. Their brain keeps noticing the logical gaps, the abandoned reasoning, the confident conclusions assembled from approximately two facts and a childhood memory. And loud.

Personally I don’t mind them. Often I find them funny and entertaining.

Generally they are good-natured and I don’t believe that every conversation needs to be a peer-reviewed journal article. And these people are surprisingly useful in the wild. They introduce people, start conversations, volunteer for things, and create momentum while the careful thinkers are still sitting quietly in the corner calculating probabilities.