in measuring the activity of the subconscious mind as…
in measuring the activity of the subconscious mind as compared to the conscious mind, we’re looking at a factor of about 1 million to one. But in terms of bit of information processing, the conscious mind function represents one 10,000 of one percent of the brains total function.
— from The Mind in the Cockpit
In the book
The brain does not really function without expectations — it is, at bottom, an expectation machine, forever predicting what comes next and showing you the prediction. It runs mostly underground: the conscious mind you experience is a thin sliver riding on a vast subconscious that matches patterns and hands up answers before you know you asked. And it does not think in cold isolation, the way we like to imagine — thought and emotion cannot actually be separated; cognition gives us understanding while emotion supplies the value, and a mind with no feeling at all cannot even decide. — The Mind in the Cockpit