"I think, really, the biggest question is, are we going to rely on our intuitions, on our instincts, on our taste receptors?
Or are we going to do something else? Now, some people might deny that there really is a "something else"
that we can do. I disagree. I think that we can...
The automatic settings give you efficiency. Point and shoot. And most of the time, it's going to work pretty well.
The manual mode is not very efficient. You have to sit there and fiddle with it yourself. You have to know what you're doing.
You can make mistakes. But, in principle, you can do anything with it. It allows you to tackle new kinds of problems...
A memory experiment. Some of them were told to remember a short little number.
Some of them were told to remember a longer number. The longer number imposes what we call a "cognitive load."
Keeps the manual mode busy.
And then they said, "Go down the hall to the other room, and by the way, there are snacks for you."
And some of these snacks are yummy chocolate cake ... they didn't tell them this up front ... others are fruit salad.
"Pick one..." And, what they predicted, and what they found, is that, when people had the higher cognitive load,
when the manual mode was kept busy, they were more likely to choose the chocolate cake,
especially if they described themselves as being on a diet or looking to watch their weight"
http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge324.html