4 ms·

Yes, our gut is our second brain, it’s the subconscious. To dismiss one’s instincts is irrational. Our bodies developed fine-tuned monitoring and alerting syst

Yes, our gut is our second brain, it’s the subconscious. To dismiss one’s instincts is irrational. Our bodies developed fine-tuned monitoring and alerting systems (our instincts). To ignore your gut is to ignore your hard-earned experience. Trust your gut. The scientific reason for why it’s telling you that will be explained later.

DFHippie 6y ago
This depends on the nature of the decision. If it's whether or not to vaccinate or insulate your attic you probably are better off trusting your brain. Many of the problems we face today are due to people spurning eggheaded decision making.
- astral303 6y ago
  Yes, I agree that you should also not dismiss the brain when making decisions. This is widely assumed to be the desired, appropriate behavior. (Whereas dismissing your gut is widely regarded as the right thing to do, which is actually a wrong thing to do and is an avoidable bad decision.) However, I think you underestimate the brain thinking that the anti-vaxxers are making—-believe me, they have done hardheaded rationalization of their beliefs. Egg-headed decisions come from bad brain thinking, not from trusting your gut.
- astral303 6y ago
  Here’s a familiar bit of egg-headed decision making, to prove to you it is the brain that’s the problem, not the gut. Ask the grunts/troops/anyone who is actually writing code: how do you really feel? Most feel in their gut things got too complex and bad decisions are being made. If these engineers only actually listened to their gut, they would be pushing back hard to get complexity reigned in, to get back to a much cleaner architecture. But for a myriad of reasons, such as not wanting to appear clueless in a fast changing tech world, the engineers stay silent. The rationalization is a very brain activity. Do a reality check on yourself. What feels have you been rationalizing or dismissing? Take a look by observing—what kind of feeling is it? Where is it in your body? (A lump in your throat, tightness in your stomach?) Observe what it is. Don’t explain it away or it will stop being observable. Once you observe, you will learn new information, which will then inform your subsequent decisions.
  - clucas 6y ago
    The scenario you outline is of a person experienced in a technical field having second thoughts about something, but not raising the concerns sure to external factors. This is very different from the scenarios mentioned by the GP, where people who are not experienced in the technical field (i.e. not immunologists or HVAC engineer, respectively) ignore the advice of people who are experts, just because it feels right to them in their gut. I would say, listen to experts (and not your gut) when outside of your field, and listen to your gut (but not only your gut) when in your field.
    - astral303 6y ago
      I agree that listening to expert advice over your gut is the right thing to do. But that’s besides the point—-learning to trust expert advice is a brain behavior that has to be properly learned. (For example, many of us have learned to catastrophize and over-generalize, where bad advice from one expert suddenly translates into not listening to all future experts). I’m imploring: do not dismiss your gut, folks! Please continue to use brain, but stop dismissing your gut. .... “I think therefore I am” is oversimplified bunk.
      - lotsofpulp 6y ago
        Your “gut” is this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases And thinking your gut knows something is part of those biases, namely, confirmation and selection bias.
        crazypython 6y ago
        No, it's this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerebellum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerebellum Or, it's System 1, the fast system. While your System 1 might make bias mistakes, I believe it can be trained not to make them.
- DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
  > If it's whether or not to vaccinate or insulate your attic you probably are better off trusting your brain. Disagree. Even my gut says to not vaccinate my attic.
kortilla 6y ago
Your gut is where prejudices, racism, nepotism, and a whole bunch of other bad shit resides. What the gut optimizes (reducing threats, reproduction, getting food, etc) is very frequently selfish short term thinking.
HappyDreamer 6y ago
> Trust your gut. The scientific reason for why it’s telling you that will be explained later Usually that's good advice :-) In other cases, some people got bullied as children or grew up with a weird parent, and because of that feel in their gut, their intuition tells them, that no one likes them, and they better stay at home and avoid people. Then, trusting one's gut or intuition, can damage a whole life. What you call "the guts" and intuition and feelings, can learn the wrong things, during childhood. Can be good to apply some logical reasoning, and also talk with other people if it's something important
- voidpointercast 6y ago
  Yeah, living having to fight your intuition for every scrap of ground RE: others is a wonderful experience.

DFHippie 6y ago

This depends on the nature of the decision. If it's whether or not to vaccinate or insulate your attic you probably are better off trusting your brain. Many of the problems we face today are due to people spurning eggheaded decision making.

astral303 6y ago
Yes, I agree that you should also not dismiss the brain when making decisions. This is widely assumed to be the desired, appropriate behavior. (Whereas dismissing your gut is widely regarded as the right thing to do, which is actually a wrong thing to do and is an avoidable bad decision.) However, I think you underestimate the brain thinking that the anti-vaxxers are making—-believe me, they have done hardheaded rationalization of their beliefs. Egg-headed decisions come from bad brain thinking, not from trusting your gut.
astral303 6y ago
Here’s a familiar bit of egg-headed decision making, to prove to you it is the brain that’s the problem, not the gut. Ask the grunts/troops/anyone who is actually writing code: how do you really feel? Most feel in their gut things got too complex and bad decisions are being made. If these engineers only actually listened to their gut, they would be pushing back hard to get complexity reigned in, to get back to a much cleaner architecture. But for a myriad of reasons, such as not wanting to appear clueless in a fast changing tech world, the engineers stay silent. The rationalization is a very brain activity. Do a reality check on yourself. What feels have you been rationalizing or dismissing? Take a look by observing—what kind of feeling is it? Where is it in your body? (A lump in your throat, tightness in your stomach?) Observe what it is. Don’t explain it away or it will stop being observable. Once you observe, you will learn new information, which will then inform your subsequent decisions.
- clucas 6y ago
  The scenario you outline is of a person experienced in a technical field having second thoughts about something, but not raising the concerns sure to external factors. This is very different from the scenarios mentioned by the GP, where people who are not experienced in the technical field (i.e. not immunologists or HVAC engineer, respectively) ignore the advice of people who are experts, just because it feels right to them in their gut. I would say, listen to experts (and not your gut) when outside of your field, and listen to your gut (but not only your gut) when in your field.
  - astral303 6y ago
    I agree that listening to expert advice over your gut is the right thing to do. But that’s besides the point—-learning to trust expert advice is a brain behavior that has to be properly learned. (For example, many of us have learned to catastrophize and over-generalize, where bad advice from one expert suddenly translates into not listening to all future experts). I’m imploring: do not dismiss your gut, folks! Please continue to use brain, but stop dismissing your gut. .... “I think therefore I am” is oversimplified bunk.
    - lotsofpulp 6y ago
      Your “gut” is this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases And thinking your gut knows something is part of those biases, namely, confirmation and selection bias.
      - crazypython 6y ago
        No, it's this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerebellum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerebellum Or, it's System 1, the fast system. While your System 1 might make bias mistakes, I believe it can be trained not to make them.
DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
> If it's whether or not to vaccinate or insulate your attic you probably are better off trusting your brain. Disagree. Even my gut says to not vaccinate my attic.

kortilla 6y ago

Your gut is where prejudices, racism, nepotism, and a whole bunch of other bad shit resides. What the gut optimizes (reducing threats, reproduction, getting food, etc) is very frequently selfish short term thinking.

HappyDreamer 6y ago

> Trust your gut. The scientific reason for why it’s telling you that will be explained later Usually that's good advice :-) In other cases, some people got bullied as children or grew up with a weird parent, and because of that feel in their gut, their intuition tells them, that no one likes them, and they better stay at home and avoid people. Then, trusting one's gut or intuition, can damage a whole life. What you call "the guts" and intuition and feelings, can learn the wrong things, during childhood. Can be good to apply some logical reasoning, and also talk with other people if it's something important

voidpointercast 6y ago
Yeah, living having to fight your intuition for every scrap of ground RE: others is a wonderful experience.