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"But ALWAYS trust your gut on NOT to do something. If your gut tells you to not work at a particular company (or to stop dating someone), trust it implicitly a
by larrys 11y ago
"But ALWAYS trust your gut on NOT to do something. If your gut tells you to not work at a particular company (or to stop dating someone), trust it implicitly as your gut is much better at saving your life than it is at figuring up upside opportunities."
The problem with this is that we have no data on people who had a gut feeling that something was not right but were wrong about that gut feeling. People would tend to talk about times when "I should have listened to my gut about this" but rarely would tend to talk about when their gut was wrong and they were worried for nothing. (And I can think of several personal examples of this type of thing.).
- tmn 11y agoThat doesn't really contradict his point. It's all about probabilistic expectation. Presumably you have a myriad of options to choose from. If you have a bad gut feeling about one, move on. Obviously there will be counter examples to where this was not the optimal choice, but it is a valid heuristic. Generally in most peoples lives, there is more to lose than there is to gain. You want to skew decision making to minimize potential loss. Once again, there will be exceptions and people where such an approach isn't ideal.
- larrys 11y agoOk that is fine but where is the correlation between what someone feels in their gut and what ends up being true in the end? Plus, what is the downside risk of being overly cautious since that has to be factored in. If the gut is based on things that you have observed in the past, or your personal experiences, then it is also possible that you will jump the gun by being overly sensitive and matching a pattern incorrectly. [1] In that case you could be wrong. I guess what I am saying is "it's not that simple" as trite advice typically makes it sound. "minimize potential loss" also means "avoid potential gain". [1] This actually happened to me and although this is just a single example which I highlight and where I choose to ignore the gut and plug on, in my particular case I am glad that I had done so. (Was with a relationship..).
- fsk 11y agoActually, your brain/gut is a parallel supercomputer. If your "gut" tells you that this is a bad situation, it probably is correct, even though you may not consciously know the reason. Your gut is processing a lot of information based on your experience, some of which you may not know consciously. I don't have that problem so much anymore. When my gut tells me something is wrong, I usually also have a conscious logical reason. It takes a lot of self-awareness, though.
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