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"But ALWAYS trust your gut on NOT to do something." Having learnt that lesson the hard way, I whole-heartedly agree. Our "gut" is the equivalent of a supercomp

by krylon 11y ago

"But ALWAYS trust your gut on NOT to do something." Having learnt that lesson the hard way, I whole-heartedly agree. Our "gut" is the equivalent of a supercomputer against the hand-held, battery-powered rational part of our minds. And it is there for a reason. If your "gut" screams at you to just run, you should at least seriously consider walking away. Every time I failed to do so, I came to regret it.

IanCal 11y ago
I'm really not happy with this assumption that you've got this incredible intuitive part of your mind that can predict things with uncanny accuracy when we can't reason through it. Snap judgements of situations are also well known to be extremely wrong. Ever judged a book by its cover and been wrong? Could your experience here be confirmation bias? You remember the cases where you felt you should run but didn't and it went wrong, and forget those where you felt you should run but didn't and everything was just fine? The other side is that if you leave, it's very hard to say what would have happened otherwise. You may feel you've dodged a bullet when there was in reality no gun.
- mreiland 11y ago
  It's not that it can predict things it's that it sees things you consciously miss. It's the reason why you might get the feeling someone is lying to you without being able to name every single piece of body language that told you why.
  - IanCal 11y ago
    And you can fall foul of an enormous number of cognitive biases because you can also see things that simply aren't there.
    - mreiland 11y ago
      You don't know enough about the subconscious to make that statement with any conviction.
      - deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
      - IanCal 11y ago
        Do you think that cognitive biases (like anchoring, for example) don't have any evidence for them? Do you disagree that humans have high false positive rates when looking for patterns (like the classic gamblers fallacy)?
        mreiland 11y ago
        I think you're asking questions so you can find an answer to attack. It's an old and boring way to argue on the internet. The truth is nothing is perfect, the reason these discussions don't go anywhere is because you're going to insist on finding the imperfections and then try to exploit that to win. That is your right, but I explained both what it is, and why it's often correct. I'm just too old to let myself get pulled into one of these discussions, sorry.
        IanCal 11y ago
        I'm sorry you feel that way, I'm just trying to find out where we might disagree. Those two questions where the ones I thought would be key points on which we might disagree and would get us closer to understanding where we both stand rather than stopping because I found someone that disagreed with me. I don't want to ignore opportunities to find out I'm wrong, or find another side to things I'd not considered. The ways in which we respond to things instinctively is a topic I find both fascinating and incredibly important. Personally I think there is enough evidence to suggest we should be highly wary of ways in which we think that we don't carefully analyse. If I'm wrong I could be ignoring a very powerful way of quickly responding to things. I think that people who rely on gut instinct are putting themselves at risk of making worse decisions on important issues, or trusting others that operate in the same way. I'm not going to keep poking, because there's no joy in talking to someone that doesn't want to respond, and certainly no joy in talking to someone who thinks that a discussion or debate is either something to be won or something where neither person should expect to come out with a different opinion.
- collyw 11y ago
  Malcolm Gladwell's book Blink talks about this. "Gut feeling" is often boils down to a "compressed" rapid response, based on all of our previous experience, without having to go through all the reasoning and debating that we usually do.
  - IanCal 11y ago
    And the quality of that response can be heavily dependent on how much we've been in a similar situation. Daniel Kahneman talks about this in "Thinking, Fast and Slow". It makes sense that quick reactions can be good if they're responding to things we have done many, many times before. It also makes sense that quick reactions can be very poor if they're responding to things that we've not done much.

by krylon 11y ago

IanCal 11y ago

I'm really not happy with this assumption that you've got this incredible intuitive part of your mind that can predict things with uncanny accuracy when we can't reason through it. Snap judgements of situations are also well known to be extremely wrong. Ever judged a book by its cover and been wrong? Could your experience here be confirmation bias? You remember the cases where you felt you should run but didn't and it went wrong, and forget those where you felt you should run but didn't and everything was just fine? The other side is that if you leave, it's very hard to say what would have happened otherwise. You may feel you've dodged a bullet when there was in reality no gun.

mreiland 11y ago
It's not that it can predict things it's that it sees things you consciously miss. It's the reason why you might get the feeling someone is lying to you without being able to name every single piece of body language that told you why.
- IanCal 11y ago
  And you can fall foul of an enormous number of cognitive biases because you can also see things that simply aren't there.
  - mreiland 11y ago
    You don't know enough about the subconscious to make that statement with any conviction.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - IanCal 11y ago
      Do you think that cognitive biases (like anchoring, for example) don't have any evidence for them? Do you disagree that humans have high false positive rates when looking for patterns (like the classic gamblers fallacy)?
      - mreiland 11y ago
        I think you're asking questions so you can find an answer to attack. It's an old and boring way to argue on the internet. The truth is nothing is perfect, the reason these discussions don't go anywhere is because you're going to insist on finding the imperfections and then try to exploit that to win. That is your right, but I explained both what it is, and why it's often correct. I'm just too old to let myself get pulled into one of these discussions, sorry.
        IanCal 11y ago
        I'm sorry you feel that way, I'm just trying to find out where we might disagree. Those two questions where the ones I thought would be key points on which we might disagree and would get us closer to understanding where we both stand rather than stopping because I found someone that disagreed with me. I don't want to ignore opportunities to find out I'm wrong, or find another side to things I'd not considered. The ways in which we respond to things instinctively is a topic I find both fascinating and incredibly important. Personally I think there is enough evidence to suggest we should be highly wary of ways in which we think that we don't carefully analyse. If I'm wrong I could be ignoring a very powerful way of quickly responding to things. I think that people who rely on gut instinct are putting themselves at risk of making worse decisions on important issues, or trusting others that operate in the same way. I'm not going to keep poking, because there's no joy in talking to someone that doesn't want to respond, and certainly no joy in talking to someone who thinks that a discussion or debate is either something to be won or something where neither person should expect to come out with a different opinion.
collyw 11y ago
Malcolm Gladwell's book Blink talks about this. "Gut feeling" is often boils down to a "compressed" rapid response, based on all of our previous experience, without having to go through all the reasoning and debating that we usually do.
- IanCal 11y ago
  And the quality of that response can be heavily dependent on how much we've been in a similar situation. Daniel Kahneman talks about this in "Thinking, Fast and Slow". It makes sense that quick reactions can be good if they're responding to things we have done many, many times before. It also makes sense that quick reactions can be very poor if they're responding to things that we've not done much.