Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious

There are many books like this these days. That talk about neurology, or psychology or even economics and business and intersect it with how we think and behave. Many of them talk about the same experiment and regurgitate the same conclusions, but as a bonus "Gut Feelings" ties many concepts together, this book presents these data in a way that is better. It's hard to explain that without spending a long time on this review, so I'm going to give a simple example that got me thinking which is why I liked this book so well. It was about how a baseball player catches a fly ball and it opens up a discussion, or thoughts, on just what we think we are. A baseball player was criticized by his coach to catch fly balls better by running over as fast as possible to where he thinks the ball is going to land and then look up and catch the ball. This is what I think of as the God's eye view of the world. Human beings are build in God's image, and so we have these computer like brains that can solve differential equations that are almost magical, and we need to take advantage of them. There is no telling how much damage has been done to people by this viewpoint, but the baseball player is one example. It turns out that when he followed his coaches expert advice he catches fewer balls. Huh? The coach ... the authority, hmmm ... very few of us really know what is going on inside us as we are live our lives, and this book slaps you in the face over and over about over-thinking, and trying to be a computer, and offers simpler methods to use instead. We catch balls by a simple heuristic (hope I spelled that right), by using our "gut". We fixate on the ball and try to keep the ball at a constant angle to us in the air and intersect that angle as the balls closes in. A simple elegant linear solution that evolution provided our simple brains to use. There are so many good examples of this kind of simple elegant direct thinking about thinking that I heartily recommend this book. In fact I intend to read more of the author's works.

when reading Gladwell's Blink, I kept hoping that by the end of the book something about how my brain worked would be revealed. Well, I got a sense that the Blink-like decisions I made on a daily basis are more common than I thought and with a wider scope (racism etc). What was incredibly disappointing about Blink was that I walked away with no more insight. yes some examples were articulated, but this in some ways was not really the promise of the book. the promise of walking away with something concrete is fulfilled in Gut feelings, which is almost like a response to Blink; the author is saying to Gladwell "this is how its done, young jedi!". Get this book if you want to know why you fight with your spouse or why you get along with them. get this book if you want to understand how to improve yourself by having more insight into how your brain is wired. get this book and his other book on Risk, and you will become a better person. not a cheap promise.

I once saw some slow motion film of some world-class cricketers. Some of the best batsmen closed their eyes in the face of a ball hurtling towards them at over 100 miles per hour. Yet they still hit the ball with remarkable accuracy. There are similar puzzles in baseball. You can describe the trajectory of the ball with all kinds of clever mathematics, but the clever outfielder knows little about such arcane mysteries. He watches the flight of the ball and automatically keeps the angle between his eyes and the ball constant. A neuroscientist consulting with a major car manufacturer showed them a way to develop a very simple proximity sensor based on the nervous system of a locust. When locusts swarm, they somehow avoid bumping into each other. It turns out that the circuit involves only four neurons. But saves the locusts - and weekend motorists - an ocean of hurt. The cricketer, the baseball player and the locust represent three examples of ways in which the nervous system uses simple rules to allow us to functions in complex situations. If we had to use all of our brainpower to solve every problem we would never get out of bed. Gerd Gigerenzer is a well-known and influential figure in neuroscience: he directs the Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition at the Max Plank Institute for Human Development in Berlin, Germany. He is a superb presenter who is much in demand at major international conferences and he has won numerous awards including the American Association for the Advancement of Science Prize for Behavioral Science Research. He is also the author of the seminal work: Adaptive Thinking: Rationality in the Real World (Evolution and Cognition Series). In this book he discusses the way in which simple rules form the basis of much of what goes on beneath the level of conscious awareness and may also form the basis of intuition. I slightly disagree with this last point: what Gerd is really talking about is instinct rather than intuition. The publicity surrounding this new book makes much of Gerd's role in providing some of the science and theoretical underpinning of Malcolm Gladwell's excellent book and perennial favorite: Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. On this occasion the marketers have got it right. Gerd Gigerenzer illustrates his book with many fascinating examples that show the accuracy of instinct. He also makes an important and often-overlooked point: instinctual decisions are not impulsive: they have their own brain-based rationale. The rules and principles that guide instinct are unsophisticated but surprisingly accurate. This is why people can often make good choices on topics outside their area of expertise. I have seen this with top level scientists and marketers, who can look at something about which they know very little, but still come up with remarkably perceptive answers. There has also been much recent discussion about the success of private investors who pick their own stocks and shares, when com

When one of our government official expressed his gut feelings about an important issue we all were in an uproar. In our conscious mind we deny the value of gut feelings. In reality we all guided by our gut feelings first and seek out the "facts" afterwards to support our view. This book is an excellent eye opener for people whom are open minded and not in denial of our inherent internal mechanism to make decisions.

"Gut Feelings" is a work aimed at a more general audience. Gerd Gigerenzer has written a number of academic works on the subject of this book; these would not be as readily accessible to a larger audience. Since I find his scientific works most intriguing, I think that this specific book is apt to be most interesting for readers. It deals with a subject relevant to the recent best seller "The Black Swan." It makes for a nice comparison to read both volumes. Both authors speak to the poor record, for example, of stock analysts in predicting what stocks do well and what do not do well. However, their analyses march in different directions. The dusk jacket notes the central focus of the work: "How does intuition work? What lies behind our moral behavior if not reflection and reasoning? How can simple `rules of thumb' help amateurs beat the stock market, outfielders catch a fly ball, parents choose a school, or lovers choose a mate?" The main argument of the author is that the evolutionary process has led humans to develop "rules of thumb" or "heuristics" that tend to lead to efficient decision making processes. Does statistical analysis give better results than heuristics? Not necessarily, says the author. What are these "shortcuts"? For instance, what if you are in a decision making situation and you need to respond to someone who may cause you problems or cooperate with you? The evidence suggests the value of a specific game with rules. As Gigerenzer puts it (page 62): "(1) Cooperate first, (2) keep a memory of size one, and (3) imitate your partner's last behavior." In plain English: If you are in competition with someone, at first cooperate. If they cooperate, you would continue cooperating. If they double cross you (don't cooperate), retaliate. Over time, according to a variety of studies, this works better than always double crossing people or always cooperating. Other heuristics: "Take the first." That is, if your first cue suggests one decision over another, go with it, even if you are ignoring other information. If there is no advantage on the first cue, go to a second one. If one option is better, go with it. In short, satisfice; select the first option that seems to work. Others are discussed as well. The book seems to digress a bit when it gets to moral behavior and social instincts. Nonetheless, a thought-provoking work that is accessible to interested readers. Well worth looking at.