Jonah Lehrer - How We Decide
p. 2009 - Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
978-0-618-62011-1
Book review information:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/22/books/review/Johnson-t.html?_r=0
Jonah Lehrer’s engaging new book, “How We Decide,” puts our decision-making skills under the microscope.
tilts more decisively in the thinking-person’s self-help direction,
promising not only to explain how we decide, but also to help us do it
better.
Early on, Lehrer introduces his main theme: “Sometimes we need to reason
through our options and carefully analyze the possibilities. And
sometimes we need to listen to our emotions.”
Most readers at this point, I suspect, will naturally think of Malcolm Gladwell’s mega-best-seller “Blink,” which explored a similar boundary between reason and intuition.
Gladwell’s book took an external vantage point on its subject, drawing
largely on observations from psychology and sociology, while Lehrer’s is
an inside job, zooming in on the inner workings of the brain. We learn
about the nucleus accumbens, spindle cells and the prefrontal cortex.
Many of the experiments he recounts involve fMRI scans of brains in the
process of making decisions (which, for the record, is a little like
making a decision with your head stuck in a spinning clothes dryer).
He has a wonderful section on creativity and working memory, which ends
with the lovely epigram: “From the perspective of the brain, new ideas
are merely several old thoughts that occur at the exact same time.”
The very best deciders, whether quarterbacks, airline pilots, poker
players, or CEOs, are those who weigh both reason and emotion. Links back here to Ban Gogh
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Cover
Since Plato, philosophers have described the decision-making process as either rational or emotional: we carefully deliberate, or we "blink" and go with our gut.
neuroscience
-Introduction xi
-The quarterback in the pocket 1
-The predictions of Dopamine 28
-fooled by a feeling 57
-the uses of reason 93
-choking on thought 133
-the moral mind 167
-the brain is an argument 196
-the poker hand 219
-coda 251
Introduction
Flight simulator - can investigate your own decisions
This book is about how we make decisions. It is about what happened inside my brain after the engine fire. It is about how the human mind—the most complicated object in the known universe—chooses what to do. xiv
For centuries, they constructed elabo rate theories on decision-making by observing human behavior from the outside. Since the mind was inaccessible—the brain was just a black box—these thinkers were forced to rely on un- testable assumptions about what was actually happening inside the head.
Greeks, assumptions revolve around that we are rational beings, analyse situations logically, plato... descartes... Over time, our rationality came to define us. It was, simply put, what made us human.
There's only one problem with this assumption of human ra tionality: it's wrong. It's not how the brain works. couldn't reason himself to safety.
So how did I make a decision? What factors influenced my choices after the engine fire? For the first time in human history, these questions can be answered. We can look inside the brain and see how humans think: the black box has been broken open. It turns out that we weren't designed to be rational creatures.
Sometimes feelings can lead us astray and cause us to make all sorts of predictable mistakes
We either rely on statistics or trust our gut instincts. There's Apollonian logic versus Dionysian feeling; the id against the ego; the reptilian brain fighting the frontal lobes. xvi
Some times we need to reason through our options and carefully an alyze the possibilities. And sometimes we need to listen to our emotions.
Two main questions for this book: How does the human mind make decisions? And how can we make those decisions better?
The Quarterback in the Pocket p1-------------------------------------------------------------------
Example: Superbowl, 1minute remaining, The greatest upset in NFL history
1
Quarterback must make many quick decisions
Happen so fast they don't seem like decisions
suggestion of NO correlation between IQ (wonderlic) test of NFL players, and the decisions they make on the field p7
No time to contemplate maths and think about things rationally
2
This mystery of how we make decisions is one of the oldest of the mind p9
"The most popular theory frames decision-making in epic terms, as a pitched battle between reason and emotion, with reason often triumphing." p9
"Plato, as usual, was there first. He liked to imagine the mind as a chariot pulled by two horses."
"If we follow the horses, we will be led like a "fool into the world below."" p10
"This division of the mind is one of Plato's most enduring themes, an idea enshrined in Western culture." p10
"René Descartes, the most influential philosopher of the Enlightenment, agreed with this ancient critique of feeling. Descartes divided our being into two distinct substances: a holy soul capable of reason, and a fleshy body full of "mechanical passions."" p10
"The Cartesian faith in reason became a founding principle of modern philosophy. Rationality was like a scalpel, able to dis sect reality into its necessary parts. Emotions, on the other hand, were crude and primitive." p11
There were no temples dedicated to emotion.
The twentieth-century version of the Platonic metaphor was put forth by Sigmund Freud.
"In his "speculative science," Freud imag ined the human mind as divided into a series of conflicting parts. (Conflict was important to Freud, since it helped explain neuroses.) At the center of the mind was the id, a factory of crude desires. Above that was the ego, which represented the conscious self and the rational brain. It was the job of the ego to restrain the id, channeling its animal emotions in socially acceptable ways. "One might compare the relations of the ego to the id with that between a rider and his horse," Freud wrote in a direct allusion to Plato. "The horse provides the locomotive energy, and the rider has the prerogative of determining the goal and of guid ing the movements of his powerful mount towards it."" p11-12
"Over time, Freudian psychology lost its scientific credibility. Discussions of the id, ego, and Oedipus complex were replaced by references to specific areas in the brain; " p12
"But modern science soon hit on a new metaphor: the mind was a computer. According to cognitive psychology, each of us was a set of software programs running on three pounds of neu ral hardware." p12
"The problem with seeing the mind as a computer is that computers don't have feelings. Be cause emotions couldn't be reduced to bits of information or the logical structures of programming language, scientists tended to ignore them." p12-13
"...if our feelings keep us from making rational decisions, then surely we'd be better off without any feelings at all. Plato, for example, couldn't help but imagine a Utopia in which reason determined everything. Such a mythical society—a republic of pure reason —has been dreamed of by philosophers ever since." p13
"But this classical theory is founded upon a crucial mistake. For too long, people have disparaged the emotional brain, blaming our feelings for all of our mistakes. The truth is far more interesting. What we discover when we look at the brain is that the horses and the charioteer depend upon each other. If it weren't for our emotions, reason wouldn't exist at all."
3
Elliot, tumor, unable to make a decision p14 example
"He had the emotional life of a mannequin.
This was a completely unexpected discovery. At the time, neuroscience assumed that human emotions were irrational. A person without any emotions—in other words, someone like Elliot—should therefore make better decisions. His cognition should be uncorrupted. The charioteer should have complete control." p15
impact of removal of tumor form area of the brain..
"The mundane choices of every day life become excruciatingly difficult. It's as if his very person ality—the collection of wants and desires that defined him as an individual—had been systematically erased" p16
"The crucial importance of our emotions—the fact that we can't make decisions without them—contradicts the conven tional view of human nature, with its ancient philosophical roots." p17
"David Hume, the eighteenth-century Scottish philosopher who delighted in he retical ideas, was right when he declared that reason was "the slave of the passions."" p17
"When a person is drawn to a specific receiver, or a certain en trée on the menu, or a particular romantic prospect, the mind is trying to tell him that he should choose that option. It has already assessed the alternatives—this analysis takes place outside of conscious awareness—and converted that assessment into a positive emotion. And when he sees a receiver who's tightly cov ered, or smells a food he doesn't like, or glimpses an ex-girlfriend, it is the OFC that makes him want to get away. {Emotion and motivation share the same Latin root, movere, which means "to move.") The world is full of things, and it is our feelings that help us choose among them." p18
Decisions seem to have already been made before we think we consciously think them?
"While Plato and Freud would have guessed that the job of the OFC was to protect us from our emotions, to fortify reason against feeling, its actual function is precisely the oppo site. From the perspective of the human brain, Homo sapiens is the most emotional animal of all. p18
4 p19
daytime soap opera, long tiem to film for 22mins of television DAYS OF OUR LIVES
only has one day to shoot, so can't afford to think carefully about everything
after years learned to trust his instincts
The mental process Stein is describing depends on his emotional brain. p23
...all those details that he doesn't consciously perceive. "The conscious brain may get all the attention," says Joseph LeDoux, a neuroscientist at NYU. "But consciousness is a small part of what the brain does, and it's a slave to everything that works beneath it." Ac cording to LeDoux, much of what we "think" is really driven by our emotions. p23
Stein's insight is that his feelings are often an accurate shortcut, a concise expression of his decades' worth of experience. They already know how to shoot the scene. p23
WHY ARE OUR emotions so essential?
The answer is rooted in evolution.
What these animals couldn't do, however, was reflect on their own decisions. They couldn't plan out their days or use language to express their inner states. They weren't able to analyze complex phenomena or invent new tools. What couldn't be done automatically couldn't be done at all. The charioteer had yet to appear. p24
These new talents were incredibly useful. But they were also incredibly new. As a result, the parts of the human brain that make them possible—the ones that the driver of the chariot con trols— suffer from the same problem that afflicts any new tech nology: they have lots of design flaws and software bugs. p25
When it comes to the new parts of the brain, evolution just hasn't had time to work out the kinks. p25
batter example, we pick up clues before the swing is initiated and that helps us decide whether to swing or not.
scientific proof of correlation between emotional brain, needed for decision making
Chapter 1 - importance, that we are
not rational beings and that emotions do come into play so this can
obviously affect us and also our perception of something.... Emotions
are important! someone feeling love will respond favourably as opposed
to something they hate.
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2 The Predictions of Dopamine p28
Example: Second Marine Division across desert of Saudia Arabia
Retaking Kuwait after Iraqi invasion
blipping on the radar
couldn't tell if blip was an enemy missle or an A-6 freindly
CHOSE to fire
"The captain asked Riley how he could be sure he'd fired at an Iraqi missile and not at an Amer ican fighter jet. Riley said he just knew." p32
sounds like intuition to me
Turns our he was right, he had SAVED a battleship.
could have just been lucky... a gamble
UNTIL 1993 when Gary Klein started to investigate the Silkworm affair
Reason:Riley was un consciously evaluating the altitude of the blip, even if he didn't know he was doing it. it was subtle but the evidence is there. p34
1
The question still remains: how did Riley's emotions manage to distinguish between these two seemingly identical radar blips? p34
The answer lies in a single molecule, called dopamine, that brain cells use to communicate with one another. p34
The importance of dopamine was discovered by accident. In 1954, James Olds and Peter Milner, two neuroscientists at McGill University, decided to implant an electrode deep into the
center of a rat's brain. p34
(NAcc), a part of the brain that generates pleasurable feelings. p34
(rat experiment) constant dopamine caused them to die, not caring about anything. p35
"Scientists now know that this neurotransmitter helps to regulate all of our emotions, from the first stirrings of love to the most visceral forms of disgust" p35
"Just as the process of sight starts with the retina,
so the process of decision-making begins with the fluctuations of dopamine." p35-36
"Schultz set out to decipher this reward circuitry. How exactly did a single cell man age to represent a reward? And why did it fire before a reward was given?" p35
Primate experiements to see if they expected the reward... worked began to recieve dopamine before given reward
"However, if the pattern was violated— if the tone was played but the juice never arrived—then the monkey's dopamine neurons decreased their firing rate. This is known as the prediction-error signal. The monkey felt upset be cause its predictions of juice were wrong." p37
When not recieving the expectation: "Within milliseconds, the activity of the brain cells has been inflated into a powerful emotion. Nothing focuses the mind like surprise." p38
Neuroscientists have known for several years that this region, the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), is involved in the detection of errors.
"It internalizes the lessons of real life, making sure that neural patterns are completely up to date. If it was predicted that juice would arrive after the tone, but the juice never arrived, then the A C C makes sure that future predictions are revised." p39
"This is an essential aspect of decision-making. If we can't in corporate the lessons of the past into our future decisions, then we're destined to endlessly repeat our mistakes." p39
Just to keep in mind, that I can talk about Frued / jung but as a basis to start thinking about the unconscious but to imply there are always other things going on in the background beyond our cconscious control
"The ACC has one last crucial feature, which further explains its importance: it is densely populated with a very rare type of cell known as a spindle neuron. Unlike the rest of our brain cells, which are generally short and bushy, these brain cells are long and slender. They are found only in humans and great apes, which suggests that their evolution was intertwined with higher cognition. Humans have about forty times more spindle cells than any other primate." p40
"The consequence of this is that the minor fluctuations of a single type of neurotransmitter play a huge role in guiding our actions, telling us how we should feel about what we see. "You're probably 99.9 percent unaware of dopamine release," says Read Montague, a professor of neuroscience at Baylor University. "But you're probably 99.9 percent driven by the information and emotions it conveys to other parts of the brain." " p40-41
"Those wild horses aren't acting on a whim. Instead, human emotions are rooted in the predictions of highly flexible brain cells, which are constantly adjusting their connections to reflect reality. Every time you make a mistake or encounter some thing new, your brain cells are busy changing themselves. Our emotions are deeply empirical." p41
"Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on my dopamine neu rons." p41
Seasickness example... used to solid unmoving ground, don't expect moving ground
"Every time you experience a feeling of joy or disappointment, fear or happiness, your neurons are busy rewiring themselves, construct ing a theory of what sensory cues preceded the emotions. The lesson is then committed to memory, so the next time you make a decision, your brain cells are ready. They have learned how to predict what will happen next." p42
2
Backgammon
Chess - computer beating human, just a maths equation to it
"This is a crucial cognitive talent. Dopamine neurons automat ically detect the subtle patterns that we would otherwise fail to notice; they assimilate all the data that we can't consciously comprehend. And then, once they come up with a set of refined pre dictions about how the world works, they translate these pre dictions into emotions." p48
stocks example
if asked which gives the best feeling, be able to identify best stocks
"According to Tilmann Betsch, the psychologist who performed this clever little experi ment, your emotions will "reveal a remarkable degree of sensitivity" to the actual performance of all of the different securities." p48
3
HOWEVER
"This doesn't mean that people can coast on these cellular emotions. Dopamine neurons need to be continually trained and re trained, or else their predictive accuracy declines. Trusting one's emotions requires constant vigilance; intelligent intuition is the result of deliberate practice." p49
" Robertie says. "The game started to become very much a matter of aesthetics. My decisions in-
The Predictions of Dopamine \ 51
creasingly depended on the look of things, so that I could con template a move and then see right away if it made my position look better or worse. You know how an art critic can look at a painting and just know if it's a good painting? I was the same way, only my painting was the backgammon board."" p50-51
"According to Robertie, the most effective way to get better is to focus on your mistakes. In other words, you need to consciously consider the errors being internalized by your dopamine neurons."
"Although we tend to think of experts as being weighed down by information, their intelligence dependent on a vast amount of explicit knowledge, experts are actually profoundly intuitive. When an expert evaluates a situa tion, he doesn't systematically compare all the available options or consciously analyze the relevant information. He doesn't rely on elaborate spreadsheets or long lists of pros and cons. Instead, the expert naturally depends on the emotions generated by his dopamine neurons. His prediction errors have been translated into useful knowledge, which allows him to tap into a set of ac curate feelings he can't begin to explain." p54
"so FAR, we've been exploring the surprising intelligence of our emotions. We've seen how the fluctuations of dopamine are translated into a set of prophetic feelings. But emotions aren't perfect. They are a crucial cognitive tool, but even the most useful tools can't solve every problem. In fact, there are certain conditions that consistently short-circuit the emotional brain, causing people to make bad decisions. The best decision-makers know which situations require less intuitive responses, and in the next part of the book, we'll look at what those situations are" p56
Chapter 2 - Dopamine affects our decisions, predictions, expectation and outcome improve errors and commit to memory... emotional brain collates most information we can't consciously comperehend
Make decisions just by looking at things, may be right/wrong but they are because of our past, so photographers can learn from past mistakes which affect their decisions now, it's because we can;t always conscious think about every decision and analyse them so of course a lot of it has to go on in the background to decide and perhapos even 'taking the shot' is through this process and more intuitive and even manipulating and selecting an image is through this process
Fooled by a feeling p57
Example: Klinestiver, Parkinson's disease
caused by lack of dopamine
discovered gambling
taken off her medication tremors came back, gambling stopped
"The brain is flooded with a feel-good chemical, making these games of chance excessively seductive. Such pa tients are so blinded by the pleasures of winning that they slowly lose everything. That's what happened to Ann." p61
"When emotions get out of control—and there are certain things that reliably make this happen—the results can be just as devastating as not having
any emotions at all." p61-62
1
the hot hand phenomenom
no evidence for it
"Why do we believe in streaky shooters? Our dopamine neu rons are to blame. Although these cells are immensely useful —they help us predict events that are actually predictable—they can also lead us astray, especially when we are confronted with randomness. " p64
The danger of random processes—things like slot machines and basketball shots—is that they take advantage of a defect built into the emotional brain." p65
We trust our feelings and perceive patterns, but the patterns don't actually exist." p65
"THIS DEFECT IN the emotional brain has important consequences. Think about the stock market, which is a classic exam ple of a random system." p67 cant be predicted
"The danger of the stock market, however, is that sometimes its erratic fluctuations can actually look predictable, at least in the short term." p67
"The world is more random than we can imagine. That's what our emotions can't understand." p70
2
Deal or no deal
26 boxes, 25 choices
for the most part, a game of luck
How contestent arrived at these decisions
Most offered higher amounts then succesively lower and lower amounts
The way the question was phrased, saving 200 ppl or killing 400 Changed answers p75-76
Loss aversion
"Loss aversion is an innate flaw. Everyone who experiences emotion is vulnerable to its effects. It's part of a larger psycho logical phenomenon known as negativity bias, which means that, for the human mind, bad is stronger than good." p81
3
credit card debt
"The problem with credit cards is that they take advantage of a dangerous flaw built into the brain. This failing is rooted in our emotions, which tend to overvalue immediate gains (like a new pair of shoes) at the cost of future expenses (high interest rates)." p87
"He tries to quote a famous song by the Rolling Stones but he can't quite remember the lyrics. The message of the chorus is simple: you can't always get what you want, but sometimes not getting what you want is just what you need." p92
Brain looks for patterns where none exist so affects our decisions.
perhaps not entirely relevant here, there is nothing maybe so disasterous when used in our photography in the depths that this discusses
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4 The Uses of Reason p93
Firefighters, out of control fire
some died - couldn't outrun fire
man survived by burning the ground and survived
1
question is now, how did he make such a smart decision?
what made him resist the urge to fleee
"Dodge survived the fire because he was able to beat back his emotions. Once he realized that his fear had exhausted its usefulness—it told him to run, but there was nowhere to go—Dodge was able to resist its primal urges. Instead, he turned to his conscious mind, which is uniquely capable of deliberate and creative thought. While automatic emotions focus on the most immediate variables, the rational brain is able to expand the list of possibilities." p99
""The advantage [of the emotional brain] is that by allowing evo lution to do the thinking for you at first, you basically buy the time that you need to think about the situation and do the most reasonable thing." And so Dodge stopped running. If he was go ing to survive the fire, he needed to think."
2
"The prefrontal cortex can deliberately choose to ignore the emotional brain." p107
3
4
reason perhaps not so important hre as I am talking about the bias and things we cannot control, as obviously sometimes we can control things but I care about if there is a chance of deception/bias then that is important. This is suggesting that sometimes our rational mind is important to override emotions sometimes
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p133 Choking on Thought
" In general, we believe that carefully studying something leads to better outcomes, since we'll avoid careless errors." p133 e.g. marriage
"Unsubstantiated speculation. Plato, after all, didn't do experiments. He had no way of knowing that the ratio nal brain couldn't solve every problem, or that the prefrontal cortex had severe limitations. The reality of the brain is that, sometimes, rationality can lead us astray." p133
So this chapter seems like it will be about how reason can mislead us... perhaps relevant. Problems.
Example: Opera superstar
worried when difficult note approaches, was overthinking it, nervous, barely breathe etc
eventually quit
"Performers call such failures "choking," because a person so frayed by pressure might as well not have any oxygen. What makes choking so morbidly fascinating is that the only thing in capacitating the performer is his or her own thoughts." p135
Golfer example, when started to think about what he was doing, began to break down.
Is this really relevant to me? I'm not so sure...
"A little experience, however, changes everything. After a golfer has learned how to putt—once he or she has memorized the necessary movements—analyzing the stroke is a waste of time. The brain already knows what to do." p138
"The lesson of Renee Fleming, Jean Van de Velde, and these Stanford students is that rational thought can backfire. While reason is a powerful cognitive tool, it's dangerous to rely exclu sively on the deliberations of the prefrontal cortex" p140
"They ignore the wisdom of their emotions—the knowledge embedded in their dopamine neurons—and start reaching for things that they can explain. (One of the problems with feelings is that even when they are ac curate, they can still be hard to articulate.) Instead of going with the option that feels the best, a person starts going with the op tion that sounds the best, even if it's a very bad idea." p140
I CAN REVISIT THIS CHAPTER IF I FEEL I NEED TO KNOW MORE ABOUT THE RATIONAL MIND CAUSING US TO ERR
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6 The Moral Mind
At first glance, morality may not come into so much that I wish to discuss here...
Example: John Wayne Gacy, child, Sadism was entertaining
On March 1 2 , 1980, John Wayne Gacy was convicted of murdering thirty-three boys. He paid the boys for sex, and if something went awry with the trans action, he would kill them in his living room p168
psychopaths make disastrous choices
"Morality can be a squishy, vague concept, and yet, at its simplest level, it's nothing but a series of choices about how we treat other people." p169
For this reason I am now going to skip this chapter.
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7 The Brain is an Argument p196
favoured presidents...
editorial staff favoured different presidents, however the majority wins
"In this sense, the editorial board is a metaphor for the brain. Its decisions often feel unanimous—you know which candidate you prefer—but the conclusions are actually reached only after a series of sharp internal disagreements" p198
RE cereal choices "Each of these distinct claims will trigger a particu lar set of emotions and associations, all of which then compete for your conscious attention." p199
""The point is that most of the computation is done at an emotional, unconscious level, and not at a logical level," he says. The par ticular ensemble of brain cells that win the argument determine what you eat for breakfast." p199
1
"The dilemma, of course, is how to reconcile the argument. If the brain is always disagreeing with itself, then how can a person ever make a decision? At first glance, the answer seems obvious: force a settlement. The rational parts of the mind should intervene and put an end to all the emotional bickering." p203
"he problem is that the urge to end the debate of ten leads to neglect of crucial pieces of information. A person is so eager to silence the amygdala, or quiet the OFC, or suppress some bit of the limbic system that he or she ends up making a bad decision. A brain that's intolerant of uncertainty—that can't stand the argument—often tricks itself into thinking the wrong thing. What Mike Pride says about editorial boards is also true of the cortex: "The most important thing is that everyone has their say, that you listen to the other side and try to understand their point of view. You can't short-circuit the process."" 203-204
2
"The only way to counteract the bias for certainty is to encour age some inner dissonance. We must force ourselves to think about the information we don't want to think about, to pay at tention to the data that disturbs our entrenched beliefs. When we start censoring our minds, turning off those brain areas that contradict our assumptions, we end up ignoring relevant evi dence. A major general shrugs off the evacuation of Soviet mili tary personnel and those midnight cables from trusted sources. He insists that an invasion isn't happening even when it has al ready begun." p217
Interesting that we have a dilemma over our choices, may revisit this for our selection over photographs that small minute decisions go into choosing.
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8 The Poker Hand p219
particle physiscit, thinking about his plays and how could have played differently, high
kicked out of casinos
"They know that the most important thing in poker is not what cards they actually have, but what cards people think they have. A lie told well is just as good as the truth." p225
I was going to say that decieving may be important for the photographer to do, but then this kind of implies it is a conscious process and not one here.... or is it?
winning hand...
"That bet had nothing to do with math," Binger says. "I'd gotten high pairs before, and not done much with them . . . But at that moment, as soon as I saw my cards, I knew what I needed to do. To be hon est, I don't know why I went all in on that hand. If I'd really thought about it, I might not have done it. The bet was damn risky. But it just felt like the right thing to do. Y ou can do all the probabilistic analysis in the world, but in the end it all comes down to something you can't quite explain." p229
comparison poker + chess, chess pure information, computers can cossitently beat
"The difference between math problems and mysteries is im portant. In order to solve a math problem, all you need is more rational thought. Some poker hands, of course, can be played by relying on the math: if you're dealt a pair of aces, or get a straight on the flop, then you're going to make an aggressive bet. The odds are in your favor" p230
" Binger realizes that in certain situations, it's impor tant to listen to his feelings, even if he doesn't always know what they're responding to. " A s a physicist, it can be hard admitting that you just can't reason your way to the winning hand," Binger says. "But that's the reality of poker. Y ou can't construct a per fect model of it. It's based on a seemingly infinite amount of in formation. In that sense, poker is a lot like real life."" p232
2
Dijksterhuis experiment chooisng cars,
"How should we make this choice? The best strategy may be the following: First, take a good look at both of the paintings. Then leave the auction and distract yourself for a while (which is easy to do in Paris), and only then decide."" p236
"Dijksterhuis says. "Use your conscious mind to acquire all the information you need for making a decision. But don't try to analyze the information with your conscious mind. Instead, go on holiday while your unconscious mind digests it." p237
4
"We can now start to sketch out a taxonomy of decision-making, applying the knowledge of the brain to the real world. We've seen how the different brain systems—the Platonic driver and his emotional horses—should be used in different situations. While reason and feeling are both essential tools, each is best suited for specific tasks." p243
"Future experiments will reveal new aspects of human hardware and software. We'll learn about additional programming bugs and cognitive talents. The current theories will undoubtedly get complicated. And yet, even at the dawn of this new science, it's possible to come up with a few general guidelines that can help us all make better decisions." p244
SIMPLE PROBLEMS REQUIRE REASON
Likewise, there's a whole subset of everyday decisions—those mundane choices that don't really matter—that could benefit from a little more conscious deliberation. Too often, we let our impulses make the easy decisions for us. A person will pick a vegetable peeler, laundry detergent, or boxer shorts on a whim and automatically trust his instincts when he gets an obvious poker hand. But these are precisely the sorts of emotion-driven decisions that might benefit from rational analysis. p245-246
NOVEL PROBLEMS ALSO REQUIRE REASON.
YOU KNOW MORE THAN YOU KNOW. One of the endur ing paradoxes of the human mind is that it doesn't know itself very well. p248
"The conscious brain is ignorant of its own underpin nings, blind to all that neural activity taking place outside the prefrontal cortex. This is why people have emotions: they are windows into the unconscious, visceral representations of all the information we process but don't perceive." p248
WELL WORTH RE-READING LATER once I know what I'm chatting about
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Coda p251
plane crash statistics, mainly error
since 1990's significantly reduced
reasons, flight simulators,
The best decisions emerge when a multiplicity of viewpoints are brought to bear on the situation. The wisdom of crowds also applies in the cockpit p254
THE WISDOM OF CROWDS, NEEDED FOR LATE`r iN DISSERTATION!!!!
such as guessing the number of jellybeans in a bottle....
CRM this is called
"Pilots are like the plane's prefrontal cortex. Their job is to monitor these onboard computers, to pay close attention to the data on the cockpit screens. If something goes wrong, or if there's a disagreement among the various computers, then it's the re sponsibility of the flight crew to resolve the problem." p256-257
explaisn how the brain works in this plabe has a lot of autopilot systems and we could be the unconsious that needa to inttervene
Simon Johnson
www.thephilosophicalphotographer.co.uk
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