Whether or not to watch Sophie’s Choice. Because it might diminish the difficulty of all future choices.
PROMPT: Hardest Decision
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Tag Archives: decision making
Two Trails [Senryū]
BOOK: “Gut Feelings” by Gerd Gigerenzer
Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious by Gerd GigerenzerMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Publisher Website – Penguin
Like Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink, Gut Feelings explores the circumstances under which intuitive decision-making has been shown to outperform rigorous and systematic reasoning. Gigerenzer is a psychologist and the Director of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development.
The central idea of this book is that our brains have evolved to engage in intuitive decision making, and that sometimes what looks like sloppy thinking has underlying benefits. Take – for example – the fact that many times people are asked a question that they don’t know the answer to, but they exploit their selective ignorance in a way that allows them to not only outperform those more ignorant than they, but also those less ignorant. Gigerenzer uses the example of students asked whether Milwaukee or Detroit has a bigger population. Often those who’ve only heard of one of the cities will guess that the one they know is bigger, and this tends to be right more often than not. Students familiar with both cities (but not knowing the precise answer) are more likely to stumble.
The book suggests that we tend to decide based on one key factor rather than the full “pros and cons” list for which many teachers and leaders advocate. The book has a fascinating chapter on how this all applies to healthcare decision-making. It provides insight into why the American healthcare system is so screwed up (high cost, low health outcomes.)
If you are interested in decision-making and the divergence between what we are taught to do and what most of us actually do most of the time (and why,) I’d highly recommend this book.
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PROMPT: No
Daily writing prompt
How often do you say “no” to things that would interfere with your goals?
I say no to all sorts of things regularly, for good or bad. I have a [sometimes] unfortunate proclivity to default to no. I move through life like an aircraft carrier, not prone to quick turns or rapid adjustment to unexpected circumstance. I need prepping for course changes and plenty of time. But it does tend to keep me on my objective.
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PROMPT: Good Leader
What makes a good leader?
I don’t think I know, not really. But I don’t feel bad because I don’t think a lot of people who consider themselves experts do either. For example, one of the biggest cons in academia is that professors in business schools often get paid much more than their science and humanities counterparts on the presumption that they would go run businesses if they weren’t paid a higher salary than the others. Most of them would not. The idea that a thorough theoretical knowledge of the world of commerce and the operations of a corporation would translate into all the X-factors needed to head a company (e.g. charisma, risk-acceptance profile, creativity, and an internal emotional landscape that borders on [or is outright] psychopathic) seems laughable. If that’s the way the world worked a quartet of music professors would be outselling the Beatles and the ranks of Olympic gold medalists would be swollen with Kinesiology PhDs.
NOTE: I should explain the “psychopathy” crack. Many of us have quite enough angst from making decisions that seem to have the potential to ruin our own lives. Some can take a little more angst and are ok making decisions that might mess up not only their own lives, but also those of their children. It takes a special kind of reptilian-like nature (beneath the appearance of charm and polished interpersonal skills) to regularly make decisions that can screw up the lives of complete strangers by the hundreds or thousands.
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PROMPT: Instincts
Do you trust your instincts?
With regards to some types of questions, I trust my instincts implicitly. This is NOT because I think I have infallible instincts or a gift, but rather because reasoning and conscious cognitive processes are often demonstrably and systematically wrong in some domains. For example, the science shows people who think they can detect lies by observing and employing their reasoning to what they observe are wrong far more often than people who go with their gut, sans analysis. There are many areas like this, where being overly cerebral offers bad outcomes.
Of course, there are cases like the Monty Hall problem, in which being more deeply analytic and reasoned yields a better outcome. And, so, the trick is to know when to go with your gut and when to systematically think things through.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 