Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious | Gerd Gigerenzer

Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious | Gerd Gigerenzer | Yes we are guided by our gut feelings.

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Gut Feelings: The ...

	Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious Gerd Gigerenzer Viking Adult, 2007 - 288 pages average customer review:based on 21 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Why We Do What We Do: An Intelligent and Genuinely Informative Account

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 compared with professionals. He argues that what we feel in our gut is informed by a brain that relies upon thousands of years of experience.

Since this book went to press, more empirical data has come out that suggests that he is right when he says that reason may no be the best decision-making tool at our disposal. That most certainly does not mean that we should trade in our brains for our feelings. It may indeed be that complex decisions are best made using unconscious processes, but we still need to use reason to see if we have come up with the right answer!

Gerd writes extremely well, and his style is fluent and engaging. Particularly commendable is someone whose first language is not English. Many of the examples that he chooses have immediate applications in our own lives.

Very highly recommended.

Richard G. Petty, MD, author of Healing, Meaning and Purpose: The Magical Power of the Emerging Laws of Life

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Yes we are guided by our gut feelings.

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.

Excellent thesis and book - controversial, but well founded.

The subject is a very difficult one, because most of it is and always will be speculative. Gigerenzer is not only an expert but writes like one. This is not a populistic book written for someone with short attention span (such as 90% of American population) but for people who seriously want to expand their horizon. Take your time to read and you will find a new insight into yourself and how and why you do the things you do. You might find Jeff Hawkins' On Intelligence interesting if you want to know how the brain actually does what it does.

Damasio, Gigerenzer and Hawkins show us how special we are, how unique each human being is and that it is irrelevant if God or nature created us. The beauty is within and human emotion and intelligence can neither be copied nor put into a machine.

Love and intuition make us who we are.
Our emotions are our strength.
No one can take that from you!

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The Gut: When It's Right, It's Right; When It's Wrong, It's Real Wrong

This interesting book---more a series of essays---travels some well established ground: more choices may please but short circuit decision making(the optimal number is 7); predicting is just as accurate if not more so with one key fact than lots of facts(the brain uses rules of thumb to get things right); when in doubt the brain goes with what it knows,and gets fooled(put a well known brand label on a peanut butter jar, but stick in lousy peanut butter and people love the taste). But the good stuff is on moral choices---we do not reason ourselves to a moral decision but are driven there by circumstance. He talks about the embedded shortcut that leads otherwise moral men to be part of a firing squad( don't break ranks, stick with your buddies); the default principle(if people are given a selected default, such as you must opt in for being an organ donor, they will go with the flow, and not take the time to decide); judges in England make bail decisions not on lots of factors, as they are oath bound to do, but on one factor (has the DA asked for bail or conditional bail)and the judges end up making decisions based not on due process but on whether they will get second guessed. A good book which would merit a 5 if there was some real world applications and not just interesting theory.

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reviews: 1, 2, 3, page 4, 5

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