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Who knows what I want to do? Who knows what anyone wants to do? How can you be sure about something like that? Isn't it all a question of brain chemistry, signals going back and forth, electrical energy in the cortex? How do you know whether something is really what you want to do or just some kind of nerve impulse in the brain? Some minor little activity takes place somewhere in this unimportant place in one of the brain hemispheres and suddenly I want to go to Montana or I don't want to go to Montana. DON D E L I L L O , White Noise
Overview
The brain has two "halves", the rational left hemisphere and intuitive, emotional right hemisphere Good decision making requires judicious use of both Use Emotional brain when no time to make a decision (or if there are too many variables) Use Rational brain when faced with completely unfamiliar situation
Platos horses
Emotion
Reason
Do we need emotions
Plato - Emotions not required Descartes - Human beings are rational David Hume -Scottish philosopher Reason is the slave to passions - is right Seat of emotion - Orbitofrontal cortex (orbito=eye socket in latin) Antonio Damasio - Elliots Tumour When OFC is removed, people cannot make simple decisions (parking car, what to eat, use blue or black pen)
Role of Dopamine
Wolfram Schultz - Neuroscientist Gave monkeys apple juice, dopamine neurons fire More apple juice, dopamine neurons started to fire less
Same with ipad, ipod etc, after a week the dopamine doesnt fire (maybe little longer for a house)
Prediction neurons (if juice not given, error correction learning) Brain learns by making mistakes
Fooled by feeling
Parkinsons disease - of dopamine system neurons start to die in part of brain that controls body movements Treatment - requip - increases effectiveness of remaining neurons to transmitting dopamine lead to gambling
Metacognition
Cant remember a name but we know that we know it (tip of tongue) Aware of being aware
Loss aversion
Kahnemann and Tversky $1.75 to $2 for a bet of $1 For every critical thing you say to someone (e.g. spouse) you have to say 5 nice things to make up for it
Nice things dont last that long in memory
Deal or no Deal
Briefcases with various amounts ($1, $10000, $500000) Participants made offers by banker Best strategy accept anything above mean of the remaining money
Framing problem
Brain avoids something framed as loss
Example Rs 100000
Surgery
80% chance of surviving instead of 20% dying
Delayed gratification
Marshmallow test - 4 year olds
Students who could delay gratification did better academically (12 years later)
Stroop task
Stroop test
Choking on thought
Opera singers, Golf players - Thinking about performance degrades the performance at the expert level Jam test when asked to explain why they preferred jams, students did badly
Thinking too much leads us to focus on all sorts of variables and degrades decision making
Choking on thought
Baba Shiv - Stanford - Energy drink - one at 30% discount, people who drank the discounted drink solved fewer puzzles than the ones who paid full price. Cake vs fruit salad - people who were asked to remember seven digits chose cake and people who were asked to choose two digits chose fruit salad, a mind trying to remember lots of information is less able to exert control over impulses Last two numbers of social security number- those with higher last two digits bid more Stocks - people who saw only the prices made better decisions
Final takeaways
Brain is buggy, evolution has had less time to shape rational decision making There is a swiss army of tools in the brain Good decisions need to make use of these tools (emotion, reason, meta-cognition)
How we think depends on what we are thinking upon