📒 How do you judge a book if not by its cover?

Do intuitions matter at all?

This is issue 44 of Carved. To read the previous issue, click here.

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I’d like to think that I’m a nice person. You know, I try to not judge someone too much, not gossip too much, not be too much of a bitch from time to time... 👀

I met someone recently who just kinda irked me 😅 I’m not really sure what it was about. Was it the way she talked, the way she carried herself, the way she just was? I couldn’t really put my finger on it — I simply wasn’t excited about making conversation with her. I felt conflicted — was I being a bitch, or was she actually annoying?

I'm not really sure. I don't think this happens that often — like I said, I feel like I generally get along with most people (she says, sounding somewhat defensive... 🙃). But from time to time, you cross paths with people you don't necessarily want to be around.

I've heard that gut feelings and immediate bodily reactions (like the whole body yes thing) can often be a good indicator of whether something or someone is a good fit. But is there anything to listening to your intuitions? They say not to judge a book by its cover, but if there's any truth to these first instincts thing, then how are you supposed to judge a book if not by its cover?

Do gut feelings matter?

This article defines intuitions as a capacity for understanding without the intrusion of rational thought or logical inference. It also argues that much of cognition happens "outside of consciousness and in the realm of intuition" (Sadler-Smith & Shefy, 2004).

Intuitions are also interchangeably used to describe gut feelings. We’re slowly getting a better understanding of the relationship between the gut and the brain. The gut microbiome and the brain evidently communicate with each other and each other’s functions. The gut microbiome also affect levels of stress, anxiety, depression, and cognition (Mohajeri et al., 2018). There's probably not a lot of thinking going on when we're making decisions, as all these two-way communications are happening constantly, and likely without much awareness.

There's also more evidence suggesting that subliminal interoceptive inputs from the gut can influence memory, emotional arousal, as well as behaviours. What this essentially mean is that the gut has way more control over our decisions than we give it credit for. Any physical sensations that arise when we're processing information or making judgments.

When instincts are confused with heuristics

So gut intuitions are powerful, and probably are worth listening to. They help us make faster, and potentially even more reliable decisions. But faster decisions can often also be a result of heuristics, or biases. So what's the difference between heuristics or biases and intuitions?

Firstly, heuristics and biases are technically not the same thing. I should know this, seeing as I did a whole degree in Behavioural Economics, but turned out I still needed a little help from Google to pick the two apart.

Heuristics refer to the shortcuts that we use to reduce complexity in decision-making, so we don't end up spending 20 minutes everyday making small decisions that would otherwise be automated. Biases, on the other hand, are the systematic errors that can occur from using heuristics, which is essentially the result of our limited capacity in processing information.

For example, we'll often rely on social norms to judge whether a restaurant is worth visiting. This can be in the form of the number of positive reviews, or how busy the restaurant looks. Most of the time this will give you a desirable outcome — a busy restaurant with lots of positive reviews are almost always going to deliver. But there may be rare instances where the positive reviews you saw were fake, for example.

This paper outlines the difference between heuristics and intuitions. As suggested above, heuristics are a type of shortcuts. In this sense, heuristics essentially largely ignore information, while intuitions involve processing and integrating information we've received.

Further reading on heuristics include Blink by Malcolm Gladwell and Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman.

When do you trust your intuitions, and when do you not?

Does it mean it's always safe to trust our intuitions?

This episode of the Ten Percent Happier featuring Rick Rubin talks a bit about when to listen to your intuitions. There were no studies or anything cited on the podcast. It was all anecdotal, though I personally place more weight on these anecdotes seeing as they came from the legendary Rick Rubin 😁

Recently, Huberman also did an interview on his podcast with a former FBI negotiator Chris Voss who mentioned that he never made a mistake listening to his gut.

I'm not sure. There is an increasing amount of study detailing the importance of gut feelings when making decisions, but I haven't had much luck finding a rule book that spells out when to listen to intuitions and when to not. Maybe it's statistically safe, or perhaps even a good idea to listen to your intuitions, but it's not always a guarantee that it's going to always be reliable.

What I've been up to

We went to see Past Lives a while ago, and it was nothing short of amazing. Maybe the best movie I’ve seen this year, even though Oppenheimer was pretty great. Past Lives is a story of human connections, deep intimate relationships between human beings. The story of human connection is probably one I'll never get bored of.

And speaking of human connections, we've just come back from Bali to go to our beautiful friends' wedding. It was a party and a half - the most spectacular celebration I've been to probably ever. It was a weekend full of love (and ugly crying!). We're now back in rainy London, which if I'm being honest, I'm really loving. It felt a little bit unnatural having that much sun in London. Now it's grey and cloudy, everything feels normal again 😆

What's on my radar

Grand Designs Herefordshire episode

We used to watch Grand Designs all the time (for whatever reason I seem to always get the Grand Designs soundtrack and Mary Poppins' x mixed up). Kevin McCloud is awesome — great host, great voice, what more could you ask for? The other day I had this real yearning for a good Grand Designs episode 😆

Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford

I was introduced to this podcast through 99 Percent Invisible, when they aired the episode about the story behind the remarkable Sydney Opera House. Turns out, the story of who designed the opera house was a little bit more complicated. The Danish architect, whose ingenious designs inspired and initiated the Opera House, almost didn't even end up getting recognised. It's an episode worth listening to!

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