Don't

Trust Your Gut

Wednesday, September 7, 2016

Making high stakes decisions which require analyzing lots of data in little time is
becoming increasingly essential and difficult. Human intuition is a decision making
tool that involves interpreting and reaching conclusions without resorting to
conscious thought.
When using human intuition, we give disproportionate weight to information
confirming, not challenging our assumptions, hence preferring conclusions justifying
the status quo. Information first received about a situation distorts our interpretation
of subsequent (updated) data received about the same situation.
The most dangerous flaw of intuition is the fact that we seek patterns even when they
don’t exist, interpreting data based on old patterns stored in our memory; increasing
our risk of making the wrong decision. Moreover, the instinctive rush to apply a
pattern to a situation and seek a definitive conclusion narrows one's thinking too
quickly.
While some have argued that intuition becomes more valuable in highly complex and
challenging environments, the opposite is actually true.
To aid the human intuition in making well-informed decisions in little time,
technology presents a viable solutions which is a set of sophisticated computer
programs that search for possible solutions and evaluate them. Hence decision tools
remedy the biggest flaw of human intuition, namely hastiness and the desire for
closure, and harness its power.
While decision tools do not expand the analytical capability of the human mind, they
visualize patterns and relationships not visible to intuition alone; hence making it
easier to make decisions with a higher success rate.