The nonsense that is gut instinct
Just the other day, I was on a random walk around what I maintain is one of the best websites on the Internet right now, The Farnam Street Blog.
While there, I stumbled upon an interesting question that had once
obsessed me a long time ago: What important truth do very few people
agree with you on? It is a question that Peter Thiel asks in his bestselling book, Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future.
The
question is an awfully tough one to take head on. Thiel makes it clear
that the most common answers, such as “Our educational system is broken
and needs to be fixed” or “There is no god”, are bad answers. The former
because many people already agree with them. The latter because it is
now a familiar debate.
“A good answer,” writes Thiel, “takes the following form: Most people believe in X, but the truth is the opposite of X.”
Having
given it some thought, I threw the question at a group of close
friends. A quiet, intelligent and soft-spoken friend based out of
Bengaluru came up with a compelling answer that I agreed with.
This
friend said: “Most people think we will be ruled by data in the future.
Wearable tech, sensors at one level, and big data analytics at another
level will help us optimize our life. Dictated by that, we will be more
efficient, more productive and live a meaningful life. But the truth is
emotions will matter more. We will increasingly be guided by our
instincts because eventually those numbers will begin to overwhelm us.
It is inevitable then that we begin to mistrust the numbers and question
the algorithms that crunch the numbers to tell us what we should do.
Instead, we will trust our instincts more. So, what will increasingly
become more important are not the new devices, but old techniques like
meditation and yoga that will help us sharpen our instincts. At present,
few people practice these. In the future, the majority will.”
His
answer struck a chord with me. I come from a school of thought that
believes an individual’s instinct—or gut feel, as we call it—is nothing
more than the sum total of our experiences. That is why, how each person
sees the world is different from the other person. Everybody’s
individual experiences are different.
To that
extent, everyone’s version of the truth is different. It is, therefore,
incumbent on us not to rubbish another view because it is the outcome of
a different experience.
So, a truth I know, but
cannot prove, is this: When faced with a mountain of data that we can
make no sense of, the only way out is to listen closely to what our gut
or instinct has to say.
Now, this whole thing
about trusting gut instinct gained currency in 2005 when the celebrated
science writer Malcolm Gladwell wrote a compelling account of why it
matters in his chart-busting book Blink.
He argued forcefully with very many examples of people in situations
that demanded they make split-second decisions. Inevitably, he points
out, our gut trumps our brain.
If more evidence
was needed, Gladwell points out, there are more nerve endings in the gut
than in the brain. So, while it may go against stated wisdom that we
take time out to think a problem through, if we give those thoughts more
than two seconds, we allow our experiences to be subsumed by data.
But my truth came under scrutiny earlier this week when it was challenged at a two-day workshop on design thinking
in Mumbai. The idea of this workshop exercise was to figure out how we
could possibly approach any issue on hand with innovative solutions.
Having
defined a problem, the instructors separated all of us into teams, and
equipped us with a set of tools to think the problem through. Crucially,
they also prodded us to capture every thought on the assigned problem
that occurred in our minds.
Without getting into
the specifics, I must confess I was stunned. When left to my gut, much
like everybody else in the room, we could think up two to three ideas
each. Many of these ideas overlapped as well. After weeding the
infeasible ones, the 20-odd people in the room could think up 35-40
solutions.
However, when exposed to a
well-thought process and equipped with tools and a little more time on
hand, we came up with more than 300 ideas to crack each problem open.
My truth about the power of gut instincts lay in ruins.
Armed
with these insights, I turned to Harsh Mariwala, the chairman of Marico
Industries Ltd, and asked him how much gut instinct mattered in his
scheme of things. Marico has a reputation for being one of the most
innovative Indian companies and much of the credit for it goes to
Mariwala.
“Instinct or gut feel by itself
doesn’t work for me,” he said. “I listen to my gut when everything else
that is rational has first fallen into place. Then I know it is the
right thing to do. But if my gut isn’t backed by the evidence on hand, I
ignore it, however loud it may be.”
If any more evidence was needed to demolish my assumptions on why instinct matters, I stumbled upon a blog post by Scott Berkun. He made a few pertinent observations.
●
Our instincts can say contradictory things. For instance, there is a
part of ourselves that knows drugs are bad. The other part lures us
towards them anyway.
● Instincts are not static. They are biased by recent events.
●
Some of our instincts are better trained than others. For instance, if
trained in the arts, you can perhaps spot an interesting painting right
away. But that may not hold true for an automobile. To that extent, you
cannot trust your untrained instinct.
●
Instincts can be manipulated. People in advertising, marketing and sales
businesses know this all too well. That is why when data stares us on
the face, they know what messages to send out that appeal to our
instinct.
Vanilla Card Activation process allows their customer to Activate Vanilla Card. Hospitality Company Card Activation
ReplyDelete