Your Irrational Brain | David Ropeik | Big Think

Your Irrational Brain
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That we are not instinctively built that way must be recognized if we’re going to get beyond the risks of not being built that way.
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DAVID ROPEIK:

I'm an Instructor at Harvard, a consultant in risk perception and risk communication, author of How Risky Is it, Really? Why Our Fears Don't Always Match the Facts, and principal co-author of RISK, A Practical Guide for Deciding What's Really Safe and What's Really Dangerous in the World Around You. I run a program called Improving Media Coverage of Risk. I was the Director of Risk Communication at the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis, part of the Harvard School of Public Health, for 4 years, prior to which I was a TV reporter, specializing in environmental issues, for a local station in Boston for 22 years.
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TRANSCRIPT:

David Ropeik: We are stuck in a post enlightenment fealty to pure Cartesian logical reason. “We’re smart. We’re at the peak of evolution. We have this powerful ability to think.” To paraphrase Ambrose Bierce from the Devil’s Dictionary however, the reality is, and there is lots of science about this, the brain is only the organ with which we think we think. Its job is not to win Nobel Prizes and to pass math tests. Its job is to get us to tomorrow. It’s a survival machine and it plays a lot of tricks with the facts in order to get us to tomorrow. That worked pretty well when the risks were lions and tigers and bears and the dark oh my. It’s not as good now when we need to rationalize and reason and use the facts more with the complicated risks we face in a modern age - climate change and genetically modified food and unsustainable living on the planet and—that takes a lot more thinking, kind of cognitive, slow, more effortful thinking.

That we are not instinctively built that way must be recognized if we’re going to get beyond the risks of not being built that way. It would be ultimately rational and reasonable for the rationalists and the Cartesians to accept what the science now tells us, which is the brain is only the organ with which we think we think and there is a lot of subjective mess that goes into the decisions we make that often fly in the face of the facts. We better accept that and understand it, so that we can apply that in order to avoid the pitfalls of our subjective way of perceiving the world. If we know why we get it wrong, if we know what subjective influences that Daniel Kahneman and Paul Slovic and a whole lot of really smart people have figured out about why our judgments don’t match the facts, if we know why we’re irrational more than just accepting that we are, the evidence says we are, but if we know why we can use those insights to say woops that is why we’re making this mistake about X, Y or Z and avoid the dangers of making that mistake.

Our brain is hardwired and the chemistry of the brain guarantees that we feel first and think second and that’s initially when we encounter information, but in an ongoing basis between the facts and the feelings in our brain the feelings carry more weight. I mean the feelings are—they feel wonderful, but they might be wrong. Recognizing that they might be wrong here is what you can do. Take more time. If the brain jumps to conclusions out of emotion first and more and there is plenty of science on this, just assume that your first decision might not be the most informed one. Don’t leap to conclusions, make up your mind quickly. Take more time, a half an hour, an hour, a day, two. Think about it. Cogitate on it. Get more information. Get more information, not just from sources who already tell you what you know and believe because that is just going to reinforce what you know, which will feel great, but may not add to your knowledge, but take more time and get more information and that allows that information and the fact side of this dual system to play more of a role.

Let me give you an example. Vaccines, let’s take—there is a relatively new vaccine HPV vaccine, human papillomavirus vaccine for young, pre-sexual aged daughters and they are now actually recommending it for boys too. Some versions of the virus are a scourge cause of cervical cancer and other sexually transmitted diseases. Well the first reaction many people might have is to the word vaccines. That has a whole stigmatized uh-oh. That’s a natural, emotional, first subjective protective way the brain is going to react to vaccines. If you just went with the reaction right there it isn’t as informed as...

[TheOmegadusk]

This is one of the best installments of bigthink that I have seen in a really long time!

[askformoreinfowhichyouwont]

I find his informative way so humerous he could be a comedian and I absolutely do not mean this in a degrading way. :)

[siaawosh]

This video is such a nice video and such a great delivery ! thank you I really loved the way you express !

[snowboarderlm]

All of the videos on this channel are awesome, but this is one of the best I've seen.

[drpimpelmees]

Exactly that,
i see it alot in my strategy games.
You just plainly know what to do but you act on instinct.

[muderousmaggot]

I'm a student in highschool, I'm in my junior year and really struggle with tests. I think that's because all of them have a time limit

[GlobalWarmingSkeptic]

Once again, I never claimed that human judgment and perception is fully accurate, but, like with my survival examples, I like my chances. When I feel like I experience something, I like the chances that what I'm experiencing is real, just like when we do everything. We assume that what we are experiencing is real.

Yeah, you can increase your odds by determining the things that can mislead you, but ultimately the determination that you come up with will usually be correct, and I trust that.

[Ferilin]

Watching this is reinforcing what i already know and it feels great.

[MCHellshit]

This is a great video and is something I've been thinking about a lot lately. There are a lot of animal instincts that used to be helpful but are now holding us back from evolving.

[gilless]

Feeling things isn't the problem, it's letting those feelings take control of our brain. I agree.

[Fregos]

I read some other of your comments and it resumes to this:You cannot make a distinction between impulse and sentimental decisions, that your brain makes almost automatically and the ones that require deeper thinking, logical operations.There is one example in the video and I gave you another one.The idea in the video is that you have to make a distinction between the two.Another ex is sentimental/memory based:2+2, you know the answer automatically/no logic;and a complex equation that requires calc

[arhabersham]

We are biased, and not being reactive (but rather reason-driven) is a must. However, "first impressions" tend to be incredibly accurate. They can be based on subconscious calculations, for which we need to be attentive to these. Malcom Gladwell's "Blink" explain this phenomena. 

[Vulcapyro]

Yeah, I have to agree that Ropeik essentially did this weird dance around his point and probably could have just outright said something like "we aren't perfect and need to think rationally about thinking, rather than just thinking". We can't always trust our own brains when we need to make informed decisions, and acknowledging this is the first step to overcoming our own pitfalls.

[zaneharman]

He says we should make informed decisions by looking up further information, not simply emotions. The point is to consider your emotional bias and also be aware that there is more information out there that may outweigh your immediate emotional response.

[Inmatinus]

A good counter-attack to the shopping psychology almost all stores and markets use who appeal to emotions and not a ''need''.
Very good Bigthink video.

[capefeather]

He's not saying to reject emotions entirely. Reason doesn't provide the base questions, so we use emotions and values to ask the questions in the first place. Reason is the road to answering those questions successfully.

[riderlibertas]

The Big Think videos I like the best are the ones that pose opinions and new ideas, like this one. There would be no papers or journals for them.

[TheKommodore]

I'm going to watch this video every day as a reminder. It's so important and it'll save me a lot of trouble in the future. Think, then react.

[Sanaak]

This channel is filled with useful information that is important to anyone's self development.

[Beer_Dad]

Big Think has had some really good videos lately - thank you!