feeling != reality

“Don't ignore your gut feeling” is what people would say when you're making some difficult, or big decisions.

This notion of “feeling” is almost like this mystical thing, something higher than our reasoning and higher than our own awareness, something that comes out of our “heart”. Some people also call this “feeling” as “my heart says that ...”.

Most “gut feeling” makes sense though, the desire to go to that university is probably because that university is actually good, or that feeling that you have for someone is probably because you really liked them and you are comfortable with them in a way that not many can replicate.

A useful way to think about this and one that's surprisingly accurate is that; reasoning is your “visible” computation. While your gut feeling is your “opaque” computation. Basically everyone has this “opaque” computation, even babies have them. The visible ones are not as universal and does require some training.

Your gut feeling can come in many forms and affect many things. It might affect your judgement of someone / something, or it also might push you towards certain action / inactions. Most of the time, they come as a package, it comes with both judgement and the desire to act. For example, your judgement of someone as being capable / incapable might push you towards pushing them more / admiring them more. The judgement towards that business deal might push you towards accepting / not accepting / negotiating the deal.

The problem is, this opaque computation often arrives as if it were reality and not the result of some computation / approximation that it is. We often just don't see the assumptions, the expectations, or the memories that went into producing such computation result.

For example, you get disappointed with a cofounder and you might start to think “i can't rely on them” and you might start on imagining these scenario where you get better cofounder and you kick them out of your company and so on etc. That “i can't rely on them” might be justified and true, but you started to plan ahead of kicking them without examining the initial response that caused it. Or you're approaching a difficult conversation, feel uncomfortable make the conclusion that “this is not worth it”.

I think it happens especially often when the thing that we are responding to is emotional / matters a lot to us. It can be relationship, your belief, your business, or your identity.

Those judgement can be accurate and acting on them are not always necesarily wrong. But often, we cannot see those judgements as what they are; judgements. And we see them as reality / truth itself. We have a name for this, this is called cognitive fusion.

But having a “space” to see and treat them as a “signal” instead of the reality/truth itself can be very empowering. This is especially useful when you actually have time to think of some decision and ponder about it. And this is a mental skill that you can train yourself, this is called cognitive defusion.