Given Expert Advice, Brains "Shut Down"

I noticed a similar effect on my opinion about movies and books. I am extremely influenced by what I hear, to the point that a movie that I love when I see it for the first time is completely spoilt the second time if I heard a disparaging comment by someone I respect. The same thing almost made me stop listening to music. I've heard so many bad things about Houellebecq that I know there is no point in even trying to read his books.

This sounds like I can be easily influenced, but it may also be that I am more conscious of these effects because I find it very important to judge things by myself.

Here's a summary of the "experiment":

  * hook 24 college students to brain-scanner-majigs.
  * given them an economic problem.. the better they do, the more they get rewarded
  * have some of them do it on their own.
  * have some of them receive advice from someone who is said to be an expert of economics.

The results? Guess what! Different parts of your brain are active when you do something yourself, and when you receive advice. Oh, and also, people tend to follow advice from experts. Here's the amazing scientific breakthrough the research suggests: maybe we can one day make brain-scanners that tell you when you're receiving expert advice or making the decision yourself. Wow! I'd pay $0 for such a thing, because I don't need one: I know when I'm choosing to take a short-cut by following expert advice, and when I'm deciding myself.

Following expert advise isn't a bad thing. Think for yourselves what it means to follow expert advice -- to me it's what allows the human race to advance at such a rapid pace. You ask someone with experience, so that you don't have to experience/learn it all yourself. It's the same concept as paying a business to do something that would be inefficient for your own business to do, or figure out how to do. If someone suggests using a company that in the past has had good results, and you use them, and they fail... would you say that your brain was shut off during the decision to use them? No... they just let you down. Plain and simple. But what if someone took brain scans while you made the decision process?? Well, in that case, you could write an article about it in Wired, it seems.

This is sensationalized science... and in this case is especially ironic, since people seem to be taking the article headline at face value.

This is another reason why I hated undergrad education. You have a bunch of teachers positioned as "experts," and they ask you to accept counter-intuitive statements under extreme time pressure and the threat of not passing the class. The most natural thing to do is turn off your brain and accept what they tell you, to pass the test.

Even if what you've "learned" is correct, you've disengaged yourself from the actual process of thinking and learning.

I have noticed that in the people I have been pitching my startup idea to. Thirty seconds or so and they would "lock up" and stare blankly. It took several iterations and beta-testing on friends and family until I formulated my pitch into a 3 minute high-level interactive approach. E.g:

"We all use the web and love it. Oh man, this is my favorite website, I'm gonna do X and catch up with Y, but look! [problem description here]. [explain the aggravation caused by the problem. [real numbers about the loss in productivity or lost sales potential]. [projected growth in my industry, a quick highlight of what's out there and how we're different and better]." Then I go into the project description and everyone is delighted at that point.

To engage the people ask them questions. Instead of "we all do X" say "don't we all do X?". Instead of saying something is a problem for you, say "is it just me or does X bug the hell out of anybody else? [then look the audience members individually in the eye]"

Participatory learning is something good teachers and salespeople have known for a very long time, as far back as Socrates at least.

Article here: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjourna...

Now, they need to conduct this experiment again with a general population control group and a "successful people" variable group. I'm willing to bet that successful people think for themselves.

This is one of the issues I was thinking about when I was looking at that Hunch site. The purest decisions that I make are the ones that have the additional attribute that I think I know why I'm making them. This seems to provide the most fertile ground for creativity.

So experts have worked on the Hunch algorithms - how do they codify this issue of providing solutions without the taint of incestuously created (self-reinforcing) knowledge? It's a closed environment that discourages the existence of black swans.

Specific to the Wired piece, many remember the team of math guys who put together a stock picking app back in the 90's. They thought the algorithms were nearly foolproof, and built an investment business around their work. Of course, their effort ultimately crashed spectacularly. An example of shutting your own brain down from your own work.

My brain doesn't "shut down". I tend to question everything even ideas that are widely held by people around me.

Haven't they noticed that people spend all of their formative years in schools were they are taught to never question authority? After so many years of "behavioral training" it seems quite normal to me that people's brains shut down when listening to an expert.

Hmm. To me this illustrates that we should be more skeptical of who we consider to be "experts" not that we should not seek counsel of those with subject matter expertise.

Hint, someone with a TV show is probably NOT who you should be listening to.

I see the implications of this are enormous. The first example that comes to my mind is criminal prosecution.

The second are software salesman. I have seen a lot of smart people who bought from Vignette, Oracle, Microsoft... Now they have an excuse...

Why is there a video of Cramer on the side?

"Socratic method" FTW!

There is some old classic paper titled The Programmers Stone. In the first chapter there is very good description of two different states of the mind - Packers and Mappers. This study is about packer's brain, because mappers will try to combine expert's opinion with their own map, alter or update it when necessary, or even create a model which fills both opinions. The rest of this Programmers Stone is some kind of nonsense, but this first chapter is a must read.

Someone needs to tell me who the experts are so I can be mindful of this and prevent it from happening to me.