Being able to count your own heartbeats correlates with better decision making | Hacker News Reader

Being able to count your own heartbeats correlates with better decision making

scienceblogs.com

17 pointscwan12 comments

I found the conclusion of this author, and, presumably, the scientists, to be questionable.

Rather than to praise "the body" for "knowing 40 cards before the brain, which deck was the bad deck", I would submit that no praise is necessary.

We all learn, eventually, to discount failed trials in the experiments of daily survival. We don't quit asking out girls the first 10 times in a row we're shot down. We don't quit fishing the first 10 times we come back empty handed. We don't quit trying to light a fire, the first 10 times the spark from our rock doesn't ignite our dry grass.

We do, eventually, figure out when the game is rigged. When the girls are married, the fish are sleeping, and grass isn't really that dry, we do, eventually, give up. We're not idiots. However, we've learned that the body is not as smart as we are. Too often, it's told us to quit, when, by ignoring it, we've succeeded. The body's responses are the instinctive, reptilian responses of the cortex, while we succeed on this planet by using our mammalian frontal lobe to find less obvious solutions.

So ...

My point is that, the scientists rigged a test, where the reptilian response of our body was the correct one, and then brag about how smart our body is. In this instance, like a stopped clock, it happened to be right. But I'm not trading in my frontal lobe just yet.

I think you misinterpreted the results. The point is that better bodily awareness enhances other cognitive abilities which sounds quite reasonable.

I fail to see how "bodily awareness" can "enhance cognitive abilities". You'll have to spell it out a little more carefully than that for me to understand you, as that sentence alone makes no logical sense to me.

I don't think they, or the author, are so far down the rabbit hole as to imply anything like that. What they are implying is more rational, but still, in my opinion, is wrong.

Emotions are a rudimentary form of decision making and processing. Many people are aware of strong emotions only in relation to how it makes them feel physically so the more aware you are of your body and how it reacts to various emotional cues the better you are able to asses where that cue is coming from. Plus, you don't need to be down a rabbit hole to suggest what I suggested.

"Emotions are a rudimentary form of decision making and processing."

Well said! We agree then. Rudimentary vs Advanced decision making in a rigged test where rudimentary happens to work better, doesn't really mean anything.

We are, as they say, in violent agreement as to our interpretation of the article. You, however, still maintain there is value in this emotional information, because a rigged test indicates there is, when as a species we've done really well by painfully learning to minimize emotional information in our decision making activities.

Now, let me throw you a bone. There are definitely cases where it's good to know our body and it's responses, so that we make better decisions. Absolutely! Thousands of them. Knowing this is vital, if you're a day trader in stocks. It's also pretty important when you're making a sale, or being sold to. There are tons of times, when the knowledge that you are being influenced by your cortex will help you.

But that's exactly the reverse situation. "Bodily Awareness" allows you to ignore your body's panic so you can make better decisions. The article implies that you should "tune in" to your body, and listen to it. This just isn't true. The instinctive "fight or flight" responses of the body are important, of course. They get us out of jams that our conscious mind is too slow to logic it's way out of.

But if you actually have time to think "I wonder what my body's opinion of this is?", than you are in a situation where your body is much more likely to be wrong than you are.

I disagree. All learning and decision making is emotional. If it wasn't then computers would be quite good at it. I have yet to see a single digitial, rational decision maker that is as good at learning from mistakes as humans and other emotionally driven animals are.

I have made my case, and with your help, made it even more clear. I think you are completely wrong in your position ... but then again, emotion may be clouding my judgment!

The rules of the market change quite infrequently and even your algorithms will be quite poor at predicting market panics and other changes that deviate drastically from the rules. Such predictions still require a holistic approach that only well trained humans are capable of. If you think I've helped make your case then good for you. I was simply trying to clarify my stance on the issue and at no point was I trying to be correct or incorrect.

Interesting. But shouldn't the title be something like "Those better at counting pulse are better at decision making". Right now it suggests that if you count before making a decision, it will be a good decision.

True - thanks. I've modified it by parsing the first sentence in his post.

How I wish we had some data on the same people, before they had their heart replaced by the new pulseless heart* and then afterwards!

* http://www.straitstimes.com/Breaking%2BNews/Singapore/Story/...

Pulse or no pulse is not relevant for the results. They just needed some metric to measure bodily awareness.

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