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Comment by benhuh | Hacker News Reader

Hey HN, this is Ben, the author.

Happy to answer or clarify any questions.

Hi Ben. I enjoyed the article. Perhaps you will find this an interesting read too. https://timeandtimeless.wordpress.com/2015/10/07/experience-...

Thanks!

Interesting article! Do you think there could be a risk of misattributing the cause of the emotion/intuition? After all, people classically misattribute things like arousal, and various aspects of memory. I guess I'm trying to separate how people can be assured they are dimishing biases (e.g. my intuition that the woman is qualified was thrown off by her confident body language) through the process you described, rather than affirming them (e.g. the woman is qualified, but I have been especially critical of her credentials).

Definitely. It takes practice and increasing your awareness of your self. The list of common cognitive biases (even if you narrow it down to the 5 most common ones) can really help frame your self awareness. Highly recommended that you use a list like that when trying to attribute your causes.

Also, at the end of the day, you have to make a judgement about the quality and benefits of the outcome and keep adding that to your System 1 dataset.

Besides "Thinking Fast and Slow", what are some good books you would recommend?

I mentioned this one as well: Power of Habit: https://www.amazon.com/Power-Habit-What-Life-Business-ebook/...

"Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions" by Gary Klein.

It talks about how experienced people can make higher quality decisions by taking into account their intuition vs just trying to decide using logic.

https://www.amazon.com/Sources-Power-People-Make-Decisions/d...

Thinking and Deciding by Jonathan Baron: https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Deciding-4th-Jonathan-Baron/...

(I say this as someone who has read Thinking, Fast and Slow and other Kahneman books.)

> This is a small preview of understanding how our emotions and brain chemistry affects our performance.

Interesting, what other sources can one look at, to go beyond this small preview?

It depends on where you start. Much of our cognitive biases and dissonances have to do with what we want to achieve and our view of the self. It's foundational work and an emerging field in science.

If you'd like to explore atheistic consciousness, try Sam Harris.

Descartes' Error is a good book for understanding the relationship between logic and emotion.

Tons of good books on meditation out there. If you want to know more about eastern philosophy, a great short book is the Tao of Pooh. Yes, the bear.

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