You Have to Feel It

(mitchellh.com)

Show context

mcdeltat ◴[30 Aug 25 22:47 UTC] No.45078646[source]▶

I've learnt that just about everything in life boils down to feelings, which is interesting. No matter how rational a person or people claim to be, usually it comes down to feelings... Life choices? Business decisions? Who gets promoted? It's all vibes and feelings. People will deliberate and argue over facts but ultimately there will be some "weighting" factor which is feelings and will make or break the outcome. You can have a perfectly argued decision that fails some vibe check and is hence discarded. Or a terrible argument that plays to some emotional point so is accepted. It's all feelings. Rare is the opposite.

replies(12): >>45078785 #>>45078868 #>>45079484 #>>45079722 #>>45079897 #>>45080295 #>>45080735 #>>45083072 #>>45083193 #>>45083907 #>>45084333 #>>45084578 #

1. hakunin ◴[31 Aug 25 06:03 UTC] No.45080735[source]▶

>>45078646 #

I grew to believe that feelings have hard-to-recognize rationales that can be explained if you dig deep enough. Very few people ever do however. Recognizing the rationale is a great skill to have in many circumstances where you give feedback, like code reviews for example. It's also a skill that makes you a better teacher.

replies(2): >>45081787 #>>45082793 #

2. pfannkuchen ◴[31 Aug 25 09:25 UTC] No.45081787[source]▶

>>45080735 (TP) #

I’m on board with the idea here, but the way you worded it makes it sound like “rationalizing” which is generally considered harmful.

Is this different from rationalizing? Or are we saying that rationalizing is okay if you are sufficiently attuned to your feelings?

replies(1): >>45082585 #

3. LoganDark ◴[31 Aug 25 12:13 UTC] No.45082585[source]▶

>>45081787 #

I get the impression you're using 'rationalizing' to mean finding a reason for an emotion that doesn't necessarily match the true source of the emotion. This is different from recognizing the existing rationale, which is exactly why it's generally considered harmful. If one gets in the habit of finding new rationales for their emotions that sound more favorable, they can also get in the habit of no longer keeping their true rationales in check, which I would assume tends to result in sociopathic behavior.

4. henrebotha ◴[31 Aug 25 12:54 UTC] No.45082793[source]▶

>>45080735 (TP) #

Various studies have shown that trying to explain the reasons for a decision can often cause people to make worse decisions. I remember there was one where lay people were able to taste and rate jams with a high degree of correlation to the ratings of expert tasters; but when asked to explain _why_ they rate one jam better than another, their ratings suddenly drastically disagreed with experts'.

replies(1): >>45085027 #

5. mock-possum ◴[31 Aug 25 17:28 UTC] No.45085027[source]▶

>>45082793 #

Interesting that you’d count disagreeing with an expert as a ‘worse’ decision, particularly in such a subjective space as the taste of jam.

If I taste something, and carefully critically consider my experience, I would count that as a better decision, and the opinion of experts don’t really factor into it, because they’re not me.

replies(1): >>45090088 #

6. pants2 ◴[01 Sep 25 06:39 UTC] No.45090088{3}[source]▶

>>45085027 #

For fun a few years ago I went through the process of deciding what my favorite song was. I had a gut feeling but wanted to take a scientific approach, I listened to my top listened songs from the last decade over and over as part of a bracket system, where I was trying to explain logically why one was better than the other.

Anyway at the end of it I chose a song that I later realized was definitely not my favorite despite me being unable to explain logically why my favorite song is my favorite song. Basically having to explain things made my ratings worse.

↑