Heuristics

Heuristics are the bedrock of our decision making. To describe this reality that impacts our life but it seems invisible is to think about a tiger. We see tigers are orange because we’re tri-color meaning we have three cones vs a deer that sees the tiger as brown or green because they are bi-colored. Tapping into the set up can be incredibly confusing but also incredibly useful for how we approach our health and our life.  

Let’s start with the feeling of known vs unknown. This is the fundamental problem heuristics solve. We don’t know enough, have enough time, enough life lines, to make perfect decisions. In an evolved reality where life and death was constantly on the menu. 

An example of a heuristic. Loss aversion. A person will fight harder to keep something they have than seek out something new. They did studies with cups and if a person had ownership of a cup they priced it higher then a similar cup that wasn’t owned.