What stock do you put in gut feelings?

I'm a very anxious person by nature. If I have time I have to employ logic and think through big decisions quite carefully. It can be a long and arduous process, often requiring a loooooot of research. It can also be very painful for people around me so I sometimes get coaxed into certain decisions (for better or worse).

If it's a life or death situation and I need to make a quick decision, I have to go with my gut. More a "shoot first and ask questions later" approach in that case.

You have to go with your gut on decisions where you won't ever get enough information that will strongly weight things one way or another, whether it's constrained based on time or availability of info. That's the only way to avoid regret. If there's a lot of reliable information pointing the other way, you might need to figure out why your gut is pointing the other way. Sometimes it's because you don't trust those sources, and sometimes it's because you're clinging to a decision you made earlier with less information so you have choice bias kicking in.

To give a low-stakes example, fantasy football is filled with decisions where information helps a bit, but in most cases any difficult decision will come down to luck. So, you should pick the players you like better or just have a better feeling about, because even if it turns out you were wrong, at least you were true to yourself and will probably feel less regret about it. It feels extra bad to be convinced into making a decision that went against your gut based on outside sources, and you still end up wrong. So, maybe it's more about avoiding this kind of situation.

I would go with "not a lot". I've been hypercritical of many things around me and I'm quick to label something or someone as "unlikeable". If I trusted my gut feeling every time, I would be in an echo-chamber bubble that I would never modify.

Not trusting my gut feeling and actually puting myself into new experiences and challenging my fears have been my greatest paths to happiness.

Especially when the clearly articulable pros are stronger on one side but your gut favors the other?

Interesting question! I favor my gut pretty strongly in this scenario. What I have found is that invariably my gut feeling is based on something real (whether positive or negative). I may not have realized what exactly it is yet - a desire, hidden reservations - but with more reflection I can figure it out. Every time, I've ultimately been able to resolve the tension. Often it turns out that the list of pros isn't actually as positive as it appeared.

The Gift of Fear is a pretty decent book about (negative) intuitions, where they come from, and the importance of trusting them. I've found the same applies for positive intuitions too, though.

For myself, the first thought is usually wrong. When I was young, I thought I was always right. However, now, I know that I rush to conclusions always. However, when I think about it, then sometimes I am right. However, I am usually still wrong. Therefore, I do not trust myself that much anymore. To make good decision, I leave to scientist, or I ask my niece, who is computer programmer, very smart.

Myself, I say many things that I believe, but I doubt them even as I say them, and I doubt them more after I say them. Except when it is about the aesthetic, then I know I am always right, no doubt.

For other, maybe it is different.

If I need to make quick decision, then I make decision, and we shall see if the result is good or evil.

If I went with my gut at decision time I wouldn't be able to:

• Get a driver's license (public transport is plenty, cars are a money sink, don't flatten the kid crossing the road)
• Solo travel to other countries (you don't know the language, you're just wasting money, you've seen plenty of botanic gardens already, they have fried spiders and crickets for lunch)
• Progressively overload while lifting weights (you'll break your back and knees spending more at rehab)
• Learn to make bread and ice cream (just buy the thing right there instead of making it from scratch)
• Comment online (others can articulate your point better, you have more important things to do)
• Switch bank accounts (you have everything setup already and moving everything else is a pain)

Call it laziness or efficient minimal caloric expenditure. I naturally just don't want to do stuff I really don't have to. But when I actually do the thing against my gut, it usually goes in the "that's not so bad" camp.

That said, I do lean on it more in other things:

• People interactions and relationships - it seems to know people so much better than I can rationally explain. They're dodgy, their response time is off from normal, they're nice to you because they want your money, MLM sell coming up etc.
• My expertise in the job/career - zero budget and management spreads everyone thin, it knows this server and app will break first. I've put this to excellent use in terms of malicious compliance. IT like many fields loves a good story of heroically fixing something broken and "saving" the business rather than boringly preventing the problem from happening in the first place.
• Being more selective of which communities to actually contribute and participate. Reddit has turned into a bot-infested hellhole that favours bots fishing for human replies. The "What's X for you? Thoughts? For me it's ___" type posts. Once you learn to recognize that sentence pattern it's hard to unsee. Thoughts? Thoughts. They really love their thoughts. Can we at least get these LLMs to churn out words that don't end in thoughts?
• Second reddit farming that I've noticed and avoid thanks to the gut: the perpetually unaware/unsure comment that abuses Cunningham's Law knowing someone will chime up and correct/add detail and keep thread participation going. "Wasn't there a cruise ship infected with hantavirus recently?" "Didn't Anthropic had an AI model that was too good to release to the public?"