34 | New Scientist | 11 June 2022
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Don’t Trust Your Gut
Seth Stephens-Davidowitz
BloomsburyEVERY day, we outsource decisions
to the internet: should we stay at
that hotel, eat at this restaurant,
ride with that driver? We have
become so accustomed to the
large-scale insights afforded by
tech, many of us wouldn’t buy
so much as a toaster without
first checking reviews online.
Their accessibility and apparent
authority mean that to just roll
the dice and pick an appliance
is almost unthinkable – why
wouldn’t you ask Google first?
And yet, when it comes to many
more important decisions – like
what we choose to study or who
to marry – we often trust our gut.
This, argues economist Seth
Stephens-Davidowitz, is where
we are going wrong. After all,
following our instincts can lead
us to act on subconscious bias or
to keep following dead-end paths.
As a former data scientist at
Google, Stephens-Davidowitz was
granted an overarching view of the
questions we would rather put to a
search engine than a friend, which
he shared in his 2017 bestselling
book, Everybody Lies. Now, he
wants us to use the insights
afforded by big data to inform life
decisions such as who to marry
and where to live. He calls it
“self-help for data geeks”.
In his new book Don’t Trust Your
Gut: Using data instead of instinct
to make better choices, Stephens-
Davidowitz brings together
“credible answers to fundamental
questions” as revealed by vastonline data sets, so we can apply
them to be more successful and
happier. “While we often think
we know how to better ourselves,
the numbers, it turns out,
disagree,” he writes.
Some findings are indeed
counter-intuitive, such as the
overstated advantage of youth
in starting a business, or the
popularity of people with non-
natural hair colours or body
piercings on dating platforms
(suggesting you should aim to “be
an extreme version of yourself ”).
Others may be more in line
with expectations: we routinely
overestimate the pleasure of
passive activities such as snacking
and watching TV. Research by the
London School of Economics
found that even relaxing tends to
make people feel less happy than
anticipated. On the other hand,Stephens-Davidowitz sacrifices
scientific rigour for a stunt, or
puts forth a data-driven approach
to life that is of limited practical
application. Though entertaining
and thought-provoking, Don’t
Trust Your Gut is most persuasive
as “self-help that actually works”
when it is puncturing myths
about the importance of
education and wealth, or
tried-and-true sources of life
satisfaction. Gratifyingly, the
author suggests, these might be
as simple as calling a friend, taking
a walk near water or having sex.
He demonstrates, in broad
strokes, what works best for most
people, so that all of us might learn
from their example. If you want to
be happier day to day, for example,
you might be better off making
friends at work than pushing for
a salary increase. Working with
friends may be the “one way to
truly make work tolerable – or
even enjoyable”.
But his somewhat utopian view
of data – as a resource to be mined
then applied, like painting by
numbers – can be at odds with a
world already transformed by it.
Numbers may not lie, as Stephens-
Davidowitz writes – but nor do
they reveal the complete, complex
picture, especially when they are
controlled by corporate interests.
When our behaviour is already
being shaped by data in ways to
which we aren’t privy, perhaps
success isn’t always a matter of
making the right decision.
And then how you feel about
a decision can be just as relevant
to your commitment to it as the
favourable statistics backing it
up. This he acknowledges in the
book’s dedication, to his wife:
“If the data says that loving you is
wrong, I don’t want to be right.” ❚Elle Hunt is a freelance
writer based in Norfolk, UKwe underestimate the boost
of running errands or visiting
museums or libraries.
From work to relationships,
Stephens-Davidowitz looks to
the data for guidance and, where
possible, tries it out for himself.
In the “Makeover: Nerd edition”chapter, he uses “AI plus rapid
market research plus statistical
analysis” – putting more than
100 doctored images of himself
to an online survey – to glean that
people generally prefer him with
glasses and a beard.
It is one example of whereLiving by numbers
Can big data help us make better life decisions? A thought-provoking book
says it can – but Elle Hunt finds some important holes in the argumentPiercings, it turns out,
correlate with popularity
on dating sites“ You might be better
off making friends at
work than pushing for
a salary increase, if you
want to be happier”