Introduction/The Quarterback in the Pocket

Lehrer's introduction starts off with a vivid description of himself flying a Boeing 737 into Tokyo Narita International Airport. Suddenly, the left engine catches on fire and a panicked Lehrer fumbles with the controls as he struggles to make a decision about what to do. He is faced with two options, both of which could end up crashing the plane, and only has split seconds to decide. In the end, he makes a sharp nose-dive towards the runway that saves the plane. Lehrer then reveals that it was simply a simulation senario that he was a part of during flight school. He goes on to try the simulation again, doing the alternative decision, and crashes the plane.

I really liked the introduction. It set the tone for the book nicely, saying that the book would delve into the human decision making process by considering real-world scenarios. The introduction also pulled me into the book. I was afraid How We Decide was going to be a purely scientific study, but by reading the introduction I realized that it would not. Of course, I know there must be scientific elements, but I feel they will be integrated into the scenarios in a way that will not be boring but instead would enhance the reading experience.

Cool.

The first chapter opens with a depiction of the 2002 Super Bowl. Even though I am not a big football fan, I actually remember Super Bowl XXXVI, which I thought was kind of funny. Anyway, Lehrer goes in depth about Patriots' quarterback Tom Brady, who made several key decisions that led to the Patriots' victory over the Rams, one of the biggest upsets in Super Bowl history. The author talks about how a quarterback has mere milliseconds to assess the situation after the ball is snapped before he is sacked. He uses this as a transition into discussing the Wonderlic test, which is similiar to an IQ test and all quarterbacks must take the test. The assumption is that if QB's score high on the test, they will be able to make good decisions on the field. However, Lehrer says that there is no correlation between a good Wonderlic score and good player performance. The Wonderlic test assesses a different kind of decision making than the one required on the field. I looked up a sample test at http://walterfootball.com/draftwonderlic.php and I have to agree with him. Quaterbacks must make split second decisions and the test is not able to gauge that ability. Honestly, I believe that no test can accurately determine how someone will react unless it is a real world scenario.

Lehrer goes on to muse about the decision-making process. He says that how we make decisions is one of the greatest mysteries of mankind, and I completely agree. Many times I have pondered over a decision and why I made the decision. (For example, I thought about doing this project for a long time before I decided to do it. I still am not really sure how I came to that decision. I just did it haha.) Lehrer describes the beginning of what I call "decision philosophy." Plato and many other philosophers (such as Rene Descartes) thought that the human decision making process was a struggle between reason and emotion. As I read about the theories of Plato, Descartes, and Freud, I thought they made absolute sense (although they were confusing at first glance - I had to read them several times). I even recalled learning about Freudian psychoanalysis during middle school (it makes much more sense now). However, Lehrer then hit me with something big. As his transition into the next segment of the first chapter, he says, "But this classical theory is founded on a crucial mistake. For too long, people have disparaged the emotional brain, blaming our feelings for all of our mistakes... If it weren't for our emotions, reason wouldn't exist at all."

What? I was confused - how does that make sense? After all the support that Lehrer had built up for the earlier theories, was he really now going to refute it? I read on, and to my surprise, things began making absolute sense... again.

Lehrer talks about a patient named Elliot that recently had had brain surgery. Everything had changed after the surgery. Before, he was a "model father and husband." After, while his IQ still tested to be the same, Elliot was completely unable to make a decision. Normal tasks, such as deciding which color pen to use or what to pick for lunch became impossible, requiring several hours as Elliot deliberated over what to pick. After some tests, it was realized that Elliot had lost all emotion. This revelation perplexed scientists. If Elliot couldn't feel, then wouldn't he be able to make the best decisions 100% of the time?

Eventually, scientists realized that humans could not make decisions without emotions, a fact that completely contradicted what humans had thought before. Lehrer backs up the big point here with examples such as the casting of actors for daytime soap operas and the 0.35 second reaction time for a baseball batter - humans make decisions when things "feel" right.

And I absolutely agree. His example of baseball made perfect sense to me. When batting, I don't have time to actively think about whether to swing at the pitch. My brain does it for me, and when I feel that a pitch is a good pitch to swing at, I swing. Without emotion, I would not be able to discern if a pitch was good or bad. I would spend too much time thinking about whether it was a good pitch or not, and by the time I would be able to decide and swing, the ball would already be in the catcher's glove for a good two seconds.

I looked up the fact of emotions being essential to making decisions on Google, and came up with an article (http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/discoveries/2006-08-06-brain-study_x.htm) that went more in depth. The article even referenced Antonio Damasio, the neurologist that studied Elliot's case.

The first chapter left me with a good first impression. The examples that Lehrer used were extremely helpful in understanding what he was trying to say. I have already begun to understand the human psyche more, and I look forward to reading more.

Word count: 1,015

How We Decide - Jonah Lehrer

Amazon link.

Upon getting the book, I realized that there were 8 chapters in total, so it works out that each blog post will correspond to each chapter.