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4.5
This book is a synthesis of the humanistic study of human emotions, the economic theory of rational choice, the experimental evidence on human choice behavior, and Darwinian evolutionary theory. It is a deeply insightful, sensitive, and revealing book that completely justifies the notion that the humanities and the science each grows with the proper association with the other. This is not a self-help book, but if you are an aspiring artist or writer, you will learn much about human nature from this book.Feeling Smart brought to mind for me one of Yeats’ most poignant yet enigmatic poems, An Irish Airman Foresees His Death. Here is how it goes:I know that I shall meet my fateSomewhere among the clouds above;Those that I fight I do not hate,Those that I guard I do not love;…..Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,A lonely impulse of delightDrove to this tumult in the clouds;I balanced all, brought all to mind,The years to come seemed waste of breath,A waste of breath the years behindIn balance with this life, this death.We are told that we should make rational, deliberate choices, and the emotionality is the enemy of good choices. Make a list of pros and cons---balance all, bring all to mind. We are also told to follow our heart, to go for our dreams---Faint heart neuer wonne faire Lady. There is, in fact, a deep Aristotelian truth in the notion that wise choices result from an intimately intertwining of reason and emotion---which is why the young are all too often incapable of making wise choices, while the old are incapable of implementing wise choices.Winter makes excellent use of laboratory game theory, which is a development of the past few decades that links the rational actor model to behavioral game theory in an effort to tease out the varieties of human preferences, reasoning patterns, and systematic strengths and weaknesses. But Winter always relates the results of experiments back to his personal experience and the larger humanist tradition. He also makes it clear that our emotions are the product of evolution. Some of our emotions are quite primitive, including fear and anger, while others, such at shame, guilt, and embarrassment are probably purely human.As Winter shows us, anger can serve as a mechanism for creating credible commitment, enabling us to improve our strategic positions in interactions with others. … However, although anger is intended to benefit us from an evolutionary perspective, often it also harms us—not only because of the mental suffering that anger can cause, but also because of the implications it can have on our relationships with those toward whom we express our anger. We are often limited in our ability to control our anger in situations in which it does not serve us or even harms us.Also, Winter shows us how in some cases, the evolutionary advantage of certain emotions can be overwhelmed by their disadvantages in the modern world. Blushing provides a very interesting example. Regret, which has very clear evolutionary advantages, is also an emotional reaction that can have negative effects, sometimes leading us to make suboptimal decisions. If we never felt regret for any of our actions, we would doubtless be quite miserable, doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over again.Winter concludes that the border delineating the twin spheres of emotional and rational systems is very thin and convoluted. In most of the occasions in which we are called upon to make decisions, whether those are monumental life-changing decisions or the most mundane, that border is liable to become so blurred that it may disappear entirely. The two systems become intertwined around each other so tightly that they become inseparable. In many cases our emotions are there to enable us to arrive at rapid and nearly automatic decisions, but in other cases, especially when weighty issues are at stake, our emotions challenge our rational thought processes.
