Antonio Damasio

Hmm

... there's a wonderful study from a researcher named Antonio Damasio, who writes about this patient who had this kind of damage, and even if he was asked, "What are you going to have for lunch?" He was not able to make up his mind because he was trying to find the perfect rational reason to go, let's say, for the sandwich or the salad.

And he would go back and forth in an infinite loop and basically say, "Well, the one thing's gonna taste better, the other one's gonna be healthy, but I had this last time," right? Trying to come to a decision just with data, just with rational thought, and it was impossible.

So we know that emotion is the crucial thing that will s- tip the scale once data has said everything that there is to say from data.

... references to other thinkers who use those terms.

Uh, weren't you d- w- one of them is Damasio.

Weren't you wanting us to have Damasio on at some point? I thought you were a Damasio fan-

Probably, yeah

... several years ago.

It simply registers.

That aligns closely with cognitive neuroscience research on interoception and somatic markers pioneered by Antonio Damasio at the University of Southern California.

Damasio demonstrated that the ventromedial prefrontal cortex constantly processes bodily sensations, gut reactions, subtle visceral cues, to guide complex decision-making long before conscious verbal deliberation even kicks in.

People often mistake inner authority for aggressive stubbornness or rigid individualism.

This is great.

I, I wanna contrast it a little bit here too with Antonio Damasio's work.

Uh, his, his book Descartes' Error, he's a neuroscientist and his work is based on, or what he's most well known for in his work, is based on studying people who have had some kind of injury, uh, where their emotional processing and their rational faculties have been sort of, uh, separated from one another.

And contrary to what, you know, a lot of us might think who, who value rationality, their rationality ended up being completely undermined by their inability to process the emotional meaning.