From: "Gary Britt" 

It only appears irrational to those reacting emotionally because they are
unable to perceive the things necessary to clear the ambiguities.  It could
well explain BDS that is so prevalent in lefties since 2000.

Gary

"Rich Gauszka"  wrote in message
news:439dc9e1{at}w3.nls.net...
> That's the thanks one gets for attempting to find some rationale for
Bush's
> irrationality
>
>
> "Gary Britt"  wrote in message
> news:439dc855$1{at}w3.nls.net...
> > Now we know why lefties nuance things into inaction and are lousy
leaders.
> >
> > Gary
> >
> > "Rich Gauszka"  wrote in message
> > news:439dbb81{at}w3.nls.net...
> >> 'The brain responds emotionally and often illogically when forced to
make
> >> decisions based on little or conflicting evidence, a new study
suggests.'
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >
http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20051212/sc_space/howambiguitymesseswithourbrains
> >>
> >> How Ambiguity Messes with Our Brains
> >> The brain responds emotionally and often illogically when forced to
make
> >> decisions based on little or conflicting evidence, a new study
suggests.
> >>
> >> ambiguous decisions and are different from risky decisions.
> >>
> >>
> >> In a risky decision, a person is uncertain about the outcome of their
> > choice
> >> but has an idea of the probability of success. In an ambiguous
decision,
> >> a
> >> person is ignorant of both factors.
> >>
> >>
> >> "Psychologists would say ambiguity is the discomfort
from knowing there
> >> is
> >> something you don't know that you wish you did," said
Colin Camerer, an
> >> economist at the California Institute of Technology and the primary
> >> researcher in the study.
> >>
> >>
> >> In the experiment, test subjects made ambiguous bets while their brains
> > were
> >> scanned using a functional magnetic resonance imager (fMRI).
> >>
> >>
> >> In one example, the subjects were given the choice between betting
money
> > on
> >> the chances of drawing a red card from a "risky"
deck that had 20 red
> > cards
> >> and 20 black cards-that is, where the probability of choosing either
> >> color
> >> was 50:50-and making the same bet with an
"ambiguous" deck where the
> >> color
> >> composition of the cards was unknown.
> >>
> >>
> >> In most cases, the subjects chose to make the risky bet. Logically,
> > however,
> >> both bets would have been equally good because in both cases, the
chance
> > of
> >> pulling a red card on the first draw was 50:50.
> >>
> >>
> >> The brain scans revealed that ambiguous wagers were often accompanied
by
> >> activation of the amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), two areas of
> > the
> >> brain that are involved in the processing of emotions. In particular,
the
> >> amygdala has been found to be closely associated with fear.
> >>
> >>
> >> A correlation between aversion to ambiguous decisions and activation of
> >> emotional parts of the brain makes sense from an evolutionary point of
> > view,
> >> Camerer said. "Freezing in the face of danger is an old, emotional
> > response
> >> which probably was evolutionarily adaptive in our ancestral past."
> >>
> >>
> >> In the modern human brain, this translates into a reluctance to bet on
or
> >> against an event if it seems at all ambiguous.
> >>
> >>
> >> The finding could help scientists understand how humans make decisions
in
> >> the real world, because the choices people make are often based on very
> >> limited information, Camerer told LiveScience.
> >>
> >>
> >> "If you think about it, how often do you know the probability of
> >> success?"
> >> he said. "Probably, the situation we modeled with the
risk game is more
> > the
> >> exception than the rule."
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
>
>

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