If ithey were never any better than a coinflip, then yes, you might as well ignore them completely. But they’re not always wrong—like I mentioned in my post, my emotions seem to generally have been right when they’ve been warning me not to trust someone. So you should figure out when your emotions are right and when they’re wrong, and then either listen to them or ignore them based on their historical track record in similar situations.
Yes, it can pay off to briefly consider alternative explanations even in situations when your emotions have usually been correct or when they’ve usually been incorrect. And if the stakes are really high, you might be best off spending some extra time thinking about the issue regardless. But that doesn’t make emotions different from any other source of information. Even if you got advice from an intelligent and exceptionally rational friend whose advice had always been correct so far, it would still be a good idea to spend a moment checking the argument for flaws before relying on it in some very high-stakes decision.
If ithey were never any better than a coinflip, then yes, you might as well ignore them completely. But they’re not always wrong—like I mentioned in my post, my emotions seem to generally have been right when they’ve been warning me not to trust someone. So you should figure out when your emotions are right and when they’re wrong, and then either listen to them or ignore them based on their historical track record in similar situations.
Yes, it can pay off to briefly consider alternative explanations even in situations when your emotions have usually been correct or when they’ve usually been incorrect. And if the stakes are really high, you might be best off spending some extra time thinking about the issue regardless. But that doesn’t make emotions different from any other source of information. Even if you got advice from an intelligent and exceptionally rational friend whose advice had always been correct so far, it would still be a good idea to spend a moment checking the argument for flaws before relying on it in some very high-stakes decision.