How do we decide?

This book is about how to make decisions. It's about what happened inside a pilot's mind after an airplane engine caught fire. It is about how the human mind chooses what to do. It relates to football players, to television show directors, to poker players, to professional investors, to professional killers, to the decisions they make every day, and others. There is a fine line between a good decision and a bad decision from the perspective of the mind, between trying to go down and trying to get back up. This book addresses this fine line in the mind of every human being, regardless of his job or direction in life. Since people have made decisions, they have thought about how to make them. Extensive theories about the decision-making process have been built over the centuries by observing human behavior from the outside. Because the mind was unable to access what was inside it, the brain was like a black box, and thinkers were forced to rely on putting forward untestable hypotheses about what was really happening inside the head. Since the ancient Greeks, these hypotheses have revolved around the main idea that humans are rational. When we decide, we are supposed to consciously analyze the alternatives and carefully weigh the advantages and disadvantages of each. In other words, we are thinking and logical creatures. This simple idea is the foundation of the philosophy of Plato and Descartes, laid the foundation for modern economics, and led centuries of research in cognitive science. Rationality has become what defines us over time, what distinguishes us simply as human beings. This book relies on all of the previous research to lead you safely to how to make the right decision on scientific grounds.