Thought I'm Wrestling With: Go with Your Gut, or Double Down on Data?
Is there an art to making better decisions?
A few weeks ago I was chatting with a friend, who happens to be a phenomenal researcher for one of our nation’s three-letter agencies, on immigration policy. Naturally, the conversation meandered over towards President Trump’s latest deportation schemes and ICE raids.
As someone not extremely literate on the issue, I’ve never had strong feelings one way or another.
On one hand, I would see a cartel gang overtake a Colorado apartment complex at gunpoint on social media and think, “We need much tighter border security.”
But then I would drive down the road to the grocery store and see other immigrants (some probably illegal) peacefully living their American dream right alongside me, and I would say to myself, “America truly is the melting pot.”
If anything, I’ve held the belief that if an immigrant could travel from the depths and despairs of various parts within South America, and make it to the United States alive, they are one heck of an individual, and we should welcome them with open arms. They have gone through more adversity than many Americans will ever face in their entire lifetime.
Under that theory, we would assume everyone at the border perseveres through trials and tribulations to make it to our ‘free' soil, and thus has earned their entry into our country.
But we know that’s not the case. And we know that shouldn’t be the case either.
Which is where I started to intellectually spar with my friend a bit more. Not because I had a point to prove, but rather was trying to explore where my own beliefs truly lay.
To my surprise, my friend listed off various statistics that contradicted my prior immigration assumptions.
For starters, immigrants commit fewer crimes and face lower incarceration rates than U.S.-born individuals. And from a community standpoint, higher immigration levels tend to coincide with lower overall crime rates. Many fear deportation and thus are on their best behavior to not give authority a reason to question them.
There is also something known as the Immigrant Paradox: a pattern where first-generation immigrants often outperform both U.S.-born individuals and later immigrant generations in education, health, and behavior—even though they may face significant socio-economic challenges.
Despite those challenges, immigrants are also less likely than native-born citizens to be crime victims—and more likely to report crimes when they occur.
I’m sure many of you reading this now just learned something new.
We often falsely attribute the one-off anecdotal news story as the norm. Or watch a video on YouTube and feel enriched with knowledge that inflates our actual understanding of an issue. Or we rely on our own experience (and biases) to conjecture our opinion of truth on matters at hand—and wonder how others could possibly disagree with us (scratches head).
This is the broader tension I keep circling: stories versus statistics.
When our own story is attached—or we read a story—we are psychologically wired to feel that more than simply seeing numbers on a page. Stories make us feel something data never will.
Joseph Stalin is often quoted as saying: “One death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.”
There’s a reason charities like Save the Children pair you up with a specific child to sponsor. When you relate, you care more. That’s not cynicism—it’s human wiring.
But at what point do we need to put our heart in check?
Every human walking this earth has experienced the great war between the heart and the mind. Emotion and reason.
Stoics like Epictetus, Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius leaned into the logical end of the spectrum. They disciplined emotions under rational control, seeing unchecked feeling as a source of suffering. Aristotle and Plato also placed reason above passion, though without suppressing emotion entirely.
On the contrary, Romantics like Rousseau, Wordsworth, Shelley, and Byron rebelled against rationalism. They believed intuition, imagination, and emotional authenticity revealed truth more deeply than cold logic ever could. Nietzsche distrusted pure rationalism altogether, celebrating passion, will, and instinct as life-affirming.
So where does that leave us?
The problem is, humans are irrational. Our instincts aren’t always optimal or right. Sure, we have the saying “trust your gut,” but what exactly is that gut feeling giving us? Is it wisdom—or just old wiring reacting to fear, hunger, or habit?
On one hand, instincts can mislead us—they’re colored by bias and outdated evolutionary shortcuts. On the other hand, neuroscience shows that the gut-brain axis is a legitimate source of information: a way the body flags patterns and risks before the conscious mind can.
Which means we even face the added challenge of knowing when not to trust our gut. When is the body picking up on something real—and when is it deceiving us?
This same tension between gut and data shows up outside politics and philosophy—even in sports.
I love investigating the famous/infamous (depending on who you were rooting for) decision of the Seattle Seahawks to attempt a pass play on second down, one yard from the end zone, instead of running with the best running back at the time, Marshawn “Beast Mode” Lynch.
For those who remember, the New England Patriots executed a perfect jam at the line, allowing Malcolm Butler to jump the route and make the game-winning interception on Russell Wilson.
Richard Sherman’s face after seeing the outcome said what we were all thinking:
“Why didn’t you just run it with Marshawn Lynch?”
But when you strip away hindsight bias, the numbers actually favored Seattle’s infamous call. Lynch had only converted about 45 percent of his carries from the one-yard line over the previous five seasons—well below league average. By contrast, passing from the one was both common and remarkably safe: that entire season, quarterbacks had attempted 109 passes from the one-yard line without a single interception, and across a decade only five had ever been picked off in that spot.
On top of that, the clock and timeout situation made a pass on second down strategically cleaner, leaving room for two potential rushes if it failed. In other words, Seattle’s choice wasn’t reckless—it was a data-driven, situationally sound decision that just happened to collide with one of the most improbable defensive plays in Super Bowl history.
Authors David Henderson and Charley Hooper, in their book Making Great Decisions in Business and Life, investigate this exact play. Their reflection is where we can all take away some insight.
Here’s the bigger point I want to make and it applies whether the decision is by a football coach in a big game or you in your big game called life.
The point is this: it’s important to distinguish between decisions and outcomes. We all know why there is so much criticism of Pete Carroll: because his play decision for that second down led to a bad outcome—that doesn’t mean it was a bad decision.
A good decision is one you would choose again, even if it occasionally produces a bad outcome. A bad decision can also lead to a lucky outcome. That distinction matters.
But life isn’t always as forgiving as sports. The Super Bowl title only gets crowned once. A single bad outcome can shape the rest of your life.
So part of me thinks not all decisions are created equal. In principle, Pete Carroll has a defensible case, and had the pass worked, we’d probably never have this debate. But something in my gut still tells me the better option was to run with Marshawn Lynch. I can’t explain it in words—and neither can most football fans. It’s just the (biased) fact.
The decision/outcome matrix is useful for limiting regret. When bad outcomes strike, if we can say we’d make the same choice again given the circumstances, then we don’t cannibalize our own confidence. But that doesn’t erase the reality that a single play, or a single choice, can define everything.
TLDR:
Humans have consciousness. That’s why we can recognize our friend by the way they walk faster than any AI could. It separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom—and from our soon-to-be computer companions. That consciousness is an asset in decision-making.
But it’s also fundamentally biased and limited. Ignoring data that tells a fuller story is just as dangerous as ignoring the gut instincts honed by a lifetime of embodied experience.
The art of decision-making isn’t in choosing one over the other. It’s in learning when to trust each—and living with the tension that you may never get it perfectly right.
Maybe the better question isn’t whether to go with your gut or double down on data—but how to keep making decisions you’d stand by, even when the outcome isn’t what you hoped for.
Still Wrestling.