Jun. 7, 2012
Looking out at the sea, observing the vastness of it all, I am awestruck. What do I say to that? There’s really only one thing I can say… “MOO”
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Stephen Brodie posted a videoRichard Dawkins excerpts Marcus Brigstocke
From his lecture at UC Berkeley on March 8 2008.
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Do you believe in intuition ?
Well intution can take many forms and I'm not talking here about so called intuition that can forecast events, such as someone breaking his leg or there being a big traffic accident this evening... If people believe those intutions, they usually tell you after the fact that they had this intution about it ... Though, I wonder about things like thunderstorms even if they haven't been forecasted by meteorologists !
Personally, I do believe in a certain form of intuition. There are so many unchartered areas or mechanisms still unknow happening in the brain, that I think, without proof, that intuition does exist.
Our brain links, or whatever how it works, take in more factors through maybe observations that do not reach the conscious mind, and factors much more quickly than conscious observations and make links much faster than our conscious thinking process.
So, often,I told myself, I should have listened to my "premonitions" or my "instinct" which I call intution... For example, if I meet someone for the first time and especially hear them speak (content, mannerism, intensity, eye contact...) I believe my brain absorbs much faster all sort of facts about that person than the conscious me, and I don't believe they reach my thinking process too much,especially if I have to respond instantly. Even, if I try to factor all the elements of this encounter, or, of a gathering of a small,number of people, I don't believe I get much of what happened or is happening or get some kind of accurate judgement, or conscious perception of who the person (s) is... some good sense of it OK; but, not all what my brain has registered and computed...
I would tend to believe that with age this process (intuition) is honed...
I'm not that good at listening what my non-thinking processes are telling me; I believe it is important and I tryto take more attention to it...
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by zrdm on -
my intuition has been dramatically and painfully wrong in the past, I almost got sentenced to life in prison for a crime I didnt commit because I followed my intuition and gave people the benefit of the doubt.
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Permalink Reply by Adriana on -
Wow. What a story. Glad you didn't go to jail for something you didn't do. It sounds like one hell of a story!
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Permalink Reply by Adriana on
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Yes, intuitions exist, they can be studied scientifically, too. Intuitions are what Daniel Khaneman calls "System 1". Our intuitions sometimes serve us very, very well, but many times they are not only useless, but even damaging. We need to know when to engage reason and forget intuition, and when to follow our gut and don't over-reason.
Marianne, check out this discussion we had about Daniel Khaneman's book "Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow" which both Michel and I recommend highly. You'll love it!
Daniel Kahneman is a very well known researcher in the field of cognitive science. Together with his research collaborator, Amos Tversky, they were pioneers in the field. Their seminal research started in the 1970s. Kahneman ended up winning a Nobel Prize in Economy, even if he is a psychologist, because his research demonstrated that we do not really think like that creature of the economists' imagination, Homo economicus, is supposed to act. The results of their research is known in professional circles as prospect theory. Prospect theory is based on the observation that human beings have perceptual weaknesses or biases built into our cognitive structure. According to Kahneman, decision making can be intuitive (system 1) or reasoned (system 2). The degree of interaction between the two can result in changes to the way we make judgements and decisions. Many of you know of Khaneman and Tversky's research through their experiments on risk or loss aversion, framing of questions, and how that influences our decisions (we fear loses more than we love gains). Kahneman has finally written a book (which I put on my reading list), "Thinking, fast and slow" which I'm sure will be fascinating. The Guardian published an excerpt from his book, and that little excerpt alone contains amazing information:
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Permalink Reply by Adriana on
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And now Marianne is thinking: "Gee, the nerd strikes again! She has to ruin everything with science" LOLZ
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Permalink Reply by Marianne on -
No no, Adriana; I understood everything from that piece of the exerpt and will check out The Naked Ape...
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Permalink Reply by Adriana on
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I wasn't worried you wouldn't understand, I was worried about me being boring...My sis sometimes tells me I always bring up science and I kill all the joy....LOLZ
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Permalink Reply by Marianne on
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Adriana,I read the discussion about the book of Kahnemant in the he Naked Ape,I found it fascinating, those insights about predictions that turned false, andt he part about happiness and how we view our lives as stories but they were about a number of people behaving in a certain way according to System1 of thinking that proved false; I found interesting what was about the priming of advertisement and how it affects us (this was more related to what I put forward); but, I do not describe the intuitoin process as thinking fast, to me it's one's own perception immediately by the brain of a person or a situation before any thinking occurs You instantly "feel" but not think; I can't think of an adequate word for "feel"....
Suppose you're invited at the home of a couple of friends; instantlyyou act accordingly to the "moods" of the environment you've entered such as coming in after a big argument just occured,or getting a sense that a person is an atheist without his even having pronounced a word though you haveto meet him and possbly hear what he says about anything; well this is more what I was writing about.
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Permalink Reply by Adriana on
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I agree, we do not use the word thinking to describe System 1 processes, because we do not recognize it as "active" thinking, we recognize it as a gut feeling, so it's perfectly OK to describe it as feeling. But because it comes from the brain, it can be argued that strictly speaking, it is thinking: non-conscious thinking.
I understand perfectly what you are talking about: we can make very quick assessments of people's moods, personalities, beliefs, etc., in an instant. I think that our brains are so finely tuned to social clues that we are very capable of making this kind of judgements. In many cases we are spot-on! At least that's been my experience. But my intuitions have failed me miserably in judging people quite a few times, too!
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