Intuition

Have you ever….  Had a hunch about something…?  Had a gut-feeling about a decision you had to make?  Whether or not to trust someone…  Action that needed to happen immediately…

Did you make a decision… … only to discover that you were right! but you don’t know why… … only to discover that you were wrong! but you were certain your were right…

Do you think…  We have a sixth sense?  Or that animals do?

While it would be fun…  We cannot really prove the sixth sense exists… at least from a psychological perspective. Psychologists tend to view this “phenomena” as submerged memories (even ones that are barely noticed events) surfacing at the right time.

A more interesting question…  Let’s worry about whether or not our intuition is a good, reliable source of knowledge.  Let’s take a little quiz…  Get out a sheet of paper.  Number it 1-5.  I will read the question on the screen, you will jot down a simple answer.

Question #1 You are jogging along and drop a tennis ball. Does the ball land: A. Directly below the point where you dropped it. B. Behind the point where you dropped it. C. Ahead of where you dropped it?

Question #2 If you drop a solid metal the size of your fist from a tall building, it takes 8 seconds to this the ground. How long will a solid metal ball twice as big take? A. 4 seconds B. 16 seconds C. 8 seconds

Question #3 You go to a party where there are 40 people. How likely is it that any two of them will share the same birthday? A. Very Likely – about a 90% chance B. Quite likely – about a 50% chance C. Very Unlikely – about a 10% chance

Question #4 Consider the plan view shown here. It shows from above, a ball attached to a string being swung around a central point “A.” When the ball is at point “B” the string is cut. In what direction does the ball go?

Question #5  Suppose you have a toy boat with a metal weight on it, floating in a tank of water. You mark the water level on the side of the tank. Then you take the weight off the boat and drip it in the water. Where is the water level now? A. Above the original level B. Below the original water level C. At the same water level A nobel prize winning physicists and 3 rocket scientists got this wrong….

Answer Time 1. Answer: C – The ball continues to move forward relative to the ground after being dropped. 2. Answer: C – Unless there is a difference in wind resistance, all objects fall at the same rate. 3. Answer: A – there’s a lot of math behind it… there are 365 possibilities. This changes if there’s a specific date mentioned. 4. Answer : The ball goes in a tangent at “B” then straight down. Many would assume it would follow the curve representing a skewed view of inertia, but in reality, things move in a straight line unless there is a reason to the contrary.

Question #5  Suppose you have a toy boat with a metal weight on it, floating in a tank of water. You mark the water level on the side of the tank. Then you take the weight off the boat and drip it in the water. Where is the water level now?  Answer – B: in the first case, the metal displaces the amount of water with equivalent mass. In the second, it displaces the water with equivalent volume.  All Three rocket scientists said “C.”

So is this a flawed way of making decisions?

Is My Hunch better than His?  Ask yourself: “should I enter this building and save the lives of the people I know are in there?  Who’s better qualified to make this decision and why are they always right?

Rapid Cognition  The process works by taking in a very thin slice of information and making a very accurate prediction or assessment based on personal internal models.

 It seems that the people who are very good at this kind of activity are the experts. An expert, it turns out, can make an informed guess about something in his subject without being able to explain it in any rational way.

Rapid Cognition  The information is there, but it is being processed behind locked doors and very quickly (in the blink of an eye). The expert just gets a feeling that something is so, but he knows this and is not afraid to act on it.

R.C. – Less is More  What is important about rapid cognition is that it requires knowledge, experience and skill and that a lot of this is used to exclude incoming data. This is because it is unnecessary, confusing and unimportant.  The experts can make highly accurate and informed guesses, because they are able to exclude unimportant and distracting information and process a very small amount of data, which just happens to be the important data.  General VanRipper  Cook County, IL Emergency Room

Stress and Auto. Responses  In situations of stress or danger there is evidence that the part of the mind responsible for rapid cognition tends to take over. This is clearly a survival mechanism meant to help protect us. When we are in a situation of extreme danger, we suddenly and automatically start making a series of rapid fire decisions based on very little information, that will probably save our lives.