The Folly of Intuition

That author is talking about flawed thinking in general, and flawed intuition in particular. Both terms imply that there is thinking in general and intuition in particular which are not flawed. So, for example, look at these two consecutive sentences:

Quote:

"I was influenced by this completely irrelevant data," he said. "I could not help myself from drawing inferences like, 'What happened this week?' or 'What's the explanation?' I was working on this intuitively and contrary to my better statistical judgment."

According to Kahneman, some human intuition is good, and some is erroneous. And like the incorrigible habit of the knuckle cracker, the bad ones are very difficult to correct.

So your author acknowledges that there is useful intuition. Your author is not supporting a contention about infallible rationality. In fact, he addresses exactly that:

Quote:

"A fully rational agent would find it possible to answer both questions equally easily, regardless of the display," he said. "That's not what happens. We don't compute everything we could compute. We do not use all the information that is actually available."

Your glorification of rationality is naïve.

1 Reply

@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

There is a big difference between rational fear and irrational fear. That difference is reason. Fear that isn´t based on reason and evidence is a bad thing.

As usual, you don't know what you're talking about. We'll just have to agree to disagree. You make such sweeping statements. Not everything you read is true. And not everything is true for everyone.

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@Setanta,

That's funny. You speak as if people have a choice between flawed intuition and valid intuition. This would be great if I could tell when my intuition was failing me. Of course the problem is that we can't tell when our intuition is flawed. But that's not the point.

The point it that research shows that humans perform more accurately when they use rational thought then when they rely on intuition. This has been tested scientifically having people doing tasks using each mode.

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@maxdancona,

Yeah, it's funny that you ignore when your alleged rationality can be flawed. Are you saying that you do have a choice between flawed and unflawed rational thought? Are you denying the claim by the author you cited to the effect that: "We don't compute everything we could compute. We do not use all the information that is actually available" ? In fact, the article you cited does not support your claim.

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@maxdancona,

I can tell, actually.

I probably use intuition more than most because Setanta's early definition, which I agree with, is a large part of how I communicate.

I'm deaf -- completely deaf, can't hear a thing. Yet somehow I am able to carry on conversations with people.

A billion small things are all coalescing at the speed of sound, at a subconscious level. Conversations I've had with that person before, things happening in the environment, micro-expressions, that person's background, that person's age, gender, ethnic background, accent, interests, fears, and on and on.

If I wait to be rational about it I wouldn't be able to understand a thing.

This was a shift I had to make when I was learning how to lipread. If I tried to understand each word as it was uttered it was hopeless. So I had to both learn to just let it wash over me (without rationalizing it into oblivion) and to reassure people that even though it doesn't make sense if I don't understand the first 25 words they say, if they keep up the flow, I'll find something to hook it on and it will all come into focus.

I am forever intuiting secrets, and a stock rule around here is that I'm not allowed to hold my husband or daughter accountable for what they're thinking, only for what they actually say. I have a bunch of freaky stories about knowing what is going on with people who aren't anywhere near me at the time.

At any rate, I always have this sort of scanning going, and have learned to (mostly) tell false scans from real scans. False scans are usually fear rather than intuition at work.

That is, I'm always worried about my daughter in a low-level way, and have learned to tell when that worry escalates into a feeling of "something is wrong," as separate from the actual feeling that something is wrong. And yeah, that happens -- I have a feeling something is wrong, and five minutes later get the email that my daughter's sick and needs to be picked up from school.

Anyway, another book I recommend is "Blink." It's padded, but there are basic things in there that are interesting and address all of this.

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@sozobe,

I was going to mention lip-reading, to the effect that i can only do by not consciously attempting to do it. However, my hearing loss is nowhere near as profound as yours, so i didn't want to claim an expertise i do not possess. Expressions, movement of the eyes, body language--a host of stimuli are processed by us without conscious interference.

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@sozobe,

Interesting,

Lip-reading is exactly the type of task that intuition is designed for. There simply isn't time to carefully consider each word. Also lip-reading is a specialized task that you can train for with immediate feedback (this is the firefighter example in the Kahneman link).

So yes, intuition is great for tasks like lip-reading.

I am skeptical about the usefulness of intuition for divining secrets, and the research backs me up on this. Humans aren't very good at detecting lies, at least not controlled research studies.

Your experience with your daughter is a common experience, but it also demonstrates a human flaw. You don't remember the times you had this sense of worry and nothing happened, and you might not even remember the time you didn't have this sense of worry and something did happen.

I propose an experiment. Get a piece of paper and put two columns. In the first column write down each time you have a feeling that something is wrong. In the second column write down each time that something happens. Make sure that you don't write down anything in the first column after the fact.

In scientific tests the results aren't very impressive once you take away your minds ability to play tricks on you.

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@maxdancona,

Ask my family about the usefulness of intuition for diving secrets. They are not happy about it.

(Or my ex-boyfriend, when he came home from a band tour on which he'd had an affair.)

Re: the experiment, that's exactly what I'm saying.

I can tell the difference between the false stuff and the real thing.

And the real thing is actually real, approaching 100% of the time.

Example: One time my daughter was ill. Sleep is very important for her and she's very sensitive to my checking on her, so I rely on my (hearing) husband to tell me if anything is wrong. (If he heard her retching, that sort of thing.) It was the kind of illness where sometimes she's just nauseous and then with enough sleep she's fine the next morning.

I went to sleep. At about 3 in the morning I suddenly woke up with a feeling that something was horribly wrong. I asked my husband -- he hadn't heard anything. The last thing I wanted to do was wake her up by checking on her. (Nausea + tiredness often meant vomiting, and she has something called cyclic vomiting syndrome where vomiting often meant deyhdration + a trip to the emergency room.) But I had a really bad feeling. He tiptoed over and listened outside her door, and didn't hear anything. I still felt something was wrong, so I went ahead and checked on her.

She was covered in vomit, and burning up with an extremely high fever. She was so weak that she couldn't cry out or get our attention.

1 Reply

@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

Interesting,

Lip-reading is exactly the type of task that intuition is designed for. There simply isn't time to carefully consider each word. Also lip-reading is a specialized task that you can train for with immediate feedback (this is the firefighter example in the Kahneman link).

So yes, intuition is great for tasks like lip-reading.

By the way, this seems to be accepting two things; one, that intuition exists (and is not a folly), and two, that you can train for it.

That seems to allow for the possibility that some people's intuition is better than others'. If that's the case, then these tests don't actually mean that much -- if we're testing how good people are at running, and include a 30-year-old couch potato, an 80-year-old with a walker, and a 20-year-old sprinter, does the fact that their average speed is 6 miles an hour mean that the sprinter didn't actually go 18 miles an hour?

I definitely believe that there are a variety of levels of intuition, according to circumstances/ necessity and a lot of other things. I think everyone has at least some.

1 Reply

@sozobe,

I don't want to be in the position of questioning your personal experience. I want to talk about what the science tells us about how the human mind works. There has been quite a bit of research done on this.

The human mind makes mistakes in tricky ways. Our brains look for patterns (and find false patterns) were there aren't patterns. Our brains change memories to forget key details and even construct new ones. There are amazing examples of mistakes that you can fairly easily trick the mind into believing.

There are people who sincerely believe they have ESP (not just picking up on clues hidden from the conscious mind, but knowing things when there is no possible clue). This is because the mind naturally takes any evidence that fits a pattern and rejects the rest (this is a comment on human nature, not an attack on anyone). Of course, once this is tested in a scientific way, ESP disappears.

If I wake up feeling that something is wrong with my kids, I am going right to their rooms and check. It is possible that I noticed something that I didn't have time to process until I am ready to sleep. But I do check them, I go and take a temperature and talk to them before I call 911.

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@sozobe,

Quote:

By the way, this seems to be accepting two things; one, that intuition exists (and is not a folly), and two, that you can train for it.

Yes, that is what I am saying. As I have said, we evolved with intuition for a specific purpose-- to deal with the cases where there isn't time to make use of our impressive ability for rational thought. As I said at first, when there is a rustle of grass a few yards away there wasn't time for our genetic ancestors to consider the evidence they were about to be eaten.

However, I am also saying that anyone intuition is going to be wrong much of the time. And the data show that people are wrong much more than they think they are.

I am not arguing that intuition is useless (particularly in urgent situations). I am arguing at assuming that there is time, conscious rational thought is much better at making good decisions.

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@sozobe,

By the way, the book "Blink" has been pretty widely criticized by the scientific community.

1 Reply

@maxdancona,

Yeah, that's why I mentioned padding. There's some science in there that's interesting though.

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@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

However, I am also saying that anyone intuition is going to be wrong much of the time. And the data show that people are wrong much more than they think they are.

I don't think you can say this conclusively any more than you can say that nobody runs 18 miles per hour, based on tests showing an average of 6 miles an hour. I think there are a variety of "speeds," but not that intuition is always wrong much of the time, for everyone.

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@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

Yes, that is what I am saying. As I have said, we evolved with intuition for a specific purpose-- to deal with the cases where there isn't time to make use of our impressive ability for rational thought. As I said at first, when there is a rustle of grass a few yards away there wasn't time for our genetic ancestors to consider the evidence they were about to be eaten.

You don't KNOW that that's why we have intuition, and it's not just useful in those extreme cases. What if I'm walking down a street by myself and am about to turn down another one. I get a 'feeling' that I shouldn't go that route, so do I stop to think and analyze my feelings? No. I choose a different route. I trust my instincts. Nothing may have happened down that first route, but I got a bad feeling about it and why not trust it?

maxdancona wrote:

However, I am also saying that anyone intuition is going to be wrong much of the time. And the data show that people are wrong much more than they think they are.

That's because they don't trust it enough of the time to know when it's intuition or just thinking "I shouldn't go down this street because it looks unsafe".

maxdancona wrote:

I am not arguing that intuition is useless (particularly in urgent situations). I am arguing at assuming that there is time, conscious rational thought is much better at making good decisions.

Your intuition can kick in anytime... choosing a job, a friend, trusting a car salesman... it doesn't have to be "particularly in urgent situations". And rational thought doesn't apply to every situation. You get a bad feeling about whether a person would make a good friend, but rationally, they haven't done anything in particular to make you suspicious... it's your intuition kicking in.

You're obviously not a whole lot in tune with your own intuition or you wouldn't discount it so thoroughly.

And as far as data - it all depends on the studies/test-givers and respondents, doesn't it? Not to mention interpreting the results. Do you believe everything you read? For every paper that says X, there's another one that says Y. We have all learned this through food studies - first eggs were bad for you, now they're not necessarily. Drink milk. Don't drink milk. Etc.

1 Reply

@Mame,

Let me give you a very clear case where people's intuition is very wrong is a harmful way.

My son has dark skin. When he walks down some streets, people get nervous. There is no reason for this as there is no real danger. My son is educated and respectful, yet when he walks past people women visibly tighten their purses and walk out of the way (he and I have tested this together where I will walk by with my white face and watch the differences in behavior).

This is a very bad thing. Not only are people being afraid with no rational reason, this sends a message to young people that they aren't trusted.

Friends of mine talk about overcompensating for this. When they walk down the street they make extra-sure they say "hi" to people so that they won't be nervous.

This is why I question my intuition. If something makes me nervous, I don't just react without thinking (assuming it is not an emergency situation that requires an immediate decision).

I feel very strongly that I need to question my intuition. If I don't have a good legitimate reason to be suspicious of you, then I feel I am treating you unfairly if I act differently around you.

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@maxdancona,

That part I agree with.

I don't think it's immutable either, which is maybe back to "train your intuition" not "discount it."

I also separate out that kind of nervousness/ fear-based reaction from actual intuition, though, which might be part of the issue (definitions).

For me, I think there are four broad categories:

- Prejudices: I think these should be examined carefully. We can't go through life without any prejudices at all -- we don't have enough mental capacity to judge every single situation we encounter based only on the evident facts. We need to "chunk" to function. But prejudices should be critically examined.

- Functional intuition: These are the sub-rational leaps that are necessary to function for ME, lipreading being primary there.

- Tentative intuition: This is a "feeling" that I use as a guide and don't discount, but can be overridden by contradictory evidence.

- Strong intuition: That's the category I refer to when I say the accuracy approaches 100% -- it also doesn't come up that often. In the example above, the evidence was overriding the gut feeling, and there were significant risks to acting on the gut feeling. (If she had been fine, and I checked on her, it was likely that I'd wake her up and that would be likely to create a dangerous situation in which she was likely to end up in the ER getting IV fluids.) But this kind of strong intuition is identifiable to me as something that I need to trust, even without corroborating evidence.

Another category that I don't include because it's not actually a type of intuition is false intuition, just my fears running away from me. I can usually identify that as false if it's getting to the point where I'm wondering if I should take action.

1 Reply

@maxdancona,

That's not intuition - that's just irrational fear. Or fear based on preconceptions. That is NOT intuition.

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By the way, one of our non-native-English speaking members had a thread in which he was asking about facsimilies, saying he could not find it in any of his dictionaries (he's a translator). I responded "Oh please," and provided him a definition, telling him what it meant in the context he provided.

Then Sozobe came along and pointed out that it was misspelled in his text--fascimilies. I had not spotted that. But then, that's something the brain does, it corrects errors through context. Shadow talkers, who repeat what someone else says continuously beginning a split second after the first speakter commonly correct errors while remaining unaware that they have done that.

So how can you rely on your "rational" thought processes when they are commonly so flawed? As the author you cited pointed out, people frequently don't have all the information necessary for a rational judgment, or simply fail to take it into account. You're making a god of science, and claiming for your "rationality" all the infallibility attributed to gods. You're basically saying that rational people don't make mistakes.

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@sozobe,

Interesting Sozobe, I really like your categorization. I don't think we disagree about Functional intuition. Let's leave that one. Tentative intuition I accept too, if it doesn't matter I won't waste the time, but if it does matter I want to back it up with facts.

Here is the problem. I think it is very difficult to impossible for an individual to distinguish between their prejudices and their strong intuitions. People can have very strong feeling about southern accents (my personal prejudice) or races, or homosexuals or any number of things. And isn't always simple-- I cringe of the stories of Arab Americans being thrown off of airplanes because other passengers are sure they are about to commit an attack.

I suppose I am skeptical at the claim the accuracy is anywhere near 100% for anyone and I think the data show that this isn't the case. We have studies on witnesses who swear they know what happened (and are incorrect). We have studies on juries making conclusions.

My favorite example is asking humans whether numbers are random or not. Humans will be very confident that they know if numbers are random or not, and they will be completely wrong. If I give you 10 sets of numbers of which 5 are random and 5 have a pattern you will not be able to pick which is which (and most people get worst than half right).

Apple had a problem with this in their "shuffle" feature that played random songs. It was mathematically random, but thousands of people called up support saying it wasn't random because it was playing the same song more than once (which is completely normal in a random selection). The solution was for Apple to make their random feature not random.

Humans are completely "sure" that vaccines cause autism, or that God speaks to them or any number of things.

Fortunately for me, in most cases when I take the time to think about it I can articulate why I have the strong intuitions I have. I think self-reflection is an important part of that.

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The Folly of Intuition

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