Quote:
Originally Posted by asdfasdf32
Fine by me.
Yes, humans should be leery of unsafe situations, but this perception can, and should be overridden when more information about the situation is obtained. I'm pretty sure you consider a child's fear of a monster under the bed to be irrational, for instance. Or possibly a fear of all snakes because some can be poisonous.
Considering many people of other religions also feel it in their gut goes to show that your gut is a poor indicator of reality.
You do use intellectual criteria for your normal operating procedure, you just call it your 'gut'. For instance, pretend as a child you were told not to eat a certain wild berry because it's poisonous. Later in life you see a similar looking berry and your gut tells you not to eat it because it might be poisonous. Now, this is a good thing because it potentially saved you from eating a poisonous berry, but it's not an indicator that this new berry actually is poisonous. Given more information, you would gladly change your stance and eat said berry.
Using reason is our own system, and you'll become more proficient at it the more you reason the world around you.
Reason is not the only system.
This forum is just loaded with afficionados of it.
I once had a neurological expert on this board explain how intuition is more accurate in some people than the ability to reason.
Most people make a lot of assumptions about reason without knowing the neurology.
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Here's a copy of Aver-aging's post on the neurology several years back from a thread I did on intuition:
What you just described is modern psychology's understanding of intuition. Quickly processing subtle environmental cues is the process of intuition. I can't stress how important it is for a person to understand neo-cortical neurology to better understand any neurological phenomenon. The design of the neocortex is hierarchical in nature, and the higher the activity, the more the thought is understood by the individual (or so its thought, at least). Lower areas of the neo-cortical hierarchy are more sensitive to small changes in the environment because they are less subject to interpretation from other areas of the neo-cortex. That's precisely why logic can actually be inaccurate.
The neo-cortex is a feedback system, and the higher parts of the hierarchy are more reliant on feedback from other levels than the lower, as they receive no direct information from sensory input. The lower levels, however, receive input from both the higher levels (there is actually more connections going from the top to the bottom then there is going from the bottom to the top) and sensory organs. If you've ever watched that special on the man with 'The highest IQ in the world' that is a perfect example of how having excellent logic can be detrimental to one's ability to perceive reality accurately. My guess is that if you looked at his brain it would have a low cell count in the lower areas of the neo-cortical hierarchy.
Also, its important to mention that some people would naturally have better intuition than others. It all depends on the individuals particular neo-cortical arrangement. It's my guess that having a high amount of direct sensory to low-hierarchy connection/cell count AND having low-hierarchy to the highest levels of neo-cortical hierarchy connection count would result in individuals with phenomenal intuitive abilities.
I mean, there needs to be more research though. This whole field is very fuzzy, and very misunderstood. They need to start dissecting people's neo-cortex after they die (from causes that were not a result of brain trauma or degenerative diseases), while attaining as much personal information about these people while they are still alive and healthy.
*EDIT*
To whoever said intuition is just shoddy logic, you obviously don't know what you are talking about. Intuition is so much more than 'shoddy logic'. For some people it's more reliable than actually being logical. For others, its a lot less reliable. It really varies from individual to individual.
Last edited by Splendour; 05-17-2012 at 01:11 AM.