Recently, while watching tv, I turned to Sue and commented on her intuition. In several scenes, we saw a father having conversations with his son. Sue intuited that we were seeing the scene as the father imagined it, and that son must be deceased. She was correct.
Just on the previous evening, I had deduced that the supposedly bad cop wasn't bad after all. Well, I guess he was partly bad, but his better side appeared in the 11th hour, and he saved the day, just as I thought he might.
That was when I turned to Sue and opined that she intuited things while I deduced them. That is not to say, however, that she didn't do any deduction and that I didn't intuit at all, for we are not just one thing or t'other.
I also deduced the final turn in the latest Netflix mystery, Untamed, set in Yosemite Park. It's not that I try to guess outcomes, but sometimes, I just get a feeling, which, I know, does sound intuitive, but I think that I see little hints as well. Sue thinks that I should write mysteries, but really, I can only solve them, and just sometimes.
Intuition or deduction: are you more one way that the other?
I strongly suspect that intuition is really deduction happening at a level below the conscious one. Our brains evolved to pick up on the implications of little clues quickly, without having to slog through every step of a conscious chain of logic. In the old days, the faster you picked up on the fact that a saber-tooth tiger was lurking in the grass or that a visitor from another tribe meant you ill, the better.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, since intuition isn't a conscious deductive process, it can fool you. Intuitively, the Earth seems to be flat. I experience both intuition and deduction, but I tend to be a little suspicious of intuition.
Yeah, I think you are essentially correct. It probably comes down to lateral vs linear thinking
DeleteI think I deal a lot with intuition, which can be considered for me to be a 'gut' feeling. Usually though, it isn't about shows, it is about weather, animals, and all things going on around me.
ReplyDeleteAs Ray Bradbury said “I don't try to describe the future. I try to prevent it.” Endings of TV shows, whatever is right around the corner...it's not always something that we want to know. But I do think our animal nature is helpful in keeping us going, safe, fed, whatever. I pity the arthritic people who always have pain before rain, including myself.
ReplyDeleteI echo Val's comment, I have the same experience.
ReplyDeleteInteresting question. I don't think I'm more one than the other.
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