I used to think I had a great “woman’s” intuition when most of the things I felt a certain way about were correct, but lately I’ve been way off and I’m starting to re-think what exactly intuition is.
Do you think intuition is real?
I think intuition is something that you get when the necessary information to make a decision about something is in your head, but you can’t able to remember it exactly, or put it into coherent thoughts, or otherwise process it normally. For example, your brain might tell you that someone you see is dangerous because he’s moving in the same way that the guy who mugged you ten years ago moved, but if you can’t realize WHY you think that or articulate it properly, then it’s intuition.
I do. It’s probably just an amalgamation of unconscious stuff coming together under one umbrella, but I’ve learned to trust my intuition.
It is a strange phenomenon. For me, it’s not like I can use my intuition for every situation. If I try to summon my intuition on a decision, I find it doesn’t work very well. But if it shows up on its own, it’s usually correct.
its called random guessing…
if your guess works out you are like “woah! I’m freakin psychic”
if it doesn’t… you forgot the gut feeling you had because a story where your not psychic isn’t memorable.
Intuition is the process of making a sophisticated guess (and often an accurate one) based on a mosaic of lttle bits of information that by themselves mean nothing.
The ability to accurately “intuit” something, however, often requires a high level of familarity with the mental state and the environment of the person or situation being “intuited”. This is why some women can look at the way a man behaves with another woman in a social setting and deduce instantly (and often accurately) if he is having an affair with her, but his wife is clueless. Or the way some people can tell almost instantly if someone is gay, but their friends have no idea.
The problem is that even if you are right 90% of the time, sometimes “intuition” is 180 degrees wrong, and making concrete, real life decisions based on it without confirmation, can lead to all sorts of problems.
Yes, exactly. It’s a little disappointing when you feel so good and so positive about the decision you are making and you tell yourself “I’m doing the right thing” and you feel it intuitively, and then… bam, you are totally off base and wrong. So confusing, this life we live.
I completely believe in intuitiion. Mine hasn’t lead me astray yet. I basically have two kinds of intuition: the nagging back of my head kind and the thunderbolt from on high kind.
For example, last November a guy who I had been actively flirting with and who seemed to be interested in me right back and I planned to go to a grad school social at a museum. He would drive and I would take the train home afterwards. Everything planned out. The day of, he shows up with this other chick from the grad program. We drive to the museum. I was sitting in the back seat and as I observed the interactions between chick and guy up front, a thunderbolt hit me “They’re together.” So, I kept really quiet as we toured the museum. So confident in my intuition, I pulled the chick aside and whispered “How long have you been seeing X[the guy]?” She asked me who told me and said they had been dating for a month. Ugh! That is my intuition.
Another creepier example is that I have been planning a trip to Paris. But a couple weeks ago, a nagging instinct to cancel started getting louder and louder. So, one weekend I cancelled my plans. That week, they found a bomb on a Paris rail-line. I know how that intuition developed. I had heard about the ransom note sent to the Paris government and published in a paper, I love riding trains in Europe and I was thinking of flying into the Swiss airport to save a couple bucks. Then, Madrid happened. Everything seemed to come together into a jagged neon warning sign in my head.
I think so…
Intuition is real, but not always accurate. Just another piece of data the mind processes.
Intuition is always real, especially if you’re a Pisces.
I think it must be real because if it wasn’t you would have to consciously decide every action in your everyday life by analysing the situation. I remember a Star Trek Voyager episode that depicted this quite well with the EMH losing his intuitive programs.
What exactly intuition is though is another question, and probably better suited to GD.