Without denying the benefits of the sixth sense, the American psychologist David Myers warns of the dangers of a kind of “intuition” fashion.
Psychologies: Сегодня, говоря об интуиции, многие в первую очередь видят в ней безусловное благо. Вы же в своей книге буквально посягнули на святое – указали на присущие интуиции слабости. В чем же, по вашему мнению, они состоят?
David Myers: Reverence for intuition is a hallmark of our postmodern era. Many popular books teach us to listen to our inner voice and follow all its advice. Hundreds of training programs promise everyone an incredible development of intuitive abilities, without which it is almost impossible to achieve success in any field – from communicating with relatives or studying arithmetic to high politics or, say, quantum physics.
The meaning of most of the practical recommendations boils down to the following: at any cost, build up “intuitive muscles” and finally stop shackling your inner voice with unnatural restrictions – let it sound wide and free. But there is a contradiction in this seductive advice. Intuition can really provide invaluable help, but it can also play a cruel joke on us. “No one dares to tell me how to behave,” said Princess Diana. “I only listen to my instincts, and they are my best advisers.”
Sounds very convincing, doesn’t it? But the favorable impression is completely hidden, as soon as we remember that the princess uttered these words in her last interview, on the eve of her tragic death. Instantaneous insight is not necessarily true, and it never hurts to test it with logic. Imagine yourself as a roulette player: you can bet on a black or red field. It is quite obvious that in both cases the probability of winning is the same. And if red fell out two, three, four times in a row? A rare player will then again bet on red, intuitively believing that the probability of black falling out increases each time. In fact, she remained the same.
“LEARN TO COORDINATE THE INTERNAL VOICE WITH THE REASON’S REASONS”.
So, trusting intuition, we not only do not increase the probability of our winning, but, on the contrary, reduce it. Another classic case: the subject is asked to blindly draw a ball from a vessel containing 9 white balls and one red one. By drawing a red ball, he will receive a reward. You can try your luck in another vessel, where there are 100 balls, including 7 red ones. No matter how the composition of the subjects varies, the result remains the same: most of the participants in the experiment prefer the vessel with the most balls. This is driven by intuition. Meanwhile, arguing logically, it is easy to see that in the second case the probability of winning is only 7%, while in the first case it is 10%. And there are many such examples.
Does this mean that intuition is not trustworthy and it is more correct to rely on logic?
Do you trust your intuition?
- Always 38%.
- Sometimes 53%.
- Never 2%.
- Не думаю, что она существует 7%.
According to the survey www.psychologies.ru
… Let’s see what the mechanism of intuition really is. Sometimes we seem to lack reasons for this or that decision, but in reality they exist – it’s just that our brain does not always have time to analyze them. These reasons can be both true and false – and in this sense they are no better and no worse than logical reasoning and are equally trustworthy.
So is it worth following the recommendations for developing intuition?
… From birth, we all, to one degree or another, have the ability to make unaccountable decisions. Moreover, this is how the lion’s share of problems is usually solved: we take many steps based only on the first, intuitive impulse. But you must admit that these decisions are not always correct, and the steps are not always successful. Therefore, the point is not to release your inner voice as much as possible, but to learn how to coordinate its prompts with the arguments of reason. The main recipe can be formulated as follows: “Lean on what is true, have the strength to reject what is false, and be wise to distinguish one from the other.”