Do you follow your instincts?

Intuition, supposedly stonger in women, results in some major decisions in many people's lives.

Rational reasoning based on facts gets thrown out the window in some cases, just to follow a "gut feeling".

Do you rationalise all of your decisions, like choosing a partner, or shifting house, changing careers, etc.

Or do you follow intuition in your decisions?

I'll state my own case a bit later.

There is a Psychological explanation for intuition. As you know our brain filters our environment and defines our perception by how and what it filters. We are only aware of about 10% of the information that actually enters our brains. The other 90% is discarded by the brain as irrelevant.

A good easy example involves the amygdala. When you see something out of the corner of your eye, and, before you even have time to figure out what it is, your sympathetic system kicks in, increasing your heart rate and shutting down digestion. If you realize that is was nothing, you put your hand over your heart and laugh at yourself, but if you realize it was something dangerous, you are ready to run. The reason for this is the information that is collected by the thalamus, which processes sensory information, is sent through two different pathways. One pathway leads up through the Cortex, which analyzes it logically before sending it to the amygdala. The other leads straight to the amygdala. The amygdala is responsible for the emotional part of our memories. It also plays a part in our present emotional states.

The idea behind intuition is that it may, in part, come out of that part of our brain that is processing information that is out of the field of our awareness. So, I would not completely discount intuition. There are things that we do not even know that we have perceived. I wouldn’t count entirely on it either. It is, at best, unprocessed and unanalyzed information that may be misinterpreted.

Okay Tori. But what about when you first meet someone, never seen them before, and you get some flash that they are evil in intent?

Is that your brain simply typecasting? Or intuition?

wishing something will be a certain way and following that wish can be dangerous. rational thinking is the only way to go

There is a big difference between wishing for something and intuition. Some 'intuition' involves women or men who have a 'feeling' that their significant other is being unfaithful. I can't imagine anyone wishing for that.

I would rate my own intuition as very strong.

It's interesting to hear how gut feelings can be rationalised.

ToriAllen said:

Our brain relies on past experience to mold our current perceptions.

How does that assumption weigh up with very young children, who have had little contact with adults other than their own family? Their experiential database is small, relatively.

They meet someone, and you are there, and you don't perceive any threat, but your child tells you later that they don't like that man/woman.

Is it possible that intuition can be passed on genetically?

And can the recombinant genetics of both parents result in children with stronger perception/intution?

I would rate my own intuition as very strong.

 

It's interesting to hear how gut feelings can be rationalised.

 

ToriAllen said:

 

 

How does that assumption weigh up with very young children, who have had little contact with adults other than their own family? Their experiential database is small, relatively.

 

They meet someone, and you are there, and you don't perceive any threat, but your child tells you later that they don't like that man/woman.

 

Is it possible that intuition can be passed on genetically?

 

And can the recombinant genetics of both parents result in children with stronger perception/intution?

That is an interesting question. Perhaps we are born with a certain amount of 'animal instinct' that is eventually corrupted and replaced by experience.

There is a big difference between wishing for something and intuition. Some 'intuition' involves women or men who have a 'feeling' that their significant other is being unfaithful. I can't imagine anyone wishing for that.

wrong choice of word for me. but intuition can often do with fearing something maybe true or beliving it may be true against rational thought

wrong choice of word for me. but intuition can often do with fearing something maybe true or beliving it may be true against rational thought

It doesn't necessarily go against rational thought so much as it isn't substantiated by rational thought. There is a bit of a difference. It is like a belief lacking evidence of origin.

There is a Psychological explanation for intuition. As you know our brain filters our environment and defines our perception by how and what it filters. We are only aware of about 10% of the information that actually enters our brains. The other 90% is discarded by the brain as irrelevant.

A good easy example involves the amygdala. When you see something out of the corner of your eye, and, before you even have time to figure out what it is, your sympathetic system kicks in, increasing your heart rate and shutting down digestion. If you realize that is was nothing, you put your hand over your heart and laugh at yourself, but if you realize it was something dangerous, you are ready to run. The reason for this is the information that is collected by the thalamus, which processes sensory information, is sent through two different pathways. One pathway leads up through the Cortex, which analyzes it logically before sending it to the amygdala. The other leads straight to the amygdala. The amygdala is responsible for the emotional part of our memories. It also plays a part in our present emotional states.

The idea behind intuition is that it may, in part, come out of that part of our brain that is processing information that is out of the field of our awareness. So, I would not completely discount intuition. There are things that we do not even know that we have perceived. I wouldn’t count entirely on it either. It is, at best, unprocessed and unanalyzed information that may be misinterpreted.

Sounds like your brain fliters less an retains more than the average brain.

There’s no such thing as intuition really. Its speculation that if materializes becomes intuition. It’s just a good guess against the odds.

That is an interesting question. Perhaps we are born with a certain amount of 'animal instinct' that is eventually corrupted and replaced by experience.

I wouldn't say our instincts get corrupted by experience. I would say that our life experiences reinforce our instinctual intuition.

Our environment, and our experience combines to make us who we are, and how we act and react.

The stories of children reared by wild animals came to mind.

Singh returned some days later with a large hunting party to dig the creatures out. In his journal, he says that as the first pick-axe blows landed on the termite mound, the she-wolf came rushing out, baring her fangs and barring the way. She had to be shot dead with a volley of arrows. The hunting party then broke into the lair and hauled out the two human children, along with two wolf cubs. The children turned out to be two girls, aged about three and five. Their ghastly appearance came from the mass of matted hair on their heads and their hunched four legged gait. Otherwise they appeared lithe and healthy. Surprisingly, the two appeared not to be sisters but girls taken at separate times - further evidence of some distorted maternal instinct in the mother wolf. When no-one in the local villages came forward to claim the girls, Singh took them back to his orphanage, christening the elder one, Kamala, and the younger, Amala.

 

Singh knew nothing of the stories of other feral children such as Victor and the Hessian wolf-boys, but his description of Kamala and Amala were strikingly similar. The girls seemed to have no trace of humanness in the way they acted and thought. It was as if they had the minds of wolves. They tore off any clothes put on them and would only eat raw meat. They slept curled up together in a tight ball and growled and twitched in their sleep. They only came awake after the moon rose and howled to be let free again. They had spent so long on all fours that their tendons and joints had shortened to the point where it was impossible for them to straighten their legs and even attempt to walk upright.

There have been times when I had a 'feeling' about someone and ignored it and later regretted it. I try to listen to them now.

Can you put that "feeling" into words? Tori says that the process is autonomous of the actual thought process, and purely subconciously calculated based on experiential intelligence.

I'm not sure.

Good cut and paste. You asked a question and then went to something else in your first post. There

There have been times when I had a 'feeling' about someone and ignored it and later regretted it. I try to listen to them now.

Yeah but how many times have you had an urge to do something and find out something bad happend? You were happy you didn't listen to yourself that time and it paid off. Its a guess. Some people might try in incress thier odds by facts and calcultions. But still ends up as a guess.

Flip a coin and save you self so time.

If there is a big difference between intuition and instinct, what are the differences?

 

If intuition is based on experience, and instinct is innate, then your claim that everything we know and do and react to is learned, is a false claim.

You wern't born with intuition. You WERE born with instinct. (the will to live)

Intuition is just speculation that you manifest from facts and imagination. You GUESS something and it my or may not materialize. If you’re wrong it becomes a lousy guess. If you’re right it becomes intuition.

Instinct also has a false perception. Instinct is like bodily functions and breathing. That would be the building blocks for the instinct to survive. that's it for instinct. The rest you learn!

So intinct is not tauhgt you were born with it.

intuition you were taught by things you heard or read and you elaborted it with specultion . For good or bad.

You wern't born with intuition. You WERE born with instinct. (the will to live)

So how do you explain youg children making observations about adults that they have only just met, and said adults have not in any way impacted on the child?? Is that instinct? Or something other than instinct?

Maybe intuition?

Intuition is just speculation that you manifest from facts and imagination. You GUESS something and it my or may not materialize.

Speculation maybe. Why does this happen without conscious reasoning first? How come this "speculation" comes as a flash? Within seconds? Without the usual thought process of reasoning? Is that instinctual? Or is that intuitive?

If you’re wrong it becomes a lousy guess. If you’re right it becomes intuition.

I'm up with cognitive forgetfullness and selective rationale, but if your "hunches" keep coming up right, is that indicative of a "special" kind of intuition? I'm not either way in this debate. I am after opinions.

Nobody likes to remember when their wrong so in their mind they only see the intuition part and not the lousy guess part.

Yes, selective memory plays a big part in perception of such issues. I tend to dwell more on the times when I'm wrong in my intuitive "guesses".

Instinct also has a false perception. Instinct is like bodily functions and breathing. That would be the building blocks for the instinct to survive. that's it for instinct. The rest you learn!

If instinct only matters with bodily functions devoted to life support, like breathing and organ function, we would be no smarter than trees, snafu. We are all way beyond that, I'm sure you will agree.

So intinct is not tauhgt you were born with instinct.

You contradicted you last statement, but thanks for your input. Most appreciated.

Can you put that "feeling" into words? Tori says that the process is autonomous of the actual thought process, and purely subconciously calculated based on experiential intelligence.

 

I'm not sure.

Gezz at the risk Of repeating myself, autonomous thought process is a guess.

Purely Subconsciously calculated would be at best VooDoo science.

Experiential intelligence would be another fancy way to say I guessed.

No I don't think theres any force in the mind that can Alter the inevitable.

I believe the instinct we are born with is survival, but it goes beyond breathing and eating. Babies and animals know who are not good 99% of the time. Because the inborn survival instinct sense when someone is threating that survival. Not always life threating, but infringing on the basics life. I think too many people ignore that little voice in their head because as a society we have been conditioned to go with our feelings. Well my feelings tell me to eat Ben and Jerry's all day, but my instincts tell me no. So I have a choice of which one I follow.

I also think some times people use words different termonolgy when in fact they are talking about the same things. Instint, intution I believe could fall into that catagory.

Can you put that "feeling" into words? Tori says that the process is autonomous of the actual thought process, and purely subconciously calculated based on experiential intelligence.

 

I'm not sure.

I don't know for sure, I have often thought I had noticed things subconconsciously. I really can't say for sure. Then when I get that feeling I started paying closer attention to things and really did pick up on things that were what I call red flags...

It's interesting to see how this thread focuses on Meat Body Think.

It's all neurons, synapses and animal instinct, hey?

Where is spirituality in all of this?

Rising above the mechanics of meat and the physical universe we have the spirit, capable of simply knowing.

The Glorious Thinkers can huddle, dissect and discuss, and in the end there are always those pieces left over. The pieces that never fit, the inexplicable magic that doesn't fit the puzzle. They'll never fit, because the basic premise is wrong. The premise that begins with "all is meat", "all is physical" dooms resolution from the outset.

In any equation, the spirit is the predominant factor.

An example of this is the following story. Its really more like common sense at times.

I was dating someone who told me a story about how when he worked at a grocery store he helped his Mom steal from that grocery store. Of course this was when he was a teenager. That was a HUGE red flag to me but I didn't have enough confidence in myself and I ignored it. Later when I found out that he was lying to me and his Mother was helping him, I saw the full circle of the behavior.

I learned the hard way with a couple of relationships that when a person lives by lying, it spreads into all their relationships, or at least has the potential to. For example, you hear your boyfriend on the phone lying to his boss about being sick, we've all done it, that in and of itself is not that big a deal, but then you notice that whenever he needs to get out of a tough situation he lies to his parents, his friends, his girlfriend (me).

After seeing that kind of thing, I listen very carefully when people talk about themselves. I always ask alot of questions when getting to know someone, I imagine people sometimes feel like I am cross examining them. I find that people often drop things that add up to a picture of who and what they are, almost like they want to see if your smart enough to figure it out. Depending on what I see and hear, I sort of grade them on how much or how little I trust them.

Really more common sense in this case then a feeling.