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What do you think about 'intuition?' In many situations, I had a feeling something wasn't right. 9/10, I was correct. There wasn't strong reasons either. That initial feeling encourages you to investigate/research. Then you find out the feeling you had was accurate. In some cases, I just waited it out and had time tell.

I'm skeptical of anything supernatural, so I have a hard time grasping this concept of intuition and "6th senses." What causes it? Can science back it up? Is it just a coincidence?

vjohnson51 7 Dec 1
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2

One of my friends jokes about me being a skeptical psychic (she believes in that stuff) there are times when I think or dream of something and then it happens or something close enough that it could possibly be what I dreamt/thought. An example neighbour tells me she is pregnant for no reason I think of my cousin who lost a baby at 7months gestation. I don't say anything to the neighbour but she loses her baby (not at 7 months) so was this some sort of psychic event or did my brain rapidly work out that her husband already had a child that was about 10 years old, she and her husband had been together for about 5 years at least (the length of time I had lived next to them) never had she talked about children or having children, (were they trying and it was too painful to talk about) she was not a young woman in terms of child bearing years I would suggest closer to 40 than 30. Did my brain do all of the maths and go there is a high chance she could lose the baby think of your cousin in her 20's perfectly healthy who lost her baby for no known reason. Intuition is simply the brain processing without us realising it. I went to visit family and saw my uncle and thought he is sick. While there were no outward signs there was something off about him something must of been different enough that my brain picked up on it, maybe a smell or the way he was walking/acting. He, in fact, already had the cancer that would kill him but no one, not even he, knew it yet. We also tend to remember the events that happen rather than the ones that don't. I was staying with the above friend and had a dream that her husband was in a car crash. Not an unreasonable dream as he spent most of the day on the road driving from job to job and we were in a big city. When I got up in the morning he had not left for work, do I tell him about my dream, knowing that he and my friend put stock in that stuff, or not? I decided not to. I simply said "take care out there" as he left. He came home and talked of the near miss he had. But he may have had near misses every other day without talking about them or we did not store them in memory as he was home safe and it was a city near misses happen often. Do I remember it because of the link to the dream I had.

10

What people call intuition is the subconscious mind picking up on a host of things we did not observe consciously and then rendering a feeling about that data.

8

Our brain process a lot more information than our conscience can deal with, this is intuition.
Sometimes is good, because in an emergency life/death situation is useful to have this background processing and giving you hints.
At the same time this gives us biases and other flaws in cognition.
So for a day to day action, trust it and develop it, but when looking for truth or knowledge, trust in the methods and tools that we develop as a civilization (and call Scientific method) to identify/silence/discard this background process and bring all to the front.

8

Intuition is real but there’s nothing supernatural about it. We perceive far more things than we realize, for some it is conscious but for form where it is subconscious. Intuition is basically our ability to gather up information about a situation and make a decision or course of action based on that information. But because we are quite often unaware that we are perceiving things we attribute it to something more supernatural than our brains ability to do things without our direct awareness of it.

8

intuition is just heightened observation, particularly on a subliminal level. there is nothing mysterious about it.

g

8

This is the first time I’ve heard intuition linked with the supernatural. It’s seems like a normal function of the brain.

8

I pay serious attention when I take an instant dislike to someone, there IS a reason, on a level I am not consciously aware.....always, always, the '"aha!" moment when I realize why I didn't like them at first, and what a lot of time I have spent trying to ignore my gut!

7

When we had training from the police about staying safe they said always trust your intuition, you’re taking in lots of information that gives you and overall feeling, never discount that. We don’t always have time to break down the signs and signals that are giving us that feeling, but it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t trust ourself.

7

Intuition is a function of the unconscious mind.

“Influences on thinking that originate from outside of an individual's consciousness were reflected in the ancient ideas of temptation, divine inspiration, and the predominant role of the gods in affecting motives and actions.”

Now we understand it to be a function of biology.

[en.m.wikipedia.org]

skado Level 9 Dec 1, 2019
7

When I ignore my gut reaction- call it intuition- I inevitably regret it.

You need to get it working better with some of these dodgy guys you’ve run into!

@Marionville

Meeting men through online dating is essential a blind date.

Research shows 80% of people post old photos and lie about their age, weight, profession, marital status, fitness, etc.

It shows they are a liar.

@vjohnson51

Thank you so much! I appreciate your kind words. Kathleen

6

I don't think of it as supernatural. There are subtle cues, not overt that most people pick up on but don't realize.

6

In my opinion, in pre-historic times, humans were wired to make snap decisions. When a predator spotted you, there was no time for intellectual deliberation. Intuition fit the bill.

In my opinion, intuition is just a subconscious memory of a similar situation. But as we now know, previous performance is not a predictor of future performance. And first impressions are often wrong.

not just your opinion, we are hard wired so much to take this fast and safe decisions based on background processing that we had to develop a whole logic, philosophical method to recognize, deal and silence it when we go for more detailed observations, and this we call scientific method.

On the other side martial arts for example exists to expand this. And this works for very limited frameworks.

I remember that I read that an English longbowman started training as a kid. At first he spent a few years learning to put an arrow on the target, counting wind, distance, movement etc.,Then he spend 2 or 3 times this time to forget how to do it and do it instinctively to be fast.

This results that when the first arrow reach a target on the maximum distance of the longbow, there were 2 more in the air.

6

I've always gone with the gut feeling. I've been told intuition is really a subconscious reaction to a combination of past experience, and primordial "that alligator brain stem" response to environmental stimuli through all of our sensory inputs. Trust it.

6

I think sometimes our brain must put some cues together we were not conscious of: sounds, shadows tones of voices, etc. But even more common than that I suspect, is that we just remember the hits and forget the misses. Very often we get a little idea something might happen, and then every now and then it really does - and we forget about the 100 times we had the feeling but nothing happened.

6

I rode my motorbike all over London in the '60's and always made a point of being first away from traffic lights. Once I delayed without knowing why and a car shot through the red light across my path. If I had gone as usual I would have been under the car. I often wondered why I delayed but I can only surmise that I saw something in my peripheral vision that made me delay.

Or it could have just been happenstance. You may have delayed hundreds of times but they were not remarkable or memorable because nothing unusual happened until this time. Life is full of these split second misses, many of which we are not even aware.

@Barnie2years Possibly but I know that up to that point I did race away from the lights and this time I didn't. After that I may have been more careful. I think we all have a "sixth sense" that evolved in early mankind. Those who didn't have it were less likely to survive and breed,. There is also the strange feeling that sometimes you feel that you are being watched and you turn round and sure enough you are being watched. Of course there may be many times you are being watched and you don't have this feeling or you have the feeling and there is no one watching so it may be that you are getting a bit paranoid. Who knows.

5

I think Intuition is your sub conscious mind picking up on things around you personally. thats pretty much for how i feel about it lol

5

I've had pretty good results trusting my intuition and there are, in my opinion two very good reasons. The first one is just that you observe things that your brain notes subconsciously without any overt warning. @genessa put that quite succinctly and clearly. I would add that selective memory comes into play as well. We remember the successes and forget when intuition may have failed us, and if we avoid doing something that seems dangerous based on intuition, we consider it successful, but in reality will never know the alternate outcome.

JimG Level 8 Dec 1, 2019
5

Real intuition is nothing more than indicators from your past experience or learning giving you a sense that something is or is not likely. You may not be able to put your finger on exactly what is the indicator, but it is there.

5

Even scientific theories start out as intuitive ideas before being subjected to rigorous testing.

4

There is so much information rattling around in the brain. I don't believe it is necessary to consciously make all the connections. Intuition to me is the accessing of information without having to necessarily make the conscious links.

4

Intuition is your brain putting past and present information together and then presenting you with assumptions based on the data. This is what the brain does all the time with everything so it can be wrong or even get tricked but it's the best we have. I use it.

4

I think that it is based on past experiences either we learned through direct experience, or we learn through observing others' experiences, either in person or on TV or some other medium. That knowledge is in our subconscious and then we have the gut feeling because we KNOW, deep down, that something is off and will produce harmful or non-beneficial outcomes.

I knew you were going to post that

@CallMeDave And? Is that a bad thing? 😕

4

Animals have a sense of things that is evident in their behavior a survival mechanism if you will. Sometimes we can confuse intuition I believe, with ego based experience, but there definitely is something innate within us that suggest when something is amiss . Depending on the circumstances and on whether or not it calls for immediate response . I would say consider where the feeling is coming from, if it is from the past it is usually based in ego and I would definitely say , don’t base your decision to act on that .

4

This is probably right up there with “déjà vu” in the realm of mystery brain functions. I have frequently had the sudden feeling that whatever I am doing, I had done the exact same thing previously or perhaps dreamed it. In either case, it feels very real! But I tend to be skeptical of life repeating itself despite a Twilight Zone episode that dealt with this that scared the crap out of me when I was a kid!

4

Theres a nursing academic who wrote about intuition and learning, her work was based on some work done by Deyfus and Dreyfus , two brothers who were math and philosophy professors. They were exploring AI for the millitary. Anywho, the basic idea is that with experience you learn to incorporate all sort of situational info and cues, until your learned responses are so good they are called "intuition" instead of "thinking". Intuition is really just a code word for all sorts of complex mental gymnastics that happens quickly and quietly, due to really well programmed brain cells. Depending on your talents and past experience, youre probably picking up on things like facial expressions or even running through news stories youve read.

4

I think intuition is made of small signals from past experiences that tell you this may not end well. It's not supernatural it's actually rational experience. Some people just ignore these signals or their desire for a certain outcome overpowers these signals.

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