Heroes Not Zombies

The relationship between intuition and reasoning has been cropping up all over the place for me recently.

I just read Gut Feelings by Gerd Gigerenzer (ISBN 978-0-7139-9751-4) and he gives one of the most cogent models of intuition I’ve ever read. He outlines what he calls “evolved capacities” – these are human qualities or characteristics which have evolved either genetically or culturally. They are language, recognition memory, object tracking, imitation and feelings like love. He makes a good case for the uniqueness of these capacities in human beings (claiming that neither other animals nor computer-based Artificial Intelligence have or ever will have them).

His model of intuition (or “gut feelings”) is that these evolved capacities interact with environmental structures around the individual and are processed through simple rules of thumb to produce what we recognise as gut feelings. I like this model. It fits well with discoveries in evolutionary biology, neuroscience and complexity science. I’m sure others will identify other qualities which fit with his idea of “evolved capacities” and I think the adaptive nature of rules of thumb applied appropriately in different contexts really works.

There’s no doubt that rationalism and logic are only two of the tools we use to understand things and I think Gigerenzer’s model of intuition highlights a major other set of tools which we use (maybe even more frequently than we do reasoning and logic). I also think it’s good to take the mysticism out of intuition and to distinguish it from simple guess work.

In this way of thinking intuition can be both developed and taught and I find that pretty exciting.

One of the key points he makes is that intuitive processes are especially helpful when dealing with situations which are very uncertain – prediction for example. This highlights a role for intuition in everything from health care to investment decisions.

I’ve long been aware that the practice of acute medicine in particular requires rapid intuitive skill – an over-reliance on data collection and analysis in these situations can be fatal. Right off the top of my head I can recall a child with meningococcal meningitis, a young farmer in rural Ayrshire with malaria and man with toothache who turned out to be having a heart attack. In all three of these cases I’m sure it was instant (and I do mean instant!) decision making that saved their lives. In each case the diagnoses were unusual for a general practitioner and none of them would have survived had I waited to do some tests before acting. I’m sure all doctors have had similar experiences – those instants where you “just know” that this is a serious life-threatening situation despite the lack of detailed evidence!

Uncertainty is a fundamental characteristic of  our lives and intuition is one of the key tools we need to deal with it.