All of feverus's Comments + Replies

Yes, I am not only suggesting but saying it explicitly (but see caveat below). Huge, obvious case in point: the autism spectrum. People on the spectrum (such as myself) have little to no ability to perceive nonverbal cues or (non-explicitly; again see caveat) model others. Even for neurotypical (that is, non-autistic) people, there is a range of ability in this area. Caveat to the above: I think these skills are innate in most people; that there is a range of ability, with the autism spectrum at one of that range and naturally charismatic, socially apt people on the other; but that the skills can be learned, with effort, as explicit skills. For instance, autistic people can train themselves to recognize nonverbal cues and social signals; but this is not a matter of simply unconsciously perceiving the cues/signals/situations and just "knowing" their meaning, as it is for most people; rather it is a case of consciously paying attention and looking for things; and the meanings of these cues and signals must be looked up, researched, and memorized. In other words, a logic-based approach to compensate for lack of an intuitive ability. It is probably also the case that neurotypicals who are not on the extreme positive end of the social ability spectrum, but do not lack the innate intuitive ability, can train their ability in the manner you mention. I would not know, of course, but it seems plausible enough, and consistent with what I've heard.

I do not play sports, but I did spend several years doing high-end raiding (mostly as a main tank) in World of Warcraft, which I think fits your criteria. Raid play is fast-paced and demanding, with necessary reaction times measured in fractions of a second. I would not characterize good play in a WoW raid as based on intuition. Here is, basically, the process for beating a new, challenging raid boss: 1. Go in, try the boss. The entire raid dies horribly, of course. 2. Meticulously, exhaustively analyze the combat log. Note down all observations made of boss behavior. Correlate data. 3. Brainstorm solutions, based on raid leader's and key raid members' comprehensive, minutely detailed knowledge of game mechanics. 4. Make detailed plan. The plan implicitly includes generally correct play from all raid members; note that for almost all classes in WoW, optimal play means following detailed algorithms for ability usage, often worked out at length by top "theorycrafters", who are often people with advanced degrees in physics and mathematics (no, I am not exaggerating) — plus, of course, extensive experience, to the point where playing correctly is at the level of muscle memory. 5. Attempt to execute plan. Correct execution demands precise, down-to-the-second performance from all raid members. 6. If successful: yay! If failure: proceed to step 2. Repeat until victory. If this is an intuition-based approach, then I don't know what "intuition" means. Of course logical thinking is better when you have time to use it. I'm not asking whether it's better. I'm asking whether "gut judgments" are accurate, and how accurate they are. Basically, I see many people claiming that in "crunch time" scenarios, you have no choice but to apply the gut judgment. Ok. But my question is: if you later go back and apply logical reasoning to the (by now, perhaps, irrelevant) problem, does it turn out that your gut judgment was right? How right? How often? Etc.

The domain of "behaving in such a way as to gain and maintain an advantageous position in social interactions" is very different from other domains, like "diagnose and repair difficulties with computer equipment", "diagnose and treat afflictions in human beings", "understand mathematical concepts", and almost anything else. It seems to me that the domain of social interactions with other humans is in fact a unique domain, not properly comparable (in the context of the current discussion) to anything else. Certainly gut feelings are key in social interactions; in fact, the most charismatic, likable, and socially successful people do what they do largely unconsciously, and are almost entirely unable not only to explain their technique to others, but even to recognize there is a technique, that other people are not as skilled at using. My question is, how accurate are gut feelings in other domains — especially those domains where there is are objectively right answers and wrong answers, and where it is possible and even easy, in principle, to compare the answer you get from your gut feeling to the actual right answer? In the treatment of computers and people, in math, in science, in engineering? (Answering this question requires data!) What's more: I really don't think that this is an accurate characterization of where gut feelings in successful social interactors come from. It's been my experience that such instinctual social success is largely innate. Oh sure, it may be honed, but saying that the gut feeling is a synthesis of years of experience is just almost certainly not what's going on there. More likely it's a naturally great ability to model others, to respond (unconsciously) to nonverbal cues, etc.