Intuition vs logic

[mr friendly guy]

Are there situations where perhaps intuition is more useful than logic (keep in mind that logic is limited by the amount of information you have on a subject).

For example

1. a master chess player manages to match an advanced computer who presumably has superior logic and can "see" several moves ahead. Its thought that such players rely on heuristics, which as essentially mental rule of thumbs to guide them in playing.

2. Essentially one of the tips to recognise financial guru's as frauds is ask yourself "if this guy has such a great money making scheme, why does he need to make money selling his stuff to you when he can used said strategy to make money himself?" (So you check for things like how much of his income actually is derived from selling "get rich" products and how much time does he spend using his "get rich" scheme vs selling you products).

Applying that line of thinking seems to be an appeal to motive fallacy and seems to me to be based on intuition.

The logical way to examine the validity of his idea is to check his facts and to test the strategy for yourself - say using "imaginary" money buying real shares in simulations for example. This however strikes me as more time consuming to reach a conclusion then by say using the previous method.

In this case, does intuition act as a short cut to allow one to reach the right conclusion.

[Bounty]

Applying that line of thinking seems to be an appeal to motive fallacy and seems to me to be based on intuition.

I don't think so. If his scheme works, it will make him ruch. If he took the time to perfect his scheme, he has the desire to become rich. Ergo, if he's not rich, there is a significant chance that his scheme doesn't work.

It's hardly airtight logic - far from it in fact - but it relies on more then "intuition". You don't start from a gut feeling, you start from past experience and loosely extrapolate from there.

[RedImperator]

Intuition is the conscious manifestation of subconscious thought. The subconscious processes all the facts and then kicks up a response: "Don't do this", "Run away!", "Good idea" and whatnot. The main advantage over logical thought is that it's much, much faster. The disadvantage is that it's largely programmed to react in a certain way to certain stimuli, so it can be fooled if the situation presents one of those stimuli out of its usual context.

[Jalinth]

For your "financial guru" example, both logic and intuition can tell you that he might be bogus. The more it is a quick way to wealth, the more logical it is to ask why isn't he doing it himself?

As to your logic example, a more fundamental (and logical) question is asking why is this person spending all of this time and effort promoting his "product" given the claimed rewards. If my "surefire scheme" is so easy, why don't I work 20 hours per week and make $10 million per year using it and just keep my mouth shut to avoid competitors. Listen whether he explains (as generally most of these folks are guys - better snake oil salesmen) why he is out selling rather than doing? I almost never hear any good explanation why his "easy money" route isn't being followed by the promoter.

For chess, the game is all logic and math. If you are facing a human, then the human aspect comes into play in terms of preferences (whether he is aggressive, passive, etc...) so you can more quickly decide what he is going to do and plan accordingly. But this is more a matter of deciding what trees you are going to examine

[Zero]

Things always seem to go very well for me when I rely on intuition. When I try and think everything through, and understand logically why to do or not do something, I fuck everything up.

[General Zod]

Things always seem to go very well for me when I rely on intuition. When I try and think everything through, and understand logically why to do or not do something, I fuck everything up.

Maybe it's not so much the thinking things through logically, as you're simply not using the proper method for applying that logic? (Logic doesn't work too well where emotions are concerned, for example),

[Surlethe]

Things always seem to go very well for me when I rely on intuition. When I try and think everything through, and understand logically why to do or not do something, I fuck everything up.

The key point in thinking things through logically is to make sure you have the proper hypotheses. Logic makes sure conclusions follow from initial conditions; if the initial conditions in the conscious reasoning are incongruent with reality, then the conclusions will be flawed, no matter how good the logic is.

[Zero]

Usually, it's simply a matter of not having all the information. I can draw logical conclusions from what I know, but there tend to be details that I miss that end up being quite important. That's why if I really give a fuck about something, I make sure I'm thorough. Anything besides that, I try to just follow instinct.

[PrinceofLowLight]

Here's a good metaphor:

Logic is your CPU. It's powerful and versatile.

Instincts are like 3D accelerators. They're not as powerful as the processor, but the circuit geometry allows it to do its job better.

When you're doing things like discerning body language and figuring emotional things, instincts will be faster and more effective. Plus it saves CPU cycles for things that it's better at.

[Alyeska]

Intuition is the conscious manifestation of subconscious thought. The subconscious processes all the facts and then kicks up a response: "Don't do this", "Run away!", "Good idea" and whatnot. The main advantage over logical thought is that it's much, much faster. The disadvantage is that it's largely programmed to react in a certain way to certain stimuli, so it can be fooled if the situation presents one of those stimuli out of its usual context.

I seem to remember that they designed the chess playing computers specificaly to do this to chess masters. They designed them to trick the chess master into doing certain moves and then the computer would deliver the win. It got to the point where the computers could win reliably like this.

[Rye]

Intuition is the conscious manifestation of subconscious thought. The subconscious processes all the facts and then kicks up a response: "Don't do this", "Run away!", "Good idea" and whatnot. The main advantage over logical thought is that it's much, much faster. The disadvantage is that it's largely programmed to react in a certain way to certain stimuli, so it can be fooled if the situation presents one of those stimuli out of its usual context.

Yeah, an example of this would be a firefighter captain or leader or whatever they're called realising something was intimately wrong with a situation and pulling his guys out. What would happen is that all the information his brain is processing is silently being checked against past experience by a small central lobe if I remember it right, which will realise the signs of a backdraft, though his logical brain will still be trying to coordinate a million other things. In which case, his intuition will save the day when the logical part would be limited by the situation.

[Pint0 Xtreme]

I seem to remember that they designed the chess playing computers specificaly to do this to chess masters. They designed them to trick the chess master into doing certain moves and then the computer would deliver the win. It got to the point where the computers could win reliably like this.

Yes. There were several chess configurations that guaranteed a victory for the computer if it ever reached that state. Considering that such states are a lot closer, it's only logical to program these states into its memory as 'win' states, making it faster for the computer to see the end state much sooner.

[Surlethe]

I seem to remember that they designed the chess playing computers specificaly to do this to chess masters. They designed them to trick the chess master into doing certain moves and then the computer would deliver the win. It got to the point where the computers could win reliably like this.

Yes. There were several chess configurations that guaranteed a victory for the computer if it ever reached that state. Considering that such states are a lot closer, it's only logical to program these states into its memory as 'win' states, making it faster for the computer to see the end state much sooner.

Chess players do this with mating patterns as well; for example, the smothered mate pattern is something a decent chess player can see coming five moves in advance, and that's one of the more well-known ones.