I first discovered these recurring tendencies in my self and in others. Then, used inferences from what’s scientifically known about intuition to explain how the nature of intuition might cause these tendencies in intuition thinkers.
I recall seeing research showing that intuitive thinkers performed better at math / logic problems if they were word problems involving social settings, eg amount of soda to buy for a party or people sitting next to each other.
I would explain this study’s result using the following inferential steps:
1) People (some more than others) have a lot of experience being in social situations
2) It’s not uncommon for people in social situations to face problems that can be easily formalized as math problems, e.g. how to split the bill at a restaurant or the examples mentioned in the study.
3) Intuition uses past experiences to solve problems
4) Intuition thinkers have probably trained their intuition to be able to solve problems found in social situations.
5) Intuition thinkers are more likely to be better at solving math/logic problems found in social situations than math/logic problems found in settings they don’t have much experience with, yet have enough background knowledge to solve.
In the post, I also inferred that intuition thinkers have a hard time corresponding words in math problems with formulas they know. When the words involved are words they’ve corresponded to formulas in the past, they’re more likely to make the right correspondence again.
If I read about the experiment before knowing the results, I wouldn’t be too surprised if intuition thinkers beat out logical thinkers.
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This is a good example of how I explained the tendencies in the rest of the post. I think the step that demands the most evidence is (3), but felt like there was enough scientific backing for it that lesswrongers know about. I believe the other inferences don’t require additional evidence enough to the point that leaving them out greatly weakens the argument.
I may have definitely made inferences in the post that, without providing additional evidence, greatly weaken my argument. I’d appreciate any instance of this pointed out.
One such study is the famous Wason selection task, and there, evolutionary psychology gives a fundamentally very different sort of answer than what you’ve given: that we have evolved, innate cognitive modules that solve certain types of problems… but are not used at all when the same abstract form of problem is put in a different context:
Cosmides and Tooby argued that experimenters have ruled out alternative explanations, such as that people learn the rules of social exchange through practice and find it easier to apply these familiar rules than less-familiar rules. [...] They argued that such a distinction [between performance on the problem in a social context and the same problem otherwise], if empirically borne out, would support the contention of evolutionary psychologists that human reasoning is governed by context-sensitive mechanisms that have evolved, through natural selection, to solve specific problems of social interaction, rather than context-free, general-purpose mechanisms.
After reading the article, it seems like their conclusion is still debated. I’m also not convicted, although I have updated that the general-purpose mechanism hypothesis is less likely correct. There needs to be an experiment with the context being non-social but frequently occurs in people’s lives. For instance, “if you arrived to the airport less than 30 minutes before your departure, you are not able to check in.” Then compare results with those from people who have never been on a plane before.
Edit: I realized my example can also be explained by the “cheater detector module”. In fact, any question with the conext being a human imposed rule can be explained the same way. A better question would be “if your car runs out of fuel, your car cannot be driven.”
I first discovered these recurring tendencies in my self and in others. Then, used inferences from what’s scientifically known about intuition to explain how the nature of intuition might cause these tendencies in intuition thinkers.
I would explain this study’s result using the following inferential steps:
1) People (some more than others) have a lot of experience being in social situations
2) It’s not uncommon for people in social situations to face problems that can be easily formalized as math problems, e.g. how to split the bill at a restaurant or the examples mentioned in the study.
3) Intuition uses past experiences to solve problems
4) Intuition thinkers have probably trained their intuition to be able to solve problems found in social situations.
5) Intuition thinkers are more likely to be better at solving math/logic problems found in social situations than math/logic problems found in settings they don’t have much experience with, yet have enough background knowledge to solve.
In the post, I also inferred that intuition thinkers have a hard time corresponding words in math problems with formulas they know. When the words involved are words they’ve corresponded to formulas in the past, they’re more likely to make the right correspondence again.
If I read about the experiment before knowing the results, I wouldn’t be too surprised if intuition thinkers beat out logical thinkers.
--
This is a good example of how I explained the tendencies in the rest of the post. I think the step that demands the most evidence is (3), but felt like there was enough scientific backing for it that lesswrongers know about. I believe the other inferences don’t require additional evidence enough to the point that leaving them out greatly weakens the argument.
I may have definitely made inferences in the post that, without providing additional evidence, greatly weaken my argument. I’d appreciate any instance of this pointed out.
One such study is the famous Wason selection task, and there, evolutionary psychology gives a fundamentally very different sort of answer than what you’ve given: that we have evolved, innate cognitive modules that solve certain types of problems… but are not used at all when the same abstract form of problem is put in a different context:
The explanation on wikipedia is well worth a read.
After reading the article, it seems like their conclusion is still debated. I’m also not convicted, although I have updated that the general-purpose mechanism hypothesis is less likely correct. There needs to be an experiment with the context being non-social but frequently occurs in people’s lives. For instance, “if you arrived to the airport less than 30 minutes before your departure, you are not able to check in.” Then compare results with those from people who have never been on a plane before.
Edit: I realized my example can also be explained by the “cheater detector module”. In fact, any question with the conext being a human imposed rule can be explained the same way. A better question would be “if your car runs out of fuel, your car cannot be driven.”