Ah, I didn’t know about holistic/analytical reasoning before. With the intuition/logical thinking styles I had in mind, I wouldn’t have predicted that intuition thinkers would ignore situational over personality information. This may be a more cultural difference.
pwno
Karma: 525
Yes, those are synonymous. I should clarify that.
Just curious, did you have any explicit beliefs that made you ignore your intuition?
Good observations.
As an intuition-dominant thinker, how did you improve your logical side?
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.
--
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.
A nice scientific approach!
Done
Agreed. I should take it out.
I think you’re right. I was using prior knowledge to interpret the argument correctly. The ambiguity in the language definitely makes my example weaker. I tried empathizing with the commenter as an intuition thinker to try figuring out what the most likely mistake caused the confusion. I still think the commenter most likely didn’t pay attention to those words, but it’s also quite likely he understood the technically correct alternative interpretation.
...picking up of Russian Norms task
Intuition thinkers probably wouldn’t have the foresight to learn Russian norms. However, they wouldn’t make a strict rule like “always smile”. Even if they did normally smile, in Russia, their intuition would be thrown off and would probably execute a more optimal strategy. Without a strict rule, they’d also be more attuned to the immediate environment and intuit that smiling isn’t customary.
Agreed and added a link with a resource I found with a few minutes of googling.
I think the answer may change depending on age. Older intuition thinkers probably have deeper ingrained habits and less motivation.
I am not convinced that it’s easy, or even really possible, to change from one thinking style to the other. Everything else I’ve read suggests this sort of cognitive leaning is largely innate.
I too think it’s uncommon to completely change thinking styles, but I do believe it’s possible to improve the weaker one. I also suspect one thinking style struggles more to develop the weaker thinking style, but don’t know which one.
Do you have anything other than your own experience to suggest otherwise?
Being around many people who are into self-development, I often see logical thinkers being more intuitive and vice versa. No one makes a complete 180, but incremental improvements are common.
I am having some difficulty understand the “Ignoring your emotions” section, much less seeing the use of “fixing” this “failing”
The idea is that feeding emotional data to your intuition can help you better understand your own preferences, understand why you experience certain emotions, and how to illicit certain emotions in yourself and others. If you’re not an emotional person, this is probably not a big concern.
I will argue that some biases are the consequence of structural properties of the brain, which ‘cannot’ be affected by evolution
The biases are indirectly affected by evolution. The brain evolved “faulty thinking” because natural constraints put a premium on accuracy—especially when sometimes-accurate beliefs are sufficient.
Glad you liked the post.
This is one of the very few places where I’m not sure we agree. I agree, someone who is really different from others will have a harder time getting the empathy ball rolling. But I still think self-understanding is utterly critical. It’s the only way you can control for projection.
I agree, I should’ve emphasized that finding a proxy is supplementary to self-understanding, not an alternative.
There’s also the fact that some people identify with being unusual or different, but such people usually exaggerate their differences more than is justified.
Very much agree. This issue is especially prominent in societies that idealize individualism. Looking back, I think I should’ve edited out the caveat, not because I disagree with my past self, but because it may inhibit some readers from questioning their self-proclaimed differences.
I think that category of people are considered low status on average, and thus, not met with much sympathy. Maybe they have a small circle of people enabling their bad habits, but I suspect the strongest force is rationalization.
Sure, it may have had a small (overstatement) effect, but it was worth it.
Right, but more specifically, the annoying parts are their denial of the problem and reluctance to improve. We’d all be a lot more sympathetic otherwise.
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.”