Intuition

March 2026

• Mar 4, 2026ConceptsWhy Rational Decisions Feel Emotionally WrongThe sense that a correct decision is a mistake is two systems disagreeing, not a character flaw. Damasio's patients with ventromedial prefrontal damage kept normal intelligence and logic yet made ruinous real-world choices, and on the Iowa Gambling Task they never developed the physiological warning signal healthy players show before they can name the losing decks. The gut reaction becomes data to unpack rather than noise to suppress.23 MIN56.5k

February 2026

• Feb 19, 2026ConceptsAnalytical Models vs IntuitionGary Klein found that expert firefighters and commanders rarely compare options, instead recognizing a situation and simulating one response, while Kahneman documented where confident intuition fails. Their 2009 joint paper sets the condition: trust intuition only where real practice meets a high-validity environment with fast, clear feedback. The page contrasts calibrated weather forecasters with stock analysts and revisits Meehl's actuarial formulas.16 MIN68.2k

July 2025

• Jul 4, 2025ExplainersIntuition vs Analytical Decision MakingGary Klein interviewed 26 fire commanders averaging 23 years of experience across 156 decision points and found they seldom generated multiple options; they recognized the situation, simulated one action and acted. Expert and naive intuition feel identical from inside, which is why Tetlock's work matters: his superforecasters beat CIA analysts working from classified data by roughly 30 percent on Brier scores, through probabilistic habits rather than better hunches.28 MIN24.4k

May 2025

• May 25, 2025CultureMoral Intuitions vs. Moral ReasoningHaidt's 2001 incest scenario produced what he named moral dumbfounding: participants stripped of every justification still insisted the act was wrong. His social intuitionist model casts reasoning as a press secretary for a verdict already reached, and the article reports moral evaluations arriving within 200 to 300 milliseconds. Singer and Greene push back, arguing reason can override and slowly reshape intuitions, which is where Rawls's reflective equilibrium fits.39 MIN53.0k

December 2023

• Dec 13, 2023ConceptsWhen Your Gut Is Right (and When It Will Wreck You)Kahneman spent a career cataloguing judgment failures, Klein a career documenting expert intuition, and their 2009 paper concluded they had never actually disagreed: they studied different environments. Reliable gut feeling needs a domain whose patterns genuinely predict outcomes, plus practice with timely, accurate feedback. Grove and colleagues' meta-analysis of 136 studies found mechanical prediction equal or superior to expert clinical judgment in 94 percent of cases.20 MIN6.5k