
Intuition is wrong, unless these conditions are met - prostoalex
https://www.thinkadvisor.com/2018/11/16/daniel-kahneman-do-not-trust-your-intuition-even-f/
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LodeOfCode
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18570797](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18570797)

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lamename
1\. Regularity (predictability) 2\. Practice 3\. Immediate feedback

i.e. conditions for learning

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whatshisface
Learning is more general than that, because you can learn by thinking
carefully even when feedback is delayed. Likewise, you can learn without
practice, for example when you learn why a theorem is true you don't need to
repeat the epiphany many times.

The only thing it has in common is the regularity condition because no matter
how much you learn, if the system is not possible to predict then there is
nothing to learn in the first place.

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astazangasta
So... This is just like, his own intuition, isn't it? I mean, maybe there are
savants out there who know things with great accuracy without familiarity,
practice, or feedback. As a general claim it seems weak.

I'll go further and say the vast majority of human knowledge is produced by
intuition. For example, the scientific method relies on inductive leaps made
based on drawing on repeated observations. This method cannot yield knowledge
without intuition; Einstein sits in a room and ponders the Michaelson-Morley
experiment, then comes up with his model of relativity. What brings him to
that point? How does the previous knowledge yield a new supposition? It
emerges ex nihilo from his stupendous brain.

Of course the nice thing about intuition is we can later validate it in other
ways and shore it up. We dont just have to skate along believing our raw
hunches. But without the ability to just dream it up we would be left with
very little real knowledge to work with.

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joshuak
Uhm, no, but funny. Your intuition that Dr. Kahneman's general claim about
intuition is weak, is way off, but humorously apropos.

This is not just his own intuition. Daniel Kahneman is a Nobel prize winning
psychologist principally responsible for inventing an entirely new field of
social psychology called Behavioral Economics, which is based largely on how
humans misapply intuition.

Working with Amos Tversky, with whom he shares the Nobel prize, and others,
Daniel Kahneman did extensive research demonstrating just how our intuition is
wrong. You can read more about it in his book "Thinking, Fast and Slow".

Experiment after experiment show that most people's intuition is generally
wrong, outside of very specific contexts as the article discusses. They also
show that people are resistant to intuitive contradictions and use their
intellect to create arguments to justify their flawed intuition, rather than
accept their intuition was wrong when confronted with new information. In
other words not only are intuitions often wrong, but wrong intuitions are
sticky and very difficult to correct.

Now my question to you is, do you feel any resistance to changing your initial
intuition despite this new information?

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astazangasta
No. I know who Kahneman is and realized after a moment's thought that my
initial response was wrong; probably based on an impulse to reject any
authority. I tossed off the comment just before going to bed, immediately
reconsidered and tried to delete it but could not. I left it as is figuring
the responses would be interesting. That intuition, at least, was correct.

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kazinator
Those are basically the conditions for training a neural network: regularity
(there is a pattern that can be learned), repetition, and feedback.

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winchling
Whatever theory you come up with for when intuition is right or wrong, it
seems to me that this theory is itself validated (rightly or wrongly) by
intuition. That we adopt the ideas that we intuitively prefer is inevitable
and not inconsistent with rationality and empirical evidence. The latter are
themselves clusters of philosophical ideas which _we prefer_.

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c3534l
I have a trust-but-verify relationship with my feelings.

