Separating fact from myth – The science behind Intuition
Do you know how some people just seem to make ‘lucky’ choices in life? They can make super-fast decisions given a choice, and later, people marvel at what smart choices they made. You know the type. Are they just lucky? Or smarter than the rest of us? More decisive? Luckier instincts?
It may be that this elusive sixth sense that some people have may not be ‘luck of the draw’ but a type of intelligence that is more experiential in nature. Something it seems we all have, but only some of us nurture or allow to surface.
The accepted definition of intuition in mainstream psychology is “A person’s capacity to obtain or have direct knowledge or immediate insight, without observation or reason. It’s the “gut feeling” you get.” (Wikipedia)
It’s that “without observation or reason” that has been questioned of late.
Much of our schooling and formal learning teaches us to favor rational thought, deductive logic, and fact-based proofs. Proof based on observable phenomena. But what about the decisions made from unobservable phenomena that prove to be correct. A decision based on just ‘knowing’ and not based on deduction. Time may prove it was a fortunate decision, but when the decision is made there usually hasn’t been time to think about it, before making a quick judgment.
Many a success story starts that way.
The science behind Intuition
There is a growing school of thought, spouted by esteemed establishments like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Max Planck Institute that recognize the limitations of rationalistic thought.
One school of thought critical of this rationalistic approach to knowledge and intelligence, suggested by Gerd Gigerenzer at the Max Planck Institute, states that, in Western society, in particular, we have been conditioned to believe that intuitive thinking is somehow wrong and inferior to the accepted rational method of painstakingly gathering and weighing the evidence.
Whereas MIT is taking it as a given that intuition is an improvement over formal logic, using data models that incorporate human intuitive abilities to improve their planning software.
“MIT incorporates human intuition in artificial intelligence to help computers plan better”
Intuition is one form of intelligence
The western, rational approach is seen as a handicap by the Intuitive Intelligence movement. Francis Cholle’s The Intuitive Intelligence paradigm set out to investigate the reason why America’s creativity has been declining over the last decades. Is it because the rationale is favored over instinct and process over gut reaction? And in the journey, we have lost touch with the playful nature that teaches us stuff phenomenologically.
Modern research on intuition has shown that there is no such thing as an all-intuitive person.
People who rely on their intuition know when to follow their intuition and when there is no need to. It’s a decision-making ability that is called upon in specific situations. Intuition is a domain-specific ability. People can be very intuitive about one thing but have no clue how to decide about some unrelated situations. Someone with a good gut feeling for trading on the stock market could easily be terrible at making decisions about buying cars.
The secret of Knowing or the Science of knowing
So taking intuition out of its murky metaphysical depths and taking the scalpel of scientific investigation to it, it looks like the ability to make snap accurate decisions, of just knowing the right choice to make, is more about skill than chance.
More evidence suggests it is about pattern matching and knowing when a pattern will match, or not match, and decide accordingly without needing to examine each fact. It relies on the brain’s ability to pick up on certain recurring or learned patterns and recognize when those patterns are relevant to our situation or not. The more practice we get at a particular subset of behaviors we can assimilate and learn, the more familiar we become with the relevant patterns and the quicker we can figure out heuristic solutions to the problem in that area.
This is a skill that relies on the Adaptive Unconscious. This is the less cognitive aspect of the brain being allowed to use our unconscious processors (which account for about 80% of brain activity) to do the work. Intuition seems to be something that gets better with exercising it.
Some go so far as claiming that intuition is the highest form of intelligence. And Intelligence, in its modern psychological definition, IS involved. It requires the use of all of our senses as well as subconscious processing, and the ability to make a decision without a doubt.
So it stands to reason that would it be a fantastic thing if you could improve your intuition. The only problem until now was that there was no way to do so.
That’s where Synctuition comes in. Combining binaural beats, gamma waves, 3D soundscapes, and your own, unique vocal frequency, Synctuition is the end result produced by some of the world’s leading neurologists, sound engineers, meditation experts, and musicians. Each of the 60 tracks represents part of a journey to self-discovery.
Synctuition is like a training regime for your brain. This specific training process will start linking the two sides of your brain by applying a specifically designed audio wave that synchronizes the electrical frequencies of both hemispheres. This stimulates the brain into forming new neural connections between the left and right sides through the corpus callosum, which acts as the connecting tunnel between the two. Studies have shown this is the area where intuitive thought happens.
The training method relies on the fact that this tunnel can be made wider, so information traffic can flow much faster and more easily between the left and right sides of the brain – resulting in a higher level of intuition.
