Is the "gut instinct" just an obsolete NT trait??

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Hi all...I must admit, that all the NT talk about "go with your gut instinct" has made my gut sore from hearing it so much
When I think of evolutionary psychology, I wonder if the gut instinct is all but extinct. You hear people trumpeting about it as the way to navigate through seemingly tricky situations, that might frustrate an Aspie...who looks at it more intellectually/analytically.

But then I think, it's really the end result that matters - and for me, deeper analysis has worked better many times than "gut instincts" so that's what I tend to rely on, where time allows. Besides, how often do "gut instincts" really work for NT's?? I have met people (mostly female) who claim that they can tell right away if someone's a jerk, or a weirdo, or whatever...but you see young NT women hooking up with these people all the time, so of what use was their "gut instinct" then??

Also I've heard people in management jobs who say that they "just know" the right candidate when he/she walks through the door. I met one woman from a friend's former company who said that she uses intuitive interviewing and "just knows", yet she has released most of the people she hired during probation because they weren't right based on her standards. In fact, I read an article a couple of years ago stating that there is a vast gap between those surveyed on "intuitive interviewing" versus actual candidate outcomes in the workplace. I myself am more inclined to probe into the person's background and ability to thoughtfully analyze problems and test to see if they are an honest, reliable worker before I hire them for my company ("my company" being hypothetical.)

Then you have the financial scams, like the pyramid schemes, your Bernie Madoff's of the world, make a million in a year, bla bla bla...and it's amazing how quickly NT's will throw their "gut instinct" out the window when greed gets in the way. Me, I always knew that if it sounded too good to be true, then it probably is. I was harassed by a couple of slicksters in the past for getting rich quick, they got agressive and would pull crap like "I can't believe you would turn down this opportunity, you seem like such an ambitious guy" and I would tell them to f*** off or I'll call the cops for harassment. My goodness, I may be Aspie, but even I can recognize that the other guy has no interest in making me rich quick, he's just in it for his own crooked gains.

Even from my own perspective, I am upset that we as Aspies are shut out of an NT's "10 seconds or less" decision to size us up and decide if we like us or not, are we somebody who they will be comfortable with. Well, heck, if they screen out an Aspie as trouble to them, then I'd say the radar is seriously off...after all, when was the last time you heard of someone being victimized or ripped off by an Aspie???

No, I don't think instinct/gut feeling will ever be obsolete. It's just something that most (but not all) NTs have, to various degrees. It's an instinct which is useful in many situations, but you cannot always rely on it - and people know this. And girls falling for the wrong guy will have a poorly developed instinct on that area of life, or their lust override their (healthier) instinct.
In my case, instinct mainly helps me to avoid unpleasantness in social situations. It may be difficult to rely on logic or factual information when you try to get to know people.

Intuition isn't exclusive to NTs.

The media likes to portray worse, like when we kill somebody or collect restraining orders.

I think greed or one of the other 7 Deadly Sins does make people throw their gut instincts out the window.

Anyway, on to your larger point, is gut instinct obsolete? No. I don't think it is. Gut instinct is extremely fast. It allows a very large amount of information to be processed faster and more efficiently than the slower and more cumbersome process of conscious logic. Sometimes it is wrong (as in your example of hiring decisions). But when it is right, it can save somebody's life. Gut instinct allows people to make instantaneous decisions that can save their lives, their childrens' lives etc., which is a big reason why it gets preserved evolutionarily. There are times when conscious logic is just too slow.

However, gut instinct has its limitations. Since the information is processed too quickly to be done consciously, all sorts of incorrect algorithms (like unconscious prejudices) can get into the process and mess up the results. I'm sure that happens with some of those gut instinct hiring screwups. I think the best method for non-life and death situations is to listen to gut instinct and do the research to find out if that instinct is right or not.

I know this is a sensitive area because triggering the Uncanny Valley gut instinct in NTs is something that has screwed over probably every Aspie at one time or another. So there may be some element of just wishing gut instinct would go away in others. But it won't because it actually is a very efficient and sometimes life saving way of making decisions. And having Aspergers Syndrome luckily doesn't remove that important gut instinct that may save your life someday and maybe already has.

You hit the nail on the head. That's what "jerks", scammers etc do, offer a tempting enough bait so people would go against their better judgement.

I use my gut a lot to tell me what's up with things.

It's not just an NT thing.

I think the common disconnect or slowness in communicating between feelings and the brain in aspies might explain why they prefer logical or rational decision making. I don't have that so much anymore, but I do do some rational and logical type thinking. I think both types are useful.

A gut instinct is way more useful than spending a few hours ruminating when someone's about to whip a knife out and stab you with it, as a rather violent example.

But your gut can't process math, or language, or geography.

The mind and body work together and talk to each other. Scientists are looking at the gut in a different way now, some are even calling it a 'second brain'.

Interesting article here;

http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... cond-brain

I never had gut instinct so my mind created paranoia to fill that void.

I use my gut a lot, it seems weird to me it would be an only NT thing. I don't have a gut instinct about how to read some social cues, but I sometimes I get a gut instinct - wrong or right about how I feel about a person, or thing. Deep analysis works for some things, but when my teacher says "thank you" when I hand her my test and I don't know what to say, I only have a few seconds to "act normally" before it gets awkward. There isn't time for deep analysis.

Gut instinct isn't objective and that's not a bad thing. I think some aspies like to think of themselves as perfect logic machines, but they aren't. No one operates purely based on logic. And there is nothing wrong with that. Sometimes gut instinct means going along with the interviewee who you know melds well with your team even if someone else technically is more advanced.

I use my gut instinct and I get myself home from my clubhouse by 4:30PM on a Friday if my best friend is at a hockey game and I have no other way of getting home. A lot of teens and preteens live in my area and I'm fair game to the bullies, so I have to do that.

Gut instincts aren't a nonautistic thing or an autistic thing. Just some humans have a more finely tuned gut than others. I've been told by multiple people that I have a really accurate gut. And I find that my gut instincts actually far outstrip my more abstract cognition for accuracy, given that my abstract cognition just isn't that great in general. And I'm autistic.

Intuition is just a different form of human cognition. Einstein used intuition to think beyond the physics of his day--we call that "leaps of intuition" when a great mind takes a sudden leap forward and then the individual goes back and explains how he or she got there to the rest of us (if they bother).

But what a lot of people call their "gut" is really what is called cognitive biases--evolution has made it possible for our brains to make cognitive short cuts, like when we still hunted and forage the plains of Africa, we had a cognitive bias towards anything that slithered like a snake. Anything slithery--bad, dangerous! it's basically a cognitive shortcut that also us to make decisions fast rather than plod through all the data and possibilities rationally. And cognitive bias are more complex for the modern human brain and people even less aware of their own cognitive biases, as the processes of this learn cognitive behavior are complex and at times not conscious.

Here's the wiki list on cognitive biases: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... ive_biases

Einstein was good at equations but what if he found inspiration from sci fi writers, like HG Wells, for his theories? He might have came up with the equations, but not the ideas. His intuition might have come from doing a lot of reading.

I think we need both - gut feelings and intellectual critical faculty. The well-balanced human uses both methods to direct their activities. Sometimes there isn't enough time to think a situation through, so the gut reaction is all we have. Other times there's all the time in the world and we can ponder over the issue to our heart's content.

One problem with recognising the value of gut reactions is that from the inside it usually feels as if practically all our behaviour is logical and consciously willed. We can nearly always come up with a logical reason for why we did this or that, but it's often no more than rationalisation, and once we find a reason that seems to make logical sense, we stop looking. It's pretty rare that anybody says "I really don't know why I did that."

Basically I see the emotions as the driver of our behaviour (the "government"), and the logical faculty as the "government adviser."

A lady at work once barged in and started heavily criticising my work as I was doing it. When I complained, she was adamant that she was only doing it because it was easier to explain the error of my ways while I was still making those errors. I stuck to my guns and she burst into tears and played the victim......thing is, she believed she'd only been trying to help. But she was reknowned for picking fights with men, and became the butt end of jokes about her aggressive behaviour towards them. I'm sure her behaviour towards me was part of that, and that there was some emotional reason behind her repeated attempts to have fights with men......possibly an overbearing father had left her with a need to carry out the unfinished business of her upbringing with any convenient male, but that's just a guess. At any rate, there was clearly a lot more going on than a simple desire to help me, but she herself was blind to it. That kind of thing goes on all the time. It's often easier to see it in another person than it is in oneself.

In addition to the scenario about not being able to try all different possibilities, there are also situations where a decision needs to be made with incomplete information - cases where deeper, 100% logically consistent answer is impossible. So we rely on our gut instinct (which is just a methodology of using our past experiences to develop a set of subconscious rules that can guide someone through these situations.)

A simple example: those that are great at video games (particularly those that use a decreasing "life's" model) use their gut instinct to avoid capture. This is why gamers can usually go farther than a random person when given a videogame that neither has played before. The gamer has developed a gut-instinct or set of subconscious rules that aid him in the unfamiliar situation. Are these rules 100% useful and accurate? No, but on average they tend to give the gamer the advantage.

Because our world is dynamic, gut instinct is not obsolete or extinct. However some peoples gut instinct is more accurate - or more in-tune- to certain situations than others. (e.g. the gamer in the above example). Of course some people think that their gut instinct is a better predictor of some situations than what it actually is, but again many people in general lack a strong sense of self-awareness of their overall strengths and weaknesses.