How to Use Intuition

Intuition is important in arts, science, business, war and politics.

Let me give an example of its importance. A noted American general has said that if you are about 40 to 70% confident, you should act. The founder of Alibaba Group has said that in strategic decisions, intuition takes about 60% and the statistical analysis and rational evaluation take the remaining 40%.

Then, say, I am about 80% sure of my intuition. Then, in total, my confidence will be --- 80% of 60% , that is 60% x 0.8, 48%.

Then, 48% is more than good enough for General Powell. In that case, I can do without "statistical analysis and rational evaluation." That would be a very fast, cost-efficient decision-making.

In contrast, Jeffery Ma has admitted in The House Advantage: Playing the Odds to Win Big In Business that

1. Analytical approach offers only small advantages, and
2. because of that, you need a big pile of resource to exploit your analytical insights.

But many people say intuition is unreliable. Then how do we compensate this?

1. Being humble like a blind person. Matsushita has, upon being quizzed why he had had such a perfect record of predicting trends, noted that he had observed that it is only people with good eyesight that fell, not the blind persons.
2. Being nimble about our decisions. This idea was suggested by an NTU physicist in his interview in Straits Times this month.(Sorry, I can't track it online now.)

But are all intuitions unreliable? What kind of intuitions have better chance of being reliable?

Again, Jeffery Ma notes in "The House Advantage" that fact-based ones are likely to be reliable. The book, Alibaba: The Inside Story Behind Jack Ma and the Creation of the World's Biggest Online Marketplace contains many such examples. I have listed here many other examples too.

1. Jack Ma : if there is a market need, it should not be too hard to succeed.
2. Jack Ma : People who catch shrimps get rich. Those who catch whales may not fare that well.
3.  Akio Morita : many people didn't mind carrying heavy music players, and therefore many people will be happy to buy the revolutionary walkmans.
4. A famous shogun : if deer can go, so can horses. He then took an expected short-cut route to rout his stronger enemy forces.
5. Einstein : Friends on 2 different trains can exchange books if their speeds are more or less the same.
6. Deng Xiaoping : crossing the river by groping the stones.

What do they have in common?

1. Can we get such intuitions?
2. Can we shape the intuitions we do have, into their mould?

Effectiveness | Effective Bluffing

Effective people can bluff their way out of many a tight spot. Here I don't mean, by 'bluffing', cheating, lying, or even pretending. I mean only guessing, intuition, instincts, hunches etc. Faced with the unknown, the unexpected, the unseen/unheard of, we must bluff and know that we are bluffing when we are bluffing. It takes humility, honesty and self-awareness to bluff in an honorable manner. And it's effective.

Treat an Examination as an Interview

We all have bluffed in one way or another in our school days, and we usually do so in paper-based exams, assuming "What can the examiner do if I bluffed in a dishonest way?"

It is a wrong assumption because the examiner does interact with our answer as if in a dialog. For example: The question goes: "Discuss the epistemology of Kierkegaard"
Your answer goes: "I have read a good deal about this topic. But right now, I have forgotten all about what I have read."

Then the examiner' thoughts will go like: "Lying. If you have read a lot, you should at least remember something." or "Maybe true. We all forget. But zero recall must be rewarded with zero score/grade."

We should preempt such responses by treating any examination as an interview, where we expect follow-up questions that will probe and poke through our facade of insincerity and corner us into admission of our dishonesty, cowardice and above all else being stupid enough to bluff. Does that remind you of the final scenes of the Detective Colombo episodes?

Honorable Bluffing in Interviews

Here I will give a number of possible responses to that question asked in an interview. I won't grade/order them in any way. I won't even classify them.

Question goes: "Can you talk about the epistemology of Kierkegaard"

Answers:
1. "I have read a good deal about this topic. But right now, I have forgotten all about what I have read."

2. "I know a good deal about epistemological views of Nietzsche but not Kierkegaard's."

3. "I know a good deal about epistemological views of many existentialists but not Kierkegaard's."

4. "I understand epistemology as ...
An epistemological framework needs to cover ...
Existentialists/Scandinavian/European/Western/ the 18th century philosophers usually regards epistemology as ...
Kierkegaard generally think that...
Kierkegaard remarked in one of his essays that knowing is ...
But I can't relate epistemology to Kierkegaard in particular."

5. "Kierkegaard has said very little about epistemology."

6. "Whatever Kierkegaard has said about epistemology. is flawed."

7. "Kierkegaard doesn't consider epistemology very important or relevant."

8. "Kierkegaard isn't an important philosopher for epistemology."
And so on.

Exercises

1. If you are a programmer, think how you would prevent "double submits" in Django, Turbo Gears, Pylons, CherryPy, Ruby on Rails, Merb, Struts, JSF, Webworks, Tapsetry, Spring, plain J2EE, codeigniter, PHPCake, Symfony, etc.

2. SAT: What is the average (arithmetic mean) of all the multiples of ten from 10 to 190 inclusive? or Amy has to visit towns B and C in any order. The roads connecting these towns with her home are shown on the diagram. How many different routes can she take starting from A and returning to A, going through both B and C (but not more than once through each) and not travelling any road twice on the same trip? or

3. LSAT: As any economist knows, healthy people pose less of an economic burden to society than unhealthy people. Not surprisingly, then, every dollar our state government spends on prenatal care for undocumented immigrants will save taxpayers of this state three dollars.

Which of the following, if true, would best explain why the statistics cited above are not surprising?

4. GMAT: If there are 16 ounces in 1 pound, the ratio of 6 ounces to 3¾ pounds is ....

Conclusion

Be honest at all times.
Then, bluff to your heart's content without worrying about the consequences.

1. What do you know to be true? Just trust your own experience. Don't believe even your God, Gods, or gods. Trust only what your previous tests have shown you.


2. How does that relate to this question/experiment/test? Use that, show that.