WEBVTT - Ep61 "When should you (not) trust your intuition?" 0:00:05.480 --> 0:00:08.760 Today we're going to talk about intuition. Why do you 0:00:08.840 --> 0:00:11.399 experience a feeling when you walk into a place that 0:00:11.840 --> 0:00:14.000 you don't like this restaurant and you want to go 0:00:14.000 --> 0:00:17.680 to this other restaurant, Or you trust this person but 0:00:17.720 --> 0:00:20.880 you don't quite trust that person. Or you might have 0:00:20.920 --> 0:00:23.720 a sense that something is wrong with your pet or 0:00:23.720 --> 0:00:27.560 your child, even if you can't articulate what the issue is. 0:00:27.960 --> 0:00:30.440 So in all these cases, what are the signals that 0:00:30.480 --> 0:00:33.479 the brain is picking up on and what fraction of 0:00:33.520 --> 0:00:38.480 those signals does your consciousness have access to? And importantly, 0:00:39.040 --> 0:00:44.640 does intuition sometimes steer us wrong? What we call intuition 0:00:44.880 --> 0:00:49.000 is not something to be trusted automatically. It quite often 0:00:49.040 --> 0:00:51.839 steers us the wrong way. So what are the features 0:00:51.920 --> 0:00:55.680 of the situation to look for where you might feel like, Okay, 0:00:56.080 --> 0:00:59.600 my intuition is more likely to be useful here than 0:00:59.640 --> 0:01:03.160 in this other situation, where my intuition is more likely 0:01:03.440 --> 0:01:06.720 to steer me wrong. And what is the future of 0:01:06.800 --> 0:01:11.280 intuition as we build new technologies that might take the 0:01:11.800 --> 0:01:15.920 myriad signals racing around in the darkness of our brains 0:01:15.959 --> 0:01:23.360 and bodies and bring them to light. Welcome to inner 0:01:23.400 --> 0:01:27.080 Cosmos with me. David Eagleman. I'm a neuroscientist and an 0:01:27.080 --> 0:01:30.240 author at Stanford, and I've spent my career at the 0:01:30.280 --> 0:01:42.600 intersection between how the brain works and how we experience life. 0:01:46.000 --> 0:01:51.800 Today's episode is about that gut feeling that we call intuition. Now, 0:01:51.840 --> 0:01:54.200 if you've been listening to this podcast for a while 0:01:54.360 --> 0:01:57.520 or reading my books, you've definitely heard me talk about 0:01:57.560 --> 0:02:02.480 all the stuff that transpires unconsciously in the unconscious mind. 0:02:02.880 --> 0:02:06.600 This is all the computations we have no access to 0:02:06.720 --> 0:02:11.000 and really no acquaintance with. So think about how you walk, 0:02:11.400 --> 0:02:16.400 all the sophisticated coordination of muscles and balance that's required there. 0:02:17.000 --> 0:02:20.880 Until very recently, that was an impossibly difficult task to 0:02:20.919 --> 0:02:23.960 get robots to do this. But ever since you were 0:02:24.120 --> 0:02:26.880 two years old or so, you've been doing it just fine. Now, 0:02:27.000 --> 0:02:29.760 you can't articulate how you walk and how you keep 0:02:29.800 --> 0:02:33.399 your balance. It's much like riding a bicycle in that way. 0:02:33.400 --> 0:02:37.680 And presumably you can do several things while you're walking 0:02:37.800 --> 0:02:40.160 or riding a bike. You can have a conversation or 0:02:40.160 --> 0:02:42.600 maybe punch out a text on your phone while you're 0:02:42.600 --> 0:02:44.920 doing it. But if I ask you to describe to 0:02:44.960 --> 0:02:49.120 me what you are doing with all that beautiful sophisticated musculature, 0:02:49.639 --> 0:02:53.000 it's simply not possible. You put the years of work 0:02:53.040 --> 0:02:55.560 into learning how to walk and how to ride a bicycle, 0:02:55.960 --> 0:03:02.080 and it resulted in expertise, but and inability to articulate 0:03:02.639 --> 0:03:05.960 what was going on there under the hood. And it's 0:03:06.000 --> 0:03:08.399 like this with most of the actions that you take, 0:03:08.480 --> 0:03:12.320 whether that's deciding what you want to eat, or who 0:03:12.320 --> 0:03:15.920 you're going to marry, or how you're identifying a smell 0:03:16.000 --> 0:03:19.880 from some mixture of molecules or whatever. You just find 0:03:19.919 --> 0:03:23.239 that your brain can magically do it because all these 0:03:23.280 --> 0:03:27.640 operations are happening in silence, in the darkness of this 0:03:27.880 --> 0:03:33.480 vast computational vault. So your conscious mind is like the 0:03:33.520 --> 0:03:36.960 broom closet in the mansion of your brain, and all 0:03:37.040 --> 0:03:41.400 of the rest involves work that's happening that you can't see. 0:03:41.720 --> 0:03:44.680 And why is that the case. It's because the data 0:03:44.760 --> 0:03:48.560 being pulled in from all your senses is way too 0:03:48.600 --> 0:03:52.560 detailed to be useful. Your retina at the back of 0:03:52.560 --> 0:03:56.800 your eye that transmits visual input at about ten million 0:03:56.880 --> 0:03:59.960 bits per second, which is similar to an ethernet connection. 0:04:00.520 --> 0:04:04.560 But if you had conscious access to all that data, 0:04:04.680 --> 0:04:07.640 you wouldn't be able to operate at your level of 0:04:07.760 --> 0:04:10.880 space and time. At your level, what you care about 0:04:11.040 --> 0:04:14.240 is where the heck did I put my toothbrush? Or 0:04:14.760 --> 0:04:17.680 what can I read on this menu? Or where is 0:04:17.760 --> 0:04:21.359 my friend's face in this crowd of people? You just 0:04:21.440 --> 0:04:26.440 want simple, high level answers to important questions. You want 0:04:26.440 --> 0:04:30.760 the abstractions, not the details. So your brain takes in 0:04:31.160 --> 0:04:35.560 enormous amounts of data, but what you want is the headline. 0:04:36.040 --> 0:04:39.080 In Silicon Valley where I live, for example, all my 0:04:39.320 --> 0:04:43.560 venture capitalist friends talk about this as pattern matching. They 0:04:43.600 --> 0:04:47.040 have thousands of new companies coming in to give them pitches, 0:04:47.600 --> 0:04:50.000 and in each of those pitches there are a million 0:04:50.080 --> 0:04:53.240 details that they can't know, but they think, you know. 0:04:53.839 --> 0:04:59.400 In my career, I've seen all these pitches and patterns emerge. 0:05:00.000 --> 0:05:02.799 I don't even know why. I sometimes feel like, wow, 0:05:02.880 --> 0:05:06.360 this team of founders is really great, or this team 0:05:06.360 --> 0:05:08.320 of founders is never going to make it, even though 0:05:08.320 --> 0:05:14.680 the idea seems strong. So those assessments rely on their intuition, 0:05:15.040 --> 0:05:17.440 and what they're trying to do is make their intuition 0:05:17.720 --> 0:05:21.599 good and refine it and refine it with practice. So 0:05:21.720 --> 0:05:24.120 in many situations. In all of our lives, we have 0:05:24.320 --> 0:05:27.360 lots of practice at something and we see a new 0:05:27.440 --> 0:05:31.039 situation and we make an assessment like yes or no, 0:05:31.720 --> 0:05:34.320 or good or bad, or take it or leave it. 0:05:34.880 --> 0:05:37.440 And the extraordinary thing about brains is that they can 0:05:37.880 --> 0:05:42.280 summarize a complex situation and say, look, although there are 0:05:42.360 --> 0:05:46.159 a million details here, the big picture is that you 0:05:46.279 --> 0:05:49.599 should approach that or avoid that. And you rarely have 0:05:49.760 --> 0:05:54.039 access to the details about why. Sometimes you might think 0:05:54.080 --> 0:05:58.400 you have access, but that is often just a retrospective story. Now, 0:05:58.640 --> 0:06:03.520 in neuroscience jargon call this unconscious inference, meaning you are 0:06:03.880 --> 0:06:08.040 inferring something about the situation and you're not doing it consciously, 0:06:08.440 --> 0:06:11.360 presumably because of the amount of data that is involved. 0:06:11.720 --> 0:06:16.320 And in popular parlance we call this intuition. But intuition 0:06:16.480 --> 0:06:20.240 sometimes gets a bad name because it's often hijacked by 0:06:20.360 --> 0:06:24.480 spiritual guru types who say you should always trust your intuition. 0:06:25.279 --> 0:06:29.240 Now here's the truth. You should not always trust your intuition. 0:06:29.720 --> 0:06:34.480 After all, your intuition is not a perfect predictor. In 0:06:34.520 --> 0:06:37.440 Silicon Valley, for example, four out of ten companies that 0:06:37.480 --> 0:06:40.320 are backed by those venture capitalists, they lose money or 0:06:40.320 --> 0:06:44.520 they go bankrupt, and many times the intuitive decisions that 0:06:44.560 --> 0:06:47.839 we make, let's say about relationships, turn out to be 0:06:47.920 --> 0:06:52.039 bad decisions. Just because the computations are happening under the 0:06:52.040 --> 0:06:56.080 hood and they're vast and complex, it doesn't mean they're 0:06:56.120 --> 0:07:01.120 guaranteed to be correct. Intuition is quite often wrong or 0:07:01.200 --> 0:07:04.599 makes a decision based on things that you wouldn't feel 0:07:04.760 --> 0:07:07.839 proud of doing if you had access to it. For example, 0:07:07.880 --> 0:07:10.960 what if your intuition tells you not to sell your 0:07:11.000 --> 0:07:13.920 house to this guy, but it's because of some deep down, 0:07:14.320 --> 0:07:17.840 unconscious racism that you weren't even aware of. What if 0:07:17.880 --> 0:07:21.480 your intuition tells you that there's something creepy about that 0:07:21.520 --> 0:07:23.680 guy over there, and you don't want to do business 0:07:23.680 --> 0:07:27.080 with him, and you say, look, I'm just trusting my 0:07:27.200 --> 0:07:29.640 gut on this one. But it turns out the poor 0:07:29.680 --> 0:07:33.720 guy has early Parkinson's disease, and so as a result, 0:07:33.960 --> 0:07:38.600 he's unable to make expressive facial expressions and instead his 0:07:38.680 --> 0:07:42.160 face is mostly blank, and that creeps you out because 0:07:42.200 --> 0:07:44.360 you don't get what's happening. Because let's say you're not 0:07:44.520 --> 0:07:48.200 a clinician. Or what if you're sitting on a jury 0:07:48.520 --> 0:07:50.920 and you think there's something about this guy that makes 0:07:50.920 --> 0:07:52.800 me feel like he should be put away for a 0:07:52.800 --> 0:07:56.560 long time. But it turns out it's because he's not 0:07:57.080 --> 0:08:00.560 handsome but ugly. There's an extensive litery sure on this 0:08:00.920 --> 0:08:05.080 that ugly people get longer sentences than good looking people. 0:08:05.520 --> 0:08:09.320 So the idea that we should always trust our intuition 0:08:09.880 --> 0:08:13.320 turns out to be mistaken. But the good news is 0:08:13.560 --> 0:08:16.000 it turns out that we can be a little bit 0:08:16.040 --> 0:08:20.560 smarter about when to look to our intuition or ignore it. 0:08:21.040 --> 0:08:24.640 Researchers have been working to figure out the circumstances under 0:08:24.720 --> 0:08:28.880 which your intuition might be more trustworthy or less trustworthy. 0:08:29.200 --> 0:08:31.600 So for this I decided to have a conversation with 0:08:31.640 --> 0:08:35.240 my friend and colleague Joel Pearson. Joel's a professor of 0:08:35.280 --> 0:08:39.520 cognitive neuroscience at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. 0:08:40.040 --> 0:08:44.280 He's recently written a book about this called The Intuition Toolkit. 0:08:44.559 --> 0:08:47.000 So Joel and I sat down together to dig into 0:08:47.040 --> 0:09:03.920 this topic. Joel tell us about intuition, Yeah, so a 0:09:04.000 --> 0:09:04.920 topic I love. 0:09:05.400 --> 0:09:07.520 We've been studying it for over a decade now, and 0:09:07.559 --> 0:09:10.240 I've recently just published a book the Intuition Toolkit. So 0:09:10.840 --> 0:09:13.880 a decade ago we started looking at the landscape of intuition, 0:09:13.960 --> 0:09:17.920 and people define it as a spiritual thing. Other people 0:09:18.200 --> 0:09:21.200 in psychology and neuroscience defind it very very differently. You 0:09:21.280 --> 0:09:23.280 have all these different definitions. So I wanted to come 0:09:23.360 --> 0:09:25.880 up with a clear definition, the most practical and what 0:09:26.000 --> 0:09:28.560 I think is the most useful definition, and that is 0:09:29.160 --> 0:09:33.880 the productive learnt use of unconscious information for better decisions 0:09:34.280 --> 0:09:35.319 and actions. 0:09:35.720 --> 0:09:39.200 By the way, does intuition always give better this is me? 0:09:39.320 --> 0:09:41.800 Okay, yeah, that's how I'm so. So this was part 0:09:41.800 --> 0:09:42.160 of the problem. 0:09:42.200 --> 0:09:44.000 So I'm going to introduce a couple of words. So 0:09:44.480 --> 0:09:45.080 this is what I did. 0:09:45.120 --> 0:09:45.559 At the beginning. 0:09:45.640 --> 0:09:48.960 I came up with another word called misintuition. Right, I know, 0:09:49.000 --> 0:09:50.920 it sounds like a miss universe contest, but it's not. 0:09:51.240 --> 0:09:53.480 I wanted a word that so I wanted to sort 0:09:53.480 --> 0:09:56.760 of split apart the misfiring of intuition when it goes wrong, 0:09:56.800 --> 0:09:58.880 because there are times when you should absolutely not use 0:09:58.920 --> 0:10:01.200 it and other times where it is useful. So I 0:10:01.280 --> 0:10:02.920 wanted to split that apart and came up with this 0:10:03.000 --> 0:10:06.200 other word misintuition and intuition. So that's why I define 0:10:06.240 --> 0:10:11.319 intuition as a productive use right of unconscious information and 0:10:11.360 --> 0:10:15.080 it's learnt, right, So we can't we'll get to in 0:10:15.120 --> 0:10:17.640 a second, I'm sure, but you can only use intuition 0:10:17.760 --> 0:10:20.280 really for something you have experience with and that turns 0:10:20.280 --> 0:10:21.040 out to be important. 0:10:21.360 --> 0:10:23.040 So give us, give us more of a sense of 0:10:23.080 --> 0:10:23.840 this then. Yeah. 0:10:23.880 --> 0:10:26.640 So the example I like to give is you walk 0:10:26.679 --> 0:10:28.880 into a cafe, right, and you at the second you 0:10:28.920 --> 0:10:33.160 walk through the door, your brain's processing a thousand different things, right, 0:10:33.520 --> 0:10:36.520 the music, what the staff are wearing, if there's tablecloths, 0:10:36.559 --> 0:10:40.640 no tablecloths, the temperature, how clean the floor is, smells, this, 0:10:40.760 --> 0:10:43.400 the hundreds of things, and you're not consciously aware of them, 0:10:43.400 --> 0:10:46.760 all right, and as you walk in, you're going to go, yeah, 0:10:46.800 --> 0:10:49.559 let's get coffee here, or let's go across the road 0:10:49.559 --> 0:10:53.280 to the other place, right, And that people are going 0:10:53.320 --> 0:10:55.720 to sometimes will report as they don't know why, but 0:10:55.760 --> 0:10:58.400 this is something off that they felt sometimes in the gut, right, 0:10:58.640 --> 0:10:59.480 the gut response. 0:11:00.040 --> 0:11:02.600 That's kind of the way I tend to introduce intuition. 0:11:02.679 --> 0:11:04.839 And what's happening in that those few seconds the second 0:11:04.840 --> 0:11:07.000 as you walk in the door, is that things in 0:11:07.040 --> 0:11:11.920 the environment are triggering positive or negative associations, and that 0:11:12.040 --> 0:11:15.040 is based on past learning, right, the classic Pavlovs dogs, 0:11:15.080 --> 0:11:16.040 classical conditioning. 0:11:16.559 --> 0:11:16.760 Right. 0:11:16.800 --> 0:11:19.760 So you go to enough cafes where it's really hot 0:11:19.760 --> 0:11:22.960 in there and there's bad music and this coffee is terrible, 0:11:23.360 --> 0:11:25.959 your brain will learn that. Whether you consciously remember that 0:11:26.080 --> 0:11:28.400 or not, your brain will start to learn these associations. 0:11:28.800 --> 0:11:28.920 Right. 0:11:28.960 --> 0:11:30.719 If you get food poisoning and sick, it's going to 0:11:30.800 --> 0:11:33.880 learn it really quickly. And so you go to enough cafes, 0:11:33.920 --> 0:11:36.360 you go to one hundreds of thousands, your brain will 0:11:36.400 --> 0:11:39.400 learn which cues the environment predicts good or bad food 0:11:39.559 --> 0:11:42.480 or coffee. And that's what's happening. So all the things 0:11:42.520 --> 0:11:47.280 in the environment are triggering red flag, green flag, right, 0:11:47.320 --> 0:11:49.760 and you feel it and you don't know why, right, 0:11:50.160 --> 0:11:53.360 and you either get the coffee or you go somewhere else. Yes, 0:11:53.520 --> 0:11:55.400 So that's I think the best way to think about it. 0:11:55.480 --> 0:11:57.720 Cool. And this is why I think about intuition as 0:11:57.720 --> 0:11:59.760 long as it's just having a wide angle lens on 0:11:59.800 --> 0:12:02.840 the There's a lot of interest in neuroscience obviously about 0:12:03.040 --> 0:12:06.520 cognition where you're deciding, okay, what's the next chest move 0:12:06.559 --> 0:12:08.800 here and so on? And that's what all lots of 0:12:08.840 --> 0:12:11.200 AI is about, is how do I make a really 0:12:11.240 --> 0:12:14.240 smart decision here? But but in a sense with intuition, 0:12:14.320 --> 0:12:16.920 it's I'm going to take in the whole cafe, and 0:12:17.440 --> 0:12:20.400 you know something's going to bubble up saying go or stay. 0:12:21.160 --> 0:12:23.960 So I'm really interested in this issue of misintuition though, because, 0:12:24.400 --> 0:12:28.199 as you phrase it, because there are lots of times 0:12:28.200 --> 0:12:31.839 that people have intuitions that are totally incorrect, like, oh, 0:12:31.840 --> 0:12:34.000 this coffee shop, there's something that creeps me out about that. 0:12:34.440 --> 0:12:37.920 Like the guy in the corner there, I feel like 0:12:38.120 --> 0:12:41.160 he's a mass murderer, even though maybe the guy has 0:12:41.280 --> 0:12:43.840 you know, something like Parkinson's disease, where people have you know, 0:12:43.880 --> 0:12:46.400 blank facial expressions. I've seen this a bunch of times 0:12:46.440 --> 0:12:49.360 where someone has Parkinson's and other people think, oh my gosh, 0:12:49.360 --> 0:12:51.360 that guy's creepy. There's something wrong with that guy because 0:12:51.360 --> 0:12:54.480 they don't know about it. Right, Okay, So so give 0:12:54.559 --> 0:12:58.320 us a sense of misintuition and how when you feel 0:12:59.080 --> 0:13:02.800 like his intuition mostly right, mostly wrong, totally random. 0:13:02.880 --> 0:13:04.200 So I'm glad you are. 0:13:04.320 --> 0:13:07.240 So the second half of the book, he unpacks based 0:13:07.280 --> 0:13:09.240 on these five rules and I use the word the 0:13:09.280 --> 0:13:12.079 acronym smile so people can try to remember this right. 0:13:12.240 --> 0:13:13.840 So the first half of the book is really about 0:13:13.840 --> 0:13:15.440 the science we've done, the lab, how you measure it, 0:13:15.440 --> 0:13:17.960 how you create the lab. And it's not always good. 0:13:17.960 --> 0:13:19.920 Sometimes you should use it, sometimes you shouldn't. And that's 0:13:19.920 --> 0:13:22.560 what the rules unpack. So let's sort of tell people 0:13:22.840 --> 0:13:26.760 when it's safe to trust their intuition. And an example 0:13:26.800 --> 0:13:30.040 of this I give often is Steve Jobs, who talked 0:13:30.040 --> 0:13:33.080 about using his intuition at Apple, both for product design 0:13:33.120 --> 0:13:34.960 and running the company in all different you know, and 0:13:35.000 --> 0:13:36.480 he was a master at it. He went to India 0:13:36.520 --> 0:13:39.000 and studied it. He was really into it when it 0:13:39.040 --> 0:13:41.240 came to his health decisions later in life, and some 0:13:41.280 --> 0:13:44.200 of his other decisions not so much right. And that's 0:13:44.400 --> 0:13:45.880 interesting because. 0:13:46.000 --> 0:13:47.559 Wait, can you impack that for people who don't know 0:13:47.559 --> 0:13:48.040 about his health. 0:13:48.600 --> 0:13:51.240 So he died from cancer in the end, he actually 0:13:51.600 --> 0:13:54.400 or his doctors and his family wanted him to get treatment, 0:13:54.440 --> 0:13:57.160 to get an operation, and he said no, he didn't 0:13:57.160 --> 0:13:59.920 want to get have that sort of be invaded surgically 0:14:00.120 --> 0:14:01.920 like that, and he put off the treatment, put it off, 0:14:01.920 --> 0:14:04.800 and put it off, until it's basically too late. And 0:14:05.400 --> 0:14:09.480 this idea that intuition is specific to a particular environment 0:14:09.600 --> 0:14:11.960 or context, and it makes sense because the learning that 0:14:11.960 --> 0:14:13.800 I'm saying that it seems to be based on is 0:14:13.880 --> 0:14:16.480 context specific. And this is one of those rules is 0:14:16.480 --> 0:14:19.120 actually the E at the end of smile for environment. 0:14:19.440 --> 0:14:20.360 So if you learn. 0:14:20.200 --> 0:14:23.960 It at you know, you craft your intuition expertly at work. 0:14:24.360 --> 0:14:26.680 When you go home, when you're on holiday in a 0:14:26.720 --> 0:14:29.320 different context, different environment, that learning is not going to 0:14:29.400 --> 0:14:31.920 apply so well. So we need to be careful and 0:14:31.960 --> 0:14:34.560 we change the environment because when you learn something in 0:14:34.760 --> 0:14:37.240 the environment gets sort of attached to that. Right when 0:14:37.280 --> 0:14:40.040 you're studying for the exam in your bedroom, not only 0:14:40.120 --> 0:14:43.320 are you learning all information, you're learning the information imprinted 0:14:43.440 --> 0:14:45.720 to your bedroom. So we have to be careful with that. 0:14:45.800 --> 0:14:48.160 So that's an example of where you can be led astray. 0:14:48.240 --> 0:14:51.520 Now s the beginning smile is self awareness, and that 0:14:51.600 --> 0:14:55.440 really is a trigger for emotions. So we shouldn't trust 0:14:55.440 --> 0:14:58.520 our intuition when we're emotional and we're stressed, anxious, or 0:14:58.560 --> 0:15:02.720 depressed for a number of reasons for something called arousalor misattribution, 0:15:03.360 --> 0:15:05.200 which is something so humans are not very good at 0:15:05.240 --> 0:15:08.680 understanding where particular feelings or stress or emotion come from, 0:15:08.720 --> 0:15:10.800 and we can go we can deep dive into this. 0:15:10.800 --> 0:15:13.480 This classic experiments in psychology that are now a lot 0:15:13.560 --> 0:15:16.920 of data to support this. Right, But basically, you know, 0:15:16.920 --> 0:15:18.600 if there was a snake right here on the floor, 0:15:18.880 --> 0:15:21.320 we both get adrenaline, we'd both be sweating and scared 0:15:21.360 --> 0:15:24.160 of the snake, and then later on we confuse that 0:15:24.200 --> 0:15:27.400 and say, man, that podcast was amazing, Right, we'd confuse 0:15:27.440 --> 0:15:30.160 the emotion for the situation with the emotion from the snake. 0:15:30.160 --> 0:15:32.080 We're just bad to understanding the source of these things. 0:15:32.280 --> 0:15:35.760 So that's a number one rule. If you're emotional stressed, don't. 0:15:35.560 --> 0:15:38.360 Follow your intuition. Just just put it aside, follow the 0:15:38.400 --> 0:15:41.480 logic as best you can. Right. So that's s. 0:15:42.360 --> 0:15:45.480 Then M is for mastery, and that we mentioned learning before, 0:15:45.840 --> 0:15:48.760 So that's really that you need to build these associations 0:15:48.800 --> 0:15:51.560 in your brain between the environment, the triggers, and good 0:15:51.680 --> 0:15:54.600 or bad outcomes. So you've never played chess before, you 0:15:54.640 --> 0:15:57.240 can't sit down and just be a grand master intuitive 0:15:57.280 --> 0:15:59.960 chess player, right. Your brain needs to learn the associate 0:16:00.240 --> 0:16:03.840 between patterns outcomes, what's good what's bad. Likewise, for anything 0:16:03.880 --> 0:16:05.800 so you need to sort of put the time in 0:16:06.600 --> 0:16:09.920 and build that experience. How much experience ten thousand hours, 0:16:10.760 --> 0:16:13.960 not so much, We don't know, right, depends how emotional 0:16:13.960 --> 0:16:14.400 things are. 0:16:14.840 --> 0:16:15.000 Right. 0:16:15.000 --> 0:16:17.080 We know that something like PTSD, you can learn something 0:16:17.280 --> 0:16:20.000 very strong, you know, in a moment it was just 0:16:20.000 --> 0:16:21.960 good or bad coffee. It's going to take a lot 0:16:21.960 --> 0:16:24.360 of learning, a lot of iterations. But if something is 0:16:24.440 --> 0:16:27.440 highly emotional, then you'll learn it very very quickly. So yeah, 0:16:27.520 --> 0:16:30.160 so you need to have experience with that. And now 0:16:30.560 --> 0:16:33.040 it's a really interesting one. I is really for impulses, 0:16:33.080 --> 0:16:36.240 but also addiction. So I heard started hearing from people 0:16:36.320 --> 0:16:41.400 that things that have addictive nature, so you alcohol, drugs, 0:16:41.400 --> 0:16:44.560 but also social media, checking your email. So behavioral addictions. 0:16:44.960 --> 0:16:48.560 People have this urge is strong pull towards them, and 0:16:48.600 --> 0:16:51.560 they can confuse that or call it intuition. But I 0:16:51.600 --> 0:16:53.280 didn't want that to be part of intuition. I think 0:16:53.320 --> 0:16:55.280 that's something a little bit different. So one of the 0:16:55.320 --> 0:16:57.800 rules is just to stay clear of anything that's addictive 0:16:58.240 --> 0:17:01.880 and don't confuse that with intuition, right, including food. And 0:17:01.880 --> 0:17:04.359 that's a controversial one because there's a whole movement of 0:17:04.400 --> 0:17:06.960 intuitive eating, which is a hot topic which we can 0:17:07.000 --> 0:17:07.720 deep dive into it. 0:17:07.760 --> 0:17:09.480 What is that movement? So there's a whole idea. 0:17:09.520 --> 0:17:11.280 There's all these books on intuitive eating, and this is 0:17:11.359 --> 0:17:13.640 this idea that you just follow how you feel about 0:17:13.640 --> 0:17:15.760 the food, right, you and you eat as much as 0:17:15.800 --> 0:17:18.200 you want, whenever you want, and your body will naturally 0:17:18.240 --> 0:17:21.800 come to an equilibrium more or less, right, I'm summarizing it. 0:17:21.880 --> 0:17:25.440 The problem is modern food's highly engineered, right, billions of 0:17:25.480 --> 0:17:28.560 dollars going into making food basically like a drug addictive, 0:17:28.840 --> 0:17:31.040 and that's a very dangerous thing. I'm against that idea 0:17:31.880 --> 0:17:33.679 unless you're out in the country and you're eating a 0:17:33.680 --> 0:17:36.280 whole food diet and maybe that that can work. And 0:17:36.320 --> 0:17:39.120 then L is for low probability, but it really it's 0:17:39.200 --> 0:17:41.320 for anything around probabilities and numbers. 0:17:41.880 --> 0:17:42.040 Right. 0:17:42.119 --> 0:17:45.840 So psychology textbooks are full of examples where people just 0:17:45.880 --> 0:17:49.760 get these probability tests and it's completely wrong, right, And 0:17:49.840 --> 0:17:53.520 our brains just don't process numbers very well, or probabilities particularly, 0:17:54.400 --> 0:17:58.320 And so again, anything around probabilities and numbers, stay away 0:17:58.320 --> 0:17:59.840 from intuition, right. 0:17:59.720 --> 0:18:02.119 Just don't don't use your intuition for anything around numbers. 0:18:02.560 --> 0:18:05.600 Right, as in, I don't want to drive over the 0:18:05.640 --> 0:18:09.720 bridge because I've seen lots of stories of bridges collapsing. 0:18:10.080 --> 0:18:10.359 Yeah. 0:18:10.359 --> 0:18:13.760 In fact, it's terribly low probability. People get scared to 0:18:13.840 --> 0:18:17.000 get the gut feeling of not wanting to do that. 0:18:17.160 --> 0:18:18.880 Is so I live in Sydney. 0:18:19.000 --> 0:18:21.400 Sometimes I'll call it the shark attack rule right where 0:18:21.720 --> 0:18:24.679 the sharks, you know, I think you're more likely to 0:18:24.720 --> 0:18:27.040 be get this For an AUSSI stat more likely to 0:18:27.080 --> 0:18:29.600 be injured by a kangaroo than a shark, right, and 0:18:29.640 --> 0:18:31.840 certainly more likely to be hurt in a car crash 0:18:32.000 --> 0:18:34.720 than a shark. But people don't think twice about getting 0:18:34.720 --> 0:18:36.399 in the car or patting a kangaroo, but they'll be 0:18:36.880 --> 0:18:38.800 you know, once you start imagining a sharks, you know, 0:18:38.840 --> 0:18:40.879 in the water, then you get reoody scared of it. 0:18:40.920 --> 0:18:43.760 So for a range offer reasons, we're just not good 0:18:43.760 --> 0:18:47.400 at following the numbers and probabilities. Emotions other things creep in. 0:18:47.840 --> 0:18:51.000 So anything around that don't follow the feelings, don't follow intuition. 0:18:51.119 --> 0:18:53.280 Stick with the numbers and the probabilities, you know. 0:18:53.359 --> 0:18:55.640 One example that here in Silicon Valley is with self 0:18:55.720 --> 0:18:59.440 driving cars. The probabilities and self driving cars are terrific, 0:18:59.480 --> 0:19:01.880 as in you're much less likely to get an accident 0:19:01.880 --> 0:19:05.000 with those. But there's something about control and the other 0:19:05.240 --> 0:19:08.480 emotions involved there that make it so people just can't 0:19:08.560 --> 0:19:12.879 do it. They'd rather have a much higher risk drive 0:19:13.160 --> 0:19:14.359 than do something safe. 0:19:14.760 --> 0:19:17.320 Yeah it's a funny, Yeah, yeah, it's an odd thing. 0:19:17.680 --> 0:19:19.679 So the l is what does the advice to people though, 0:19:19.720 --> 0:19:21.840 that if it's a low probability event, don't try. 0:19:22.040 --> 0:19:26.440 Anything abound probabilities, smoking, climate change, or anything around numbers 0:19:26.440 --> 0:19:30.200 and probabilities. Don't feel it, don't like follow the numbers, 0:19:30.240 --> 0:19:32.840 do the math, just follow whatever the numbers say, don't 0:19:32.880 --> 0:19:34.200 try and feel your way through it. 0:19:34.680 --> 0:19:34.880 Right. 0:19:35.160 --> 0:19:36.640 And then E was the environment. 0:19:37.000 --> 0:19:40.399 So I mentioned before with Steve Jobs that the learning 0:19:40.480 --> 0:19:42.400 is context and environment specific. 0:19:42.480 --> 0:19:43.040 So when you're on. 0:19:43.080 --> 0:19:46.119 Holiday, right, I'm in a different country now, you know, 0:19:46.160 --> 0:19:47.840 I look to the wrong side, and I feel like 0:19:47.840 --> 0:19:50.920 I should look to the to the to the right 0:19:50.960 --> 0:19:53.800 and right the cars coming from the left here in America, 0:19:54.080 --> 0:19:56.240 and they're all you know, when there's there's all kinds 0:19:56.280 --> 0:19:59.159 of very subtle things like that when you're traveling that 0:19:59.280 --> 0:20:02.040 I have to really pay attention to, not just do 0:20:02.119 --> 0:20:05.119 my usual intuitive thing and sort of think, go back 0:20:05.160 --> 0:20:07.119 to sort of first principles and think logically about what 0:20:07.160 --> 0:20:07.560 I'm doing. 0:20:07.600 --> 0:20:09.160 So that's smile. 0:20:09.320 --> 0:20:11.520 There's these five rules that fall out of the science 0:20:11.800 --> 0:20:12.560 around intuition. 0:20:12.960 --> 0:20:14.800 It's just so curiosity. Why did you call it smile 0:20:14.920 --> 0:20:17.000 instead of miles or slime? 0:20:20.000 --> 0:20:22.280 My wife helped me with that. Essentially came up with that. 0:20:22.320 --> 0:20:24.040 I wanted something positive because a lot of. 0:20:24.040 --> 0:20:25.879 The rules that don't do this don't use your intuition, 0:20:25.960 --> 0:20:28.800 Like I like the idea of smile before you intuit, 0:20:29.200 --> 0:20:32.239 smile before you use your intuition, and the idea that 0:20:32.440 --> 0:20:35.040 of people to have a daily practice and you know, 0:20:35.160 --> 0:20:37.440 getting really used to those rules, like you know, going 0:20:37.440 --> 0:20:40.200 to the gym or something in practicing right, I suggest 0:20:40.280 --> 0:20:43.000 people have a sort of an intuition practice diary or 0:20:43.119 --> 0:20:45.480 a table where they'll keep track of things and learn 0:20:45.560 --> 0:20:47.600 to use it. So one of the things that people, 0:20:47.640 --> 0:20:50.560 you know, small decisions. They may not use intuition when 0:20:50.600 --> 0:20:53.320 they're going to get married or get divorced, or change 0:20:53.640 --> 0:20:55.919 live somewhere else, move overseas or a new job or 0:20:55.960 --> 0:20:58.360