intuition
does it come from the cognitive mind
or from a higher dimensional primordial spirit
there is a question I have been wanting to talk about
have you ever had this experience
in a certain moment
a judgment suddenly pops up in your mind
with no reasoning
and no chain of logic
but you just know
you cannot explain why
but you are certain
this thing
we usually call it intuition
but here is the question
where does your intuition actually come from
is it reliable
or is it
just a product of the brain being lazy
and more importantly
what if I told you
that hiding behind the word intuition
are actually two completely different things
would a lot of things suddenly make sense
hello
everyone
I am Leo Wang
today we are going to do one thing
I want to take intuition apart
all the way down
so you can see clearly
what you normally feel as intuition
how many layers it really has
what the mechanism of each layer is
and where the differences are
I will use one man's story to show
that there is a kind of intuition
that Kahneman's framework simply cannot contain
that man is Ramanujan
let's start with Kahneman
Daniel Kahneman won the Nobel prize in economics
the core question he studied all his life was
how people make judgments
he proposed a hugely influential model
dividing human thinking into two systems
system one
fast thinking
automatic instinctive effortless
system two
slow thinking
requiring focus and step by step reasoning
here is an example
you are walking down the street
and you see the outline of a person far away
in a fraction of a second your brain decides
this is a man
around fifty years old
and in a bad mood
you did not reason
you did not analyze
the judgment was already done
that is system one at work
then you sit down to do a math problem
387 times 24
you have to break it down step by step
first 387 times 4
then 387 times 20
and add them up
that is system two at work
what was Kahneman's key finding
the vast majority of our daily decisions
are made by system one
system two is actually lazy
most of the time it just rubber stamps
adding a plausible explanation to system one's conclusion
now let's translate this into the framework from our earlier episodes
system one and system two
are both just two modes of the cognitive mind
system one is the fast mode of the cognitive mind
automatic pattern matching trained on all your past experience
system two is its slow mode
where you consciously use logic and language to reason
but fast or slow
they are limited by the same thing
your training data
what you have seen lived through and learned
determines what the cognitive mind can output
this point is crucial
please remember it
we will need it later
next I want to talk about a very important scientific finding
from another giant
Antonio Damasio
he is now a neuroscientist at the University of Southern California
and did his early research at the University of Iowa
where he proposed the somatic marker hypothesis
Damasio found
that when people make decisions
the brain is not doing pure logic
the body gives a signal before consciousness does
say you are considering an investment
before you finish weighing the pros and cons
your palms have already started to sweat
and your heart rate has changed
these bodily reactions
are what Damasio called somatic markers
he proved this with the famous Iowa gambling task
participants pick cards from four decks
some decks lose money in the long run
and some make money
the experiment found
that before healthy people consciously knew which decks were bad
their skin conductance had already risen
the body knew the answer before the mind did
and patients with ventromedial prefrontal damage
had no such warning signal at all
so they kept picking the bad decks
and kept losing
I should add
this experiment later became controversial
researchers redid it with finer questions
and found that subjects may have known consciously
earlier than the original study assumed
but the bodily signal is real
and it shows up before people can put it into words
that part still stands
why does this finding matter
it shows that what we call intuition
is largely your body making the judgment for you
your past experience gets encoded as automatic bodily responses
when a similar situation shows up again
the body signals before consciousness does
you experience that signal as a feeling you cannot name
and you call it intuition
but notice
what this intuition really is
it is a compressed file of your past experience
a fast conclusion the cognitive mind draws from prior beliefs
it just does not travel the language channel
it travels the body channel
so at this point
we can summarize
Kahneman's fast thinking
plus Damasio's somatic markers
give us the full picture of intuition at the cognitive mind level
it has two paths
one goes through cognition
giving you a flash judgment
the other goes through the body
giving you a feeling you cannot explain
but the source is the same
both come from you as a carbon based local model
running automatically on historical data
is this kind of intuition reliable
most of the time yes
because your training data is large enough
and the pattern matching is pretty accurate
an old doctor takes your pulse and knows what is wrong
a veteran investor glances at a deal and knows
an old driver hears the engine and knows the problem
these are advanced versions of the fast mode
decades of experience compressed into milliseconds
but it also makes mistakes
and when it does you cannot even tell
Kahneman spent most of his life studying these errors
take the anchoring effect
you see a number first
and every later estimate gets dragged toward it
or the availability bias
recent events feel far more probable than they are
or confirmation bias
the cognitive mind filters out evidence that contradicts your beliefs
and keeps only what supports you
these are illusions made by the mind on autopilot
what you feel is certainty
clarity
the feeling of I just know
but underneath runs a piece of buggy code
so the cognitive mind's intuition has a fatal limit
first
it fails systematically without knowing it
second
and more fundamentally
it can never go beyond its training data
what you have seen
what you have learned
what you have lived
is all the raw material it has
it can recombine
it can reason by analogy
it can transfer patterns
but it cannot create out of nothing what it never met
alright
now comes the other side of the story
in 1913
the Cambridge mathematician Hardy at Trinity College
received a letter from India
the writer was Srinivasa Ramanujan
a young Indian man with no formal math degree
the letter was packed with mathematical formulas
Hardy later recalled
that he had never seen anything like it
these formulas
some he could verify were correct
but could not understand how they were derived
some he had never seen before
and later proved to be brand new mathematics
and some
were only proved decades later by other mathematicians
Ramanujan's mathematical training was very limited
he was essentially self taught
all he had was an outdated compendium
of formulas published in the 1880s
a synopsis of elementary results in pure and applied mathematics
the book had only formulas and theorems
and almost no proofs
with just that raw material
what he produced
surpassed the finest mathematicians in the world
Hardy later rated mathematicians on genius
out of 100
he gave himself 25
he gave his colleague Littlewood 30
he gave the great Hilbert 80
Ramanujan
100
most shocking is how he said he got the formulas
he said
they appeared to him in dreams
the goddess Namagiri he worshipped would show him formulas
and he wrote them down when he woke
he described one scene in detail
as he slept a red screen appeared before him
seemingly formed of flowing blood
he stared at it
and suddenly a hand began writing on it
writing out a series of elliptic integral formulas
the formulas were carved into his mind
and he wrote them down the moment he woke
you may not believe in gods
but you have to face one fact
Ramanujan's training data
meaning the math books he had read
was nowhere near enough to produce his results
pattern matching cannot explain this
he never saw enough samples to extract those patterns
and slow thinking cannot explain it either
he could not lay out a full derivation himself
Hardy spent years supplying the proofs
if we insist on explaining Ramanujan with the cognitive mind
we hit an awkward problem
a local model
produced output beyond its training data
which should not happen in computation theory
unless
there is another source of information
this is the primordial spirit from our carbon based AI episode
the cognitive mind is your local model
running on this lifetime's training data
the primordial spirit is a deeper awareness
that does not depend on local training data
if the primordial spirit really exists
the information it carries would show up as a special intuition
something that feels completely different in texture
now let me give you a framework to tell them apart
separating mind level intuition from a possibly deeper signal
this is not settled science
it is an extrapolation from existing cognitive science
but I find it very useful in practice
first
look at the sense of origin
with cognitive mind intuition
if you trace it back carefully
you can usually find a faint source
you will remember
oh
I think I saw something like this before
but a deeper signal
has no source
you cannot trace it back
it is a knowing that appears in consciousness from nowhere
second
look at the emotional color
mind level intuition almost always carries emotion
Damasio's somatic markers tell us
the body reacts first
then you read it as a good or bad feeling
but the deeper signal
is above all clear and lucid
it is not excited
not anxious
not thrilled
it is simply a quiet certainty
like knowing that one plus one is two
with no emotion at all
third
see if new data overwrites it
mind level intuition can be updated
you read a new paper
you see a new case
and your gut call may change
because the training data was updated
the deeper signal is different
it does not shift with new information
no matter what you read
or how you analyze
that knowing stays right there
fourth
and this one matters most
see if it goes beyond your knowledge
the cognitive mind always outputs within its data
if you have never touched music
no intuition of that kind writes you a symphony
but Ramanujan did something like that
his math intuition exceeded his math training
this kind of intuition
if it really happens
cannot be coming from the local model
of course let me be clear
these four points are a tool for self awareness
not a chain of logic that proves anything
science cannot yet measure such a signal directly
what we can do
is build a finer system of awareness in experience
and that
is exactly what spiritual practice does
have you noticed
that meditation training is essentially
about telling apart with ever finer resolution
where this present thought
is coming from
is it from memory
from emotion
from a bodily reaction
or from somewhere quieter and deeper
these four sources feel different in the body
memory thoughts carry images and a sense of time
emotional thoughts carry heat and force
bodily thoughts carry location and texture
but what rises from the depths
is marked by this
it has none of those qualities
it is as clean as a pane of clear glass
most people spend life led around by the cognitive mind
never stopping to tell the difference
not because the primordial spirit is absent
but because the cognitive mind is too loud
decades of Kahneman's research tell us
how loud fast and domineering system one is
it barely lets system two get a word in
let alone make room for a deeper voice
what practitioners call stillness and samadhi
translated into cognitive science
is turning down the volume of both systems
so the channel buried in noise can finally be heard
Ramanujan may have been born tuned to that channel
but he was not the only one
many great scientific breakthroughs follow the same pattern
in 1865
the German chemist Kekule published the ring structure of benzene
years later he recalled
that the idea came on a winter night in Ghent
he was dozing by the fireplace
and half asleep saw a snake biting its own tail
in 1869
Mendeleev was hunting for an order for 63 known elements
and had racked his brain for a long time
the most popular account says
the answer came in a dream
in the dream he saw a table
with every element in its place
he woke and drew it immediately
that was the first periodic table
even more striking
he left blank spaces in it
predicting undiscovered elements
gallium and germanium later filled them perfectly
these stories share one feature
the answer was not derived step by step
it emerged in a moment when the mind went quiet
arriving whole from somewhere else
so next time a strange hunch pops into your head
do not rush to follow it
and do not rush to dismiss it
pause for a second
and ask yourself
this voice
is it my training data pattern matching
or is something quieter trying to tell me something
just asking that question
already pulls you out of autopilot
you are no longer the one being led around
you become the one standing between two intuitions
the observer able to tell them apart
and that observer
whether you call it metacognition
or awareness
or the primordial spirit
that is who you are
speaking of which
a viewer once asked in the comments
how alaya consciousness relates to intuition
that is a great question
in Yogacara the alaya consciousness
is the storehouse of all seeds
all the training data of the cognitive mind
every karmic trace perfumed into those seeds
is stored there
so its intuition
is essentially seeds in the alaya consciousness
manifesting automatically when conditions are right
your past experience becomes seeds
the seeds sprout in similar situations
and the sprout that comes up
is what you call intuition
but the alaya consciousness has another side
in the deeper Yogacara theory
its deepest layer opens onto the perfected nature
onto the original face unstained by seeds
if mind level intuition is seeds sprouting
then the deeper signal
may pass through the seed layer
as light shining up from below it
this is only a speculative framework
but it has one practical use
when in meditation
or in some quiet moment
you feel two kinds of knowing at once
you now have a coordinate system to make sense of it
have you ever had a completely lucid intuition
no emotion no source just a clean pure knowing
come talk about it in the comments
I am really curious
in your life
the cognitive mind and the deeper signal
how often has each guided you right
and how often has each misled you
I am Leo Wang
see you next time