The intuition of NTs

Post Reply New Topic

I don't think it is so much a need to be lied to? More an ability or willingness to accept the good feeling of hope in the short term in spite of the [likely] pain in the long term. I'm guessing it is wrapped up in with the [helpful] ability to function in the face of uncertainty. "I don't know how I'm going to solve this problem. I don't even know what the actual problem is. But I'm going to start working towards the solution."

The latest news on einstein after the release of the last bunch of letters seems to point out that his first wife did indeed do a lot of the math but that he had the 'intuition' as to the 'correctness' of the final solution which eluded him for so long since he didn't have the technical skill to provide the proof.

My husband commonly speaks of wording your speech in a very specific way in order to put the proper idea in the reciepients head .. Sometimes the idea that is conveyed is not exactly the truth, nor is it exactly a lie. Its just worded very carefully to make the reciever feel that you just told them something comforting. I personally don't like this idea - it seems manipulative to me. I just say things straightfowardly. But then again, I wouldn't know how to word things to convey such subtle ideas.

Seems like that might be a kind of intuition?

That would have been reversing the roles of typical male-female cognitive differences.

And he didn't have many intuitions subsequently in his career. IMO she outclassed him.

Giving his wife (who was an interesting, remarkable person none-the-less) that sort of credit isn't widely accepted at all, for a number of reasons. Hrmm, OK here's one link. http://www.esterson.org/milevamaric.htm

I am curious though what you consider "feminine" about Relativity? Einstein was quite big on "intuition" and sort of fuzzy things. Relativity, and later Quantum Mechanics, certainly did turn "common sense" on it's head. So maybe if you consider "intuition" somehow inherently feminine that's where you are coming from?

Last edited by DwightF on 17 Dec 2008, 7:05 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Intuition isn't magic. It's just more thinking but it happens in a "black box" where you can't keep track of the exact path of reasoning like you do with conscious thought. You can figure out how to word something like that, it's called "framing" BTW, consciously if you explicitly know the rules.

Wouldn't that prove my point, though? That he 'intuitively'knows the rules wheras I (and it appears, most aspies) don't?

I've only read a little about enistein but I think that if you look at some of the sideways offshoots he traveled down and abandoned it appears as if he had several dozens of ideas that he chose not to persue until after his main objective since it was in his grasp and he knew it for years. If he had time, I think we would have looked deeper into many of these dead ends.

NT's seem to have better "in the moment" intuition but that doesn't mean they always think through the future ramifications of their choices.

If he's become good at it he could have internalized the rules to that point. Internalized rules, algorithms you don't have to consciously think about to use, is what intuition runs on. Maybe he wasn't ever explicitly taught this stuff, he figured it out on his own, partially by observation. But this stuff can be, and it is my understanding is explicitly taught. I've seen it explicitly mentioned under the umbrella of "critical thinking" (in the from of giving yourself protection from malicious or deceitful framing). It is particularly important to professions like lawyers (politicians too, little wonder there is a fair amount of overlap there ). What's his background?

But really, it sounds like you don't WANT to use this. That's going to be a huge barrier to you internalizing it. You have objections based on moral and/or connivence and/or not-giving-a-damn issues. Plus there is the potential problem with poor understanding of the target mind if you are doing this for an NT audience. But by themselves those could theoretically overcome?


Or is there some sort of thinking that [some] autistics can't use intuition in any meaningful way at all? Or they refuse to because they don't trust it because the reasoning isn't explicit?

He was never taught.. His background? Uhm.. He's currently in his 2nd year of college and working part time as an AP clerk. What else do you need to know?

Also, yes, it could be learned .. you are saying that everyone has to be taught this type of behavior? That could be the case.. it doesn't seem true to me because it seems like most regular people 'know' how to employ behaviors such as this instictively. But I could be wrong *shrug* maybe I just never learned through observation because I don't really observe or care to internalize the rules of manipulation as you stated.

Hard to say if "everyone has to be", there are probably some that could figure it out in a vacuum but it'd take them some time and they likely wouldn't be as advanced as they would be under typical circumstances. It's sort of like asking "does everyone need to be taught mathematics?". But most people are taught it, even if it is by example instead of explicitly. You probably just weren't paying attention and/or were a little slow on the uptake because the teaching method didn't match your learning preference.

Last edited by DwightF on 17 Dec 2008, 7:55 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Hm, well ok. I accept that. There's alot of things that go on socially that I miss.

Thanks for helping me to clarify

Since NTs seem to make so many wrong decisions based on their intuition, I think that the word intuition could be just another word for guesswork.

There are many kinds of intuition. For instance, I generally know when something is wrong in my life, and I need to make a change and move on. Or when there's a change in the energy of the room and it's become unsafe. I know it, and I ignore my intuition at my peril.

But all we're talking about here is social intuition, ie being able to carry on a conversation without having to have every single meaning spoken for you in vivid detail. It's also about being in a kind of rhythm with the other person you're talking to, something I've never accomplished except with people whose "otherness" is a good match for mine.

So why does a woman go after a guy when he's clearly giving all kinds of obvious nonverbal cues he's not interested? The problem is that most people have a picture in their heads of what they want, and it often blinds them to the reality of the situation. (This is why people take up meditation--to try to just clear their minds so they can see things clearly.)

Or, they're trying to work out a situation from their childhood, like, "I had a cold, distant father who didn't love me, so now I'm going to pursue cold, distant men and MAKE them love me." (This is why therapists make lots of money.)

Or, they're just at their wit's end with their job and have the feeling of "ANYTHING is better than this," when many things could be worse. (This is why people jump from the frying pan into the fire.)

Remember, Aspies tend to work by thinking things out. It doesn't get us far with NTs, because they usually don't operate on logic. And because they don't operate on logic, and don't have to think things through because they already think they "get" it, they make all kinds of irrational decisions.

I think we Aspies would be just as irrational if we didn't have to think everything out constantly. It's definitely made me smarter over the years to have had to do this. Tired, too, but that's another story.

Precisely true (and well described).


Intuition is like any other cognitive process, not infallible. In fact for many people it is much more fallible than their conscious reasoning.

Social intuition is not about being right about all things social. It refers to cognitive processes that 'take care' of much of the figuring out in the area of sociality, removing the need in many cases to think about all the details observable to get some notion about what is going on. Social intuition is like estimating size or number as opposed to overt reasoning which is more like counting (in this analogy). Although sometimes people estimate exactly the right number, and sometimes people miscount, counting tends to be more accurate than estimating. However counting is slower, and the more there is to count the slower it is compared to estimating.

Last edited by pandd on 17 Dec 2008, 9:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.