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Posted on 11/26/2002 7:25:35 PM PST by AndrewC
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 Image: BRAD HINES
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Captain James T. Kirk has just beamed up from planet Alpha 177, where magnetic anomalies have caused the transporter to malfunction, splitting Kirk into two beings. One is cool and rational. The other is impulsive and irrational. Rational Kirk must make a command decision to save the crew, but he is paralyzed with indecision, bemoaning to Dr. McCoy: "I can't survive without him. I don't want to take him back. He's like an animal-- a thoughtless, brutal animal. And yet it's me!"
This psychological battle between intellect and intuition was played out in almost every episode of Star Trek in the characters of the ultrarational Mr. Spock and the hyperemotional Dr. McCoy, with Captain Kirk as the near perfect synthesis of both. Thus, I call this balance the Captain Kirk Principle: intellect is driven by intuition, intuition is directed by intellect.
For most scientists, intuition is the bête noire of a rational life, the enemy within to beam away faster than a phaser on overload. Yet the Captain Kirk Principle is now finding support from a rich emerging field of scientific inquiry brilliantly summarized by Hope College psychologist David G. Myers in his book Intuition: Its Powers and Perils (Yale University Press, 2002). I confess to having been skeptical when I first picked up the book, but as Myers demonstrates through numerous well-replicated experiments, intuition-- "our capacity for direct knowledge, for immediate insight without observation or reason"-- is as much a component of our thinking as analytical logic.
Nalini Ambady and Robert Rosenthal of Harvard University, for example, discovered that evaluations of teachers by students who saw a mere 30-second video of the teacher were remarkably akin to those of students who had taken the course. Even three two-second video clips of the instructor yielded a striking 0.72 correlation with the course students' evaluations.
Research consistently shows how so-called unattended stimuli can subtly affect us. At the University of Southern California, Moshe Bar and Irving Biederman flashed emotionally positive images (kitten, romantic couple) or negative scenes (werewolf, corpse) for 47 milliseconds immediately before subjects viewed slides of people. Although subjects reported seeing only a flash of light for the initial emotionally charged pictures, they gave more positive ratings to people whose photographs had been associated with the positive ones-- so something registered.Intuition is not subliminal perception; it is subtle perception and learning-- knowing without knowing that you know. Chess masters often "know" the right move to make even if they cannot articulate how they know it. People who are highly skilled in identifying "micromomentary" facial expressions are also more accurate in judging lying. In testing college students, psychiatrists, polygraphists, court judges, police officers and Secret Service agents on their ability to detect lies, only the agents, trained to look for subtle cues, scored above chance.
Most of us are not good at lie detection, because we rely too heavily on what people say rather than on what they do. Subjects with damage to the brain that renders them less attentive to speech are more accurate at detecting lies, such as aphasic stroke victims, who were able to identify liars 73 percent of the time when focusing on facial expressions. (Nonaphasic subjects did no better than chance.) We may even be hardwired for intuitive thinking: damage to parts of the frontal lobe and amygdala (the fear center) will prevent someone from understanding relationships or detecting cheating, particularly in social contracts, even if he or she is otherwise cognitively normal.
CONTINUED --- Click Here
(Excerpt) Read more at sciam.com ...
I said, give me Saurian Brandy!
(I liked that episode).
Why aren't there any muslems on Star Trek?
Because it takes place in the future....
Sorry, but YOU are full of baloney. Anyone scientist who has ever had a "flash of creative insight" knows that intuition (whatever its source), is very real.
The REAL problem comes when intuition is allowed to over-rule rational analysis. Intuition = discovery, rational examination = proof are the two halves of scientific progress.
I prefer the Darth Vader principle:
"Asteroids do not concern me, Admiral. I want that ship, not excuses."
Meaning, "Results Are Our Business". ;)
Regards, Ivan
Webmaster, TheDarkSide.Net
No, I believe it's "The Man In Charge should always surround himself with Red Shirts."
Last words on Star Trek: "Touch that glowing orb? If you say so, sir...."
Intuition has nothing to do with "odds-making." I would call it rather, "subconscious intellectual processing", thinking and reasoning that takes place without us being aware that we are doing it.
A lot of human communication is non-verbal. We communicate with body language, emotion, facial expressions, gestures, and even odors. The brain has been trained since childhood to pick up on these cues, but we often tend to ignore them as we grow older. I believe that what we call "feminine intution" is actually this subconscious processing; women seem to be more atuned to non-verbal cues than men are, although either sex is capable of it. Men are, in part, socially trained to ignore this type of perception as "feelings." Highly successful and clever people use this processing to augment their cognitive skills.
There's nothing mythical about intutition. And it's much more than simple probability estimating.
Bingo. When I'm faced with a new technical problem, I gather all the possible background information I can find, and study it. Then I just "fuggedaboutit" on a conscious level for a day or so. When next I revisit that need, the solutions are there, ready to be examined logically and used. I don't have the foggiest idea as to how it works, BUT IT DOES WORK, and repeatably so.
Sulu would think it quite funny... Ohura would thrust out her hooters and the show would be over.
Shatner gets the blond bimbo's and all the shows notoriaty.
But Chekhov would shag The Three Sisters in The Cherry Orchard.
Whoopi was mostly harmless. We never got to see why "Q" was afraid of her.
And Patrick Stewart is an excellent actor. Much under-rated, IMHO.
Now, that dreadful Voyager series, with the captain who thought she was Catherine Hepburn...but wasn't...that was the dregs. I couldn't watch. I had vivid fantasies of seeing her gang-raped by Klingons...
--Boris
Just a guess, a hunch really.
--Boris
The best description of Kate Mulgrew I have ever read. Bravo!
I think it comes from reading Florence King and a bit of Dorothy Parker.
--Boris
People who are highly skilled in identifying "micromomentary" facial expressions are also more accurate in judging lying. In testing college students, psychiatrists, polygraphists, court judges, police officers and Secret Service agents on their ability to detect lies, only the agents, trained to look for subtle cues, scored above chance.Here's a fascinating article by Malcolm Gladwell (a redundant statement IMO!) about reading people's faces.
Some years ago, John Yarbrough was working patrol for the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. It was about two in the morning. He and his partner were in the Willowbrook section of South Central Los Angeles, and they pulled over a sports car. "Dark, nighttime, average stop," Yarbrough recalls. "Patrol for me was like going hunting. At that time of night in the area I was working, there was a lot of criminal activity, and hardly anyone had a driver's license. Almost everyone had something intoxicating in the car. We stopped drunk drivers all the time. You're hunting for guns or lots of dope, or suspects wanted for major things. You look at someone and you get an instinctive reaction. And the longer you've been working the stronger that instinctive reaction is."Yarbrough was driving, and in a two-man patrol car the procedure is for the driver to make the approach and the officer on the passenger side to provide backup. He opened the door and stepped out onto the street, walking toward the vehicle with his weapon drawn. Suddenly, a man jumped out of the passenger side and pointed a gun directly at him. The two of them froze, separated by no more than a few yards. "There was a tree behind him, to his right," Yarbrough recalls. "He was about seventeen. He had the gun in his right hand. He was on the curb side. I was on the other side, facing him. It was just a matter of who was going to shoot first. I remember it clear as day. But for some reason I didn't shoot him." Yarbrough is an ex-marine with close-cropped graying hair and a small mustache, and he speaks in measured tones. "Is he a danger? Sure. He's standing there with a gun, and what person in his right mind does that facing a uniformed armed policeman? If you looked at it logically, I should have shot him. But logic had nothing to do with it. Something just didn't feel right. It was a gut reaction not to shoot— a hunch that at that exact moment he was not an imminent threat to me." So Yarbrough stopped, and, sure enough, so did the kid. He pointed a gun at an armed policeman on a dark street in South Central L.A., and then backed down. ...
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