Did you ever get a “gut feeling” so intense it guided you away from making a decision and discover later it prevented you from making a mistake? Or did you “just know” who was on the phone before picking it up? These instances of uncanny precision, when we appear to “know” something and can’t logically explain why, are intriguing. They lead us to ask: is there actually some mystical “sixth sense” at work here, or is something else happening behind the scenes of our minds?
For centuries, intuition has been a source of both wonder and doubt. Some pooh-pooh it as coincidence or wishful thinking, whereas others insist on its magic. But as science probes more deeply into the secrets of the human brain, we’re starting to find some fascinating explanations for these elusive intuitions.
The Unconscious Super-Sleuth: Pattern Recognition Overdrive
One of the most widely-accepted scientific accounts for intuition is that it’s effectively super-speedy, unconscious pattern recognition. Our brains are phenomenal information-processing machines, continuously assimilating huge quantities of information from the world around us – far more than we are consciously aware of.
Picture your brain as a huge library, containing every experience, every conversation, every view, sound, and scent that has ever come your way. When confronted with a new situation, your unconscious mind quickly scans this giant database, immediately connecting the dots and identifying subtle patterns that your conscious mind may not catch.
For instance:
An experienced firefighter may feel a “bad feeling” about going into a specific building, not due to a clear hazard that they perceive, but due to their unconscious mind having rapidly computed hundreds of tiny signals (the odor of the smoke, the direction of the flames, the sound of the building) in totality that convey an elevated risk, after years of training.
A chess grandmaster can “just see” the optimal move without painstakingly computing every possibility. Their subconscious mind has immediately identified a familiar pattern of pieces and positions, recalling effective strategies from countless previous games.
This fast, non-linear processing enables us to create sudden judgments and decisions, frequently with astonishing accuracy, even if we can’t define why we feel as though we do. It’s not a supernatural sixth sense, but a highly effective, deeply ingrained function of our incredibly powerful unconscious mind.
This is an example of how our unconscious mind comes to conclusions based on information to give us that “gut feeling”:
Above Pattern Recognition: Sights of Non-Local Information?
Whereas unconscious pattern recognition accounts for much of the intuitive effect, there are some experiences that seem to be beyond this explanation. These are the properly “uncanny” ones which suggest something more – even, perhaps, some kind of non-local information processing.
Take examples where people report, occasionally under controlled conditions, that:
Individuals “feel” faraway events: Someone suddenly gets a strong feeling to call a loved one, only to find out they got into an accident a few seconds ago.
Precognitive dreams or intuitions: Someone has a clear dream or intense feeling regarding a future event that ultimately occurs exactly as predicted.
Shared “knowing” between intimate ones: Twins or intimately linked partners occasionally describe knowing what the other is thinking or feeling from across a room, without any normal communication.
These kinds of events stretch the limits of normal science. Are they simply incredibly unlikely coincidences? Or could they indicate that the human mind could potentially access information in a way that isn’t limited by the normal rules of space and time as we currently comprehend them?
Here is an example showing the more mysterious aspect of intuition, hinting at connections beyond the immediately apparent: