Let me put myself in a difficult position. I am going to take two common pieces of advice, argue that they directly contradict each other, show that they are both wrong, and then try to stand up proudly on the only dry piece of unpainted floor in the corner.<\/p>\n
Over and over we hear the piece of advice “Don’t make assumptions!” or “When you assume, you make an ASS out of U and ME.”<\/p>\n
What a grossly over-simplistic piece of trite. We all make assumptions every second of every day. If we had to test every single assumption, we would be rendered hopeless. Is that really your boss, or is it an identical twin? Is it really Monday, or have you been in a coma for 20 years? Are the traffic lights really going to stay red for long enough to cross the road? Is that tiger really going to eat me – perhaps it really just wants to be friends. We can only survive by making continuous assumptions.<\/p>\n
A key aspect of intelligence is being able to fill in the partial facts we know about the world with intelligent assumptions.<\/p>\n
So, ignore this piece of advice. Make assumptions when assumptions are called for!<\/p>\n
Over and over we hear the piece of advice “Trust your instincts” or “Listen to your gut!”<\/p>\n
What a grossly over-simplistic piece of trite. Instincts are based on outdated assumptions trained into us through natural selection, or poorly considered assumptions that we have been brought up with. Instincts give us the ability to make quick decisions, not the ability to make the best decisions. If we trusted our instincts, we would be rendered hopeless. Settling differences through violence is instinctive. Being unable to accurately estimate remote probabilities is instinctive. Xenophobia is instinctive. Being scared of heights is instinctive. Rape is instinctive. Modern society can only survive by distrusting those instincts.<\/p>\n
A key aspect of intelligence is being able to overcome our instincts to put some rational thought behind our decisions.<\/p>\n
So, ignore this piece of advice. Ignore your instinct when your rationality is called for!<\/p>\n
So, if you accept my premise that instinct is nothing but a set of in-built assumptions, then “Trust your instincts” and “Don’t make assumptions” are directly contradictory pieces of advice.<\/p>\n
If you accept my premise that intelligence is built on the ability to overcome your in-built assumptions when required and<\/em> the ability to come up with good assumptions when they are called for, you can see that both pieces of advice are too simple to be useful.<\/p>\n I recommend you ignore both of them. I assume your instinct is to agree with me, and I think your rational self will agree.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If you are ever told to trust your instincts or to avoid making assumptions, ignore that advice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[29,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-influencing-others","category-observation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=249"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}