Intuition is often considered the opposite of logical thinking, a fast, unconscious, automated, and experience-driven thinking system. Intuition responds quickly but with poor accuracy. Logical thinking is accurate but slow. Therefore, the two need to function in suitable environments.
Although as slow as research on the human brain, the principle of intuition is still unknown, but there are some hypotheses to explain it. For example, the Somatic Marker Hypothesis proposed by neuroscientist Antonio Damasio suggests that bodily sensations (heartbeat, tension, relaxation) provide us with “emotional signals” that influence and induce choices.
The things that cause bodily sensations are often related to hormones. For example, adrenaline secreted when encountering danger, dopamine secreted when receiving rewards, and ghrelin ( Ghrelin ) secreted when the body is hungry. This brings people intuition , which is a partial scientific explanation of intuition.
Intuition is similar to branch prediction in a computer CPU. Branch prediction is to quickly select a branch before calculating the result, and then calculate the result of this step. If the correct branch is selected, it will save one step of time. Now the success rate of prediction has increased to more than 80 %, which is based on historical experience to generate intuition. And then neural networks may be used for prediction, which is probably more like intuition.
Coming to ChatGPT, the breakthrough in the LLM field, initially used non-logical “intuition” to generate text, and the error and hallucination rate was indeed high. The later OpenAI o1 model brought systematic logical thinking functions, reducing errors.
Since the model’s thinking function takes less time, users are more likely to choose to turn on the model’s logical thinking instead of the default “intuition” (unless using the free version, where thinking quota is low). Because intuition has helped humans survive too much, and the speed of thinking is slow, they may not be able to actively call on logical thinking. Therefore, the LLM that can easily think deeply is too attractive to humans.
P.S.: In the past, there was a popular saying “women’s intuition”. Now there is a hypothesis that because women’s corpus callosum is different from men’s, it makes the left and right brains easier to collaborate and integrate, making it easier to mix intuition and logical thinking. Men are less likely to switch back and forth between intuition and logic, so they appear more rational and methodical when thinking. (In addition, Albert Einstein’s corpus callosum is different in shape from that of ordinary people)