How to Use Your Intuition as a Superpower - Dr Tara Swart - #990

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
What do you mean when you talk about trusting our instincts?

**Tara Swart** (0:05)
I think it's a return to something quite primal and physical. So I think in this modern world, we overthink everything, we try to rationalize everything, we prize logic above anything else. And I'm sort of talking about using intuition as well as logic.

**Chris Williamson** (0:27)
Why do you think it is that we are laying at the feet? Why is it that we're dispensing with sort of the wisdom that comes from instinct? If it's something that is sort of more ingrained, why is that being pushed to a side?

**Tara Swart** (0:44)
So I think it goes back to when the outer cortex of our brain grew from being a sliver around the limbic system, which is the size of your clenched fist. And that's when we could articulate speech and we could like plan better for the future. And so then we sort of prized those things more than the primal instincts that we had relied on before. And then if you fast forward to much more recently, until about 30 years ago, we didn't have sophisticated scanning technology that could actually show us things like how emotions and intuition work in the brain. So it just, I think, felt safer to rely on something like logic that makes more sense. And then if you also add in the rise of technology, it feels like it's counterintuitive. But I actually think this is where intuition and emotion and in creativity and vulnerability are going to become superpowers. Whereas they've sort of been put lower down than logic and rationality.

**Chris Williamson** (1:50)
Why would you say superpowers?

**Tara Swart** (1:53)
Because I think they're things that technology and AI won't be able to emulate or actually use in the same way that we can.

**Chris Williamson** (2:02)
Right. Well, I always think about this. It's kind of interesting that we had the Scientific Revolution. And I remember when it was early 2000s and I was starting to listen to Christopher Hitchens or Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris or whatever. And it was very seductive to dispense with wishy-washy mythology and archetype. And you wanted something that felt more rigorous and that you could prove. And we had this amazing boon in loads of areas of psychology and then 20 years later the replication crisis has come along and decapitated tons of the studies that we all thought were part of the physics of the human system. And now how many people refer to themselves as an agnostic because they're terrified of calling themselves an atheist because it feels sterile. We kind of had this weird sense that we were going to be able to prove the world to us. And, you know, physics has kind of stalled for the last 60 years or so. It hasn't really developed anything that's been that new. And I think people have got this sense that even if stuff can be literally unproven, it can be functionally useful in the same way as, huh, well, maybe my gut instinct, I can't give you on a spreadsheet. I can't fully dissect why I felt that thing.
But I've noticed that when I rely on that sense, the outcomes that I get, my decisions tend to be better, even though they're less explainable. And I wonder whether we're going back to a focus on effectiveness over rigor, if that makes sense.

**Tara Swart** (3:46)
You've put that so beautifully. I mean, I think it's a real sort of modern dilemma. And I almost feel like where you get to the top or the peak of feeling of what you can prove, of what you can explain, it's almost like you then do a 180 and you actually ask yourself, what feels good? What feels right? How do things pan out when I ignore my gut instinct and I ignore those red flags and I go with what I think is the right thing to do, as deemed by modern society?
And I think you're right. A really big question is do the things that can have value to us, that can make us happier and more connected and more at peace, do they actually all have to be measurable and proven? Like I'm starting to, even as a scientist whose career has relied on rigor for so long, I'm starting to question that. If you look at the rates of mental illness around the world now, if you look at how lost and lonely and disconnected and unhappy and anxious people are, something hasn't worked about what we have for so long now, let's say at least in your and my adult life, thought was the right way to be.