12/27/22 Report - A Quick Look At One Treasure Coast Wreck Beach. Intuition: What It Is and More About It.

 

Written by the TreasrueGuide for the exclusive use of the Treasure Beaches Report.

John Brooks Beach Tuesday Afternoon.

I took a quick look at John Brooks Beach This Afternoon.  There was one detectorist digging to the south of the access (photo below).

John Brooks Beach Tuesday Afternoon.

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Detectorists often get a feeling about where to look. They might be guided by intuition. Other detectorists are very analytical and pay little attention to those types of feelings.

You might think that intuition is something like ESP, and is nothing more than foolishness, but intuition and science go together. Below are some quotes about intuition attributed to Einstein.

The only really valuable thing is intuition. I believe in intuition and inspiration; at times I feel certain I am right while not knowing the reason. The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift. The intellect has little to do on the road to discovery.  There comes a leap in consciousness, call it intuition or what you will, and the solution comes to you and you don’t know how or why.

Clearly Einstein valued intuition.

In 2017 I posted the results of a poll I conducted on how much deetectorists use intuition versus analysis.   (See The Treasure Beaches Report Direct From Florida's Treasure Coast.: 7/9/17 Report - 2011 Law Concerning Ownership of Artifacts and Space Exploration Artifacts. Blog Poll Conclusions.)

Below is how I reported the results of that poll.

The most recent blog poll has concluded and the results are in.

As you can see from the bar chart below, the respondents generally go more by analysis and observation than intuition. That isn't surprising considering the amount of time I spend on analysis of beach conditions and other things. Only one of the 45 respondents said that they went almost exclusively by intuition and hunches.

On the other end of the spectrum, 4 respondents said they rely almost exclusively on analysis.

The vast majority of those that responded, appear to use some mixture of analysis and intuition. Overall the results were definitely skewed in the direction of analysis and observation over intuition.

Here are the results expressed in a bar chart. I reordered the categories from how they were ordered when the poll was presented, and also shortened the category labels. The numbers in the chart are percentages.

As you can see, the vast majority of detectorists who responded to the poll claimed to use intuition to some extent.  There were very few people who reported going entirely by intuition, and another small group that reported not using intuition at all.

Intuition is defined as the ability to understand something immediately, without the need for conscious reasoning:

A key word there is "conscious."  So can you reason unconsciously.  Maybe, but that might come closer to being intuition.  I think data can be analyzed and reasoning can take plae without being entirely conscious of it.

John Naisbitt, a futurist and author of several books on megatrends, gave the following quote.

Intuition becomes increasingly valuable in the new information society precisely because there is so much data.

He is saying that intuition helps a person deal with, or process, overwhelming amounts of data.

I believe that the more information you have stored away, the more productive your intuition will be.    You can process a lot of information, experiences and observations to arrive at conclusions even if you can't figure out or tell someone how you came to your conclusion.  Much information processing is done subconsciously.

A child can identify an animal as a dog even if he can't tell how you did it..  Think about it.  What is a dog?  How to you know that a particular animal is a dog?  At first, that sounds like an easy task.  A dog has fur, four legs, and barks.  But does that really distinguish from many other animals.   Many animals have four legs and fur, etc. etc.  For example, maybe is is a coyote or wolf rather than a dog, and a missing leg would not confuse anyone.  

Barking can be defined as making a short, loud, explosive noise with the vocal organs, so other animals bark.  It isn't as easy to explain how you would identify a dog as it is to recognize one.  Yet there could be some mistakes, especially if you saw a coyote or wolf.  Much mental processing is done without subconsciously.  We take our observations, facts or data, and combine or process them subconsciously/  That is, in part, intuition.   

Now to the important part.  You might think your intuition is good or bad.  You might get a feeling you should look in a particular place, and as a result make a remarkable discovery, and you might feel like you knew it was there.  But how often is your intuition correct?  It is easy to ignore all those feelings that failed.  We simply do not keep accurate score or data on the effectiveness of our intuitive feelings.  

It isn't easy to test intuition.  You might try some experiments, but you will have to think real hard about how to do it.

There have been good scientific studies on telepathy, mediums and ESP by hard-core recognized academic scientists such as Gary Schwartz, Professor of Psychology, Medicine, Neurology, Psychiatry and Surgery, who studies human consciousness.  The Department of Defense has studied ESP.  The conclusion of some hard-core scientists such as Schwartz is that some people do reliably exhibit greater accuracy in such tasks than others.  Relatively few people reliably score well above chance in controlled experiments on mediumship.  There are others who do not put such stock in such concepts even if they have been studied in controlled experimental situations.

Overall, it would seem difficult to test or measure the accuracy of intuition in a practical setting such as metal detecting.  There are those occasions that impress us when we have a feeling about something and it turns out to be correct, but it is too easy to ignore all the times when we have a feeling that fails us.

For me, there have been times when I was doing extremely well and it felt like I was being guided by something - perhaps my own subconscious mind.  You can attribute that to intuition, but it could also be chance.  But there have also been long dry periods when it seemed like a find was long overdue.  What happened?  Did my intuitive skills disappear?    Was I distracted or out of the zone, or was it something else entirely?

Some people might be more intuitive than others.  That is a hard thing to test or prove.  And I don't know that we need to.  My conclusion is that we do a lot of problem solving subconsciously and that shouldn't be overlooked or neglected, but the more we learn and reason, the more our subconscious mind will have to work with, and your over the long-haul your luck will improve.

If you put much stock in intuition, as some of the more intuitive individuals will do, there are methods for being more open to such leadings.  You might look into that, but in the meantime, study and accumulate information and improve your skill.

In summary, many people believe in intuition and can tell you amazing stories about how it worked for them.  Some scientists have done experiments in which some people have demonstrated amazing intuitive abilities, while most people perform no better than chance.  Individuals might feel they are led by intuition, but it is hard to test and prove it is anything more than chance.  If you are so inclined, you might try to test and improve your intuitive abilities.

Good hunting,

TreasureGuide@comcast.net