Unexpected Answers From Intuition

Intuition is an incredibly powerful tool, but sometimes it plays by its own rules. My intuition is largely based on asking questions. I ask the a question and receive an answer. Rinse and repeat as much as necessary. The upside to this arrangement is that I am not constantly bombarded by intuitive “noise”. Some people are! The downside is that questions are finite and can play by rules that can be funny or frustrating.

Two examples from my years of experience...

#1: Asking a question with no answer can give a misleading answer, especially if you take the question at face value. A classic example would involve food. I shouldn't drink sodas, but sometimes I want to. I ask the question “should I go and get a soda from the machine in the canteen?” The answer is “yes”. Fast forward to visiting the machine, and it is broken or out of the soda I asked about. The answer “should I do X” could be yes only because “X” is not possible. Weird logic? Yep... but that's how intuitive questions seem to work for me.

#2: You may not understand the answer you are seeking. I can't get into the nitty-gritty on this one in order to protect the innocent, but I can share most of an example. I went to an event and asked “will X happen?”. The X was an improbable thing that would have been nice if it had happened. Odds were slim to none, but I received a very solid “Yes” to the question. I attended the event, had a wonderful time, but “X” did not seem to happen. Or did it? I asked afterwards if “X” happened and I was told “yes”. OK. Apparently my understanding of what “X” meant needs to be recalibrated. Possible explanations are that the time scale for “X” is bigger than that one night and the intuitive feedback is ignoring, for my benefit, that I meant just that night.

What are the challenges? Either the outcome is not possible or the big universe and yourself have different definitions. The difference between the two seems to be that the “different definition” situation affirms that the answer was correct even after the incongruence is recognized. The not possible outcome is recognized and acknowledged after the fact.