Exploring the Intuition Spaces of Others

John Salvatier has an interesting article on what he calls the '‘I Already Get It’ Slide, a cognitive bad habit that prompts you to gloss over the reasoning behind conclusions with which you are already familiar.

He describes the consequences:

This is unfortunate because the error prevents you from actually absorbing other’s intuitions, and absorbing other’s intuitions is important for doing anything hard.

In the article, John talks about a situation where his intuition was in fact incorrect, but there’s a more general learning here.

In innovation and research, it is not just the conclusion that is important, but the steps that led to the conclusion. And before that, there’s the spark that gave rise to the steps themselves. There are often multiple paths to the same destination.

Translating this to idea evaluation has profound implications on exploring a concept or venture.

There is the visible argument - what’s presented - and behind that is a hidden intuition space. The entire Intuition Space will never be fully legible. Intuition is difficult to communicate. What’s interesting is that some of this Intuition Space is actually visible to us if we avoid jumping to ‘I Already Get It’ mode.

There is plenty to be learned from ideas with which we already agree.

The tendency is to not only focus on conclusions with which we already agree, and the reasoning behind them. But to assume that we know the intuitions that led to the reasoning in the first place.

Collecting intuitions for ideas looks like fertile ground for idea exploration.

A promising new hobby.

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