Post: #1

I've been thinking a lot lately.

Whether it is with girls, Professors, employers, male friends or casual acquaintances the initial gut feeling i get about a person or situation is almost always ... 99% of the time right.

Yes. You can not judge a book by its cover and all that.

I've had 2 big breakups so far in my life and i can't help but admit that i knew there was something wrong at least a month or two before it happened. These are not obvious red flags that i could have logically evaluated and conducted a decisive course of action on. But i felt it in my gut.

Whenever i felt that an interview did not go well, despite the interviewer forwarding promising shit like " You without doubt have a very impressive resume and we'll be sure to contact you within the next week." ... I never got a call back. When my gut feeling told me that the interviewer liked me, even when logically the position was a longshot, i ended up getting the job.

An old friend of mine recently told me that a girl i had a crush on back in 8th grade got married. I was like "Oh wow good for her". She continues and tells me that the same girl actually had a huge crush on ME until we graduated High School. Deep down i knew it. Her body langauge, the way she talked to me. Stealing looks when she thought i was not noticing her ... asking me to help her with Physics homework.

Senior year of college me and my boys started hanging out with this popular wrestler kid. Everyone thought he was cool. He was but there was something about his attitude that was slimy and ... just not right. He threw out a cool facade but seemed like the kind of guy who would hit on your girlfriend while you went to the bathroom. I dismissed my suspicions since he was nice to me & always referred to me as "The Boss". 3 months later he banged one of my friends's GF. I could not believe that one of the first impressions i created about him was that of a girlfriend poacher.

How reliable is your gut instinct? Are we better off dismissing our logical minds while in social situations? Is our gut the ultimate measuring stick when it comes to gauging people's actions or reactions towards us? Is this the reason women are said to have a "sixth sense"? Because they are more emotional and more likely to follow their gut instincts?

Discuss.

Post: #2

The older I get the more I believe that my gut feelings are most of the time correct. Shoot my gut feelings about my first wife not being right for me proved to be dead on and I ignored it anyway much to my peril.

The only caveat I would make as far as my own experience would be is it really my gut feeling telling me to not move forward with something or is it my fear/insecurity/doubt masquerading as intuition?

Post: #3

It's pretty damn reliable, but we disregard it because of emotions or being blinded by love or greed.

Every previous relationship I've had, I had a gut feeling, ignored it, and got fucked over for it.

In social situations, If I have a bad gut feeling, I become more aware, but I'm not fleeing.

Never dismiss the logical male mind in you. Never.



When it comes to doing things, for example, throwing yourself off a jump on a snowboard.

I had bad gut feelings, but grabbed my balls and did it, and everything turned out fine.


I think your gut feeling should give you more Situational Awareness, I find my gut is more right when it comes to women then it comes to other situations.

Post: #4

Your gut feeling was designed to protect you from death and predators in evolutionary times.

Ignoring it is a modern concept.

Post: #5

There are times when it can be irrational, such as with approach anxiety.

But other times, it's dead on. Normally it's the first indication when something is wrong, but your rational mind doesn't want to accept it. A lot of communication is nonverbal, and our subconscious may be capable of processing loads of red flags our conscious mind doesn't pick up on. I think there's a lot of things we're programmed to believe, and social expectations we're supposed to observe. But at a base level, we have instincts that can push through all the programming to send alarm bells ringing when something isn't right.

Post: #6

Always trust your gut. Doubly so when women are involved.

Post: #7

Very ! I try mine and trust it as much as possible .. when I don't things go wrong .. sometimes very wrong ..

My mate was due to go on holiday and he woke up in a cold sweat the night before with a really bad gut feeling about the holiday .

Visited 3 bistro's one night looking for a mate who lived there .. two of those bars got shot up 50 mins after he was in them ... the city .. Paris.

ALWAYS TRUST YOUR GUT ..

Post: #8

Unless you wrote down what your misgivings at the time, as well as the pro's to the situation - i'd say not very.

Hindsight is 20/20.

WIA

Post: #9

I had an English Lit professor who gave me one of the best pieces of advice I've ever received: "The answers are within."

Listen to your gut.

Post: #10

(12-01-2015 02:13 PM)Anabasis to Desta Wrote:  Yes. You can not judge a book by its cover and all that.

I would argue you should judge a book by it's cover in most situations.

Why would you encase an wonderful novel in a shitty cover. Just like with people, why would an outstanding individual not take the time to present themselves properly.

Quote:How reliable is your gut instinct?

This is mostly my opinion but our gut instinct is probably one of the core reasons that we who are alive today have been bred. Back in the day, people only had their gut instincts and the voices of a few fellow tribe members. Those who had poor instincts weeded themselves out of the genome.

Our gut instincts are a combination of verbal, visual and social cues that amass in our brains into an internalized opinion. The people who ignore that gut instinct are the ones who get betrayed, fucked over etc etc. There is a reason why people always say go with your gut instinct.

Post: #11

Here's a relevant Wikipedia article - "unconcious cognition" - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconscious_cognition

WIA makes a good point as always about anecdotes and confimation bias but in spite of this I have to agree with you that it's pretty reliable. The concious mind is a minority percentage of brain activity and limited in its ability to perceive and process stimuli, gut feelings are the conclusions from those processes being brought to the surface, stripped of "wish it could be this way" rationalizations.

Post: #12

Just the other day, I was thinking about how much we should rely on our gut instinct. I got a little anecdote to share: last Friday night I arrived back home at my parents from an international business trip. I was away since Monday at the beginning of the week. To take you on bit of a side trip, I do photography as a semi-pro, particularly model photography. The Sunday night before I left, I was finishing some photos on photoshop, and in a hurry, I ended up forgetting my SD card in our family desktop. I actually hide the card from my parents because they are quite conservative; fairly religious with eastern values. If they saw the beach shoots and bikini comps I did, some of them being in nightclubs, fuck, say hello to some shitty rent in some shitty suburb.

So I came back home, my parents where sitting on the sofa, the TV was on. They greeted me warmly asking how my trip was and all. But something was off. I couldn't detect anything artificial, from what they said to the way they looked at me. Everything seemed normal and we had a conversation running smoothly. But inside the little voice said, you've been snapped mate. You've been busted.

My heart was pumping, I took my briefcase and baggage upstairs to my room. I checked the little corner where I typically hide my card and BOOM, it wasn't there. So I just acted chill and waited till whenever my parents decided to confront me. And sure enough, the next day my mum brought it up and that was that.

I've had multiple other cases throughout the years with my gut instincts kicking in and it's always been in relation to people. When it came to making decisions or forming opinions unrelated to people and I was unsure, the gut instinct was absent. Like some of the above have said, there was no visual, verbal or any other kind of signal to form a subconscious opinion, hence the gut instinct never came into play.

I've found the accuracy of the gut instinct to be scarily accurate. It should be a tool kept in our arsenal whenever we are present in any social situation. You never know when it will come in handy, and whenever it does, be prepared to listen to it.

Post: #13

Pretty much every disastrous business decision I have made has been when I've over-ridden my gut instinct with "logic".

Post: #14

Kaotic touched upon something important that I think may need more distinction.

Is approach anxiety or fear of a potentially dangerous situation truly a "gut" feeling or a matter of mental rationalization?

When I think of "gut" feeling I think of the initial instinctual knee-jerk reaction to something. In that sense, the gut feeling of approaching a girl would be when you first see her and are attracted to her. That is your gut saying "Hey hot girl you should be inside her" and your emotions are what you have to fight as your male hamster tries to rationalize why you should not approach because you are programmed to want to avoid rejection, embarrassment, and uncomfortable awkward situations.

The same with doing a stunt or some extreme activity like sky diving. Your initial gut feeling is "shit that looks sweet I want to experience that" which is why you consider it in the first place, but then you have to fight your brain and convince yourself that you should against fear of injury.

From my experience and from people's personal confessions that I have spoken to over the years: the gut is batting 1000. I try to go with it all the time, but it doesn't always work that way because having the willpower to quell your emotions and insecurities is difficult.

Post: #15

In retrospect, infallible.

Post: #16

It is very reliable, but only when you are experienced. Inexperienced men cannot see social cues or read social situations in the slightest. Inexperienced women can do so better, but also miss a lot (which is why it is easier to make a girl like this believe bullshit than it is to do with a slut).

When you are experienced, and have been in many social situations, every new situation you encounter always presents some similarity to something that happened in the past. Hence it is a good prediction that the outcome will be the same. You learn to recognize the microgestures a girl gives off when it's going to be a bust. Or how she behaves when she is DTF. Or if she is married. You can see when a girl is affected by something you said even if she tries to play it cool. And a wide variety of other situations. A man who has been gaming for several years has no excuse, he should be able to predict the outcome of social situations most of the time, and be hyperaware of everything that is happening.

Post: #17

Gut instinct is based on experiences (and other things like critical spirit).

That's why someone who come at you too strong behaving like an old friend is often bad news or when your girl tell you that she has something to talk about with you or when you see one of your friend in your building stairs when you come back from work.

Post: #18

Pretty reliable - I always know when a girl likes me. Conversely I can always tell when a girl has lost interest, which is a lot less pleasant.

I remember being 12 years old and knowing when I could kiss a girl, but not always trusting it.

Post: #19

(12-01-2015 10:07 PM)Gorgiass Wrote:  Here's a relevant Wikipedia article - "unconcious cognition" - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconscious_cognition

WIA makes a good point as always about anecdotes and confimation bias but in spite of this I have to agree with you that it's pretty reliable. The concious mind is a minority percentage of brain activity and limited in its ability to perceive and process stimuli, gut feelings are the conclusions from those processes being brought to the surface, stripped of "wish it could be this way" rationalizations.

This!

Post: #20

(12-01-2015 02:19 PM)OregonToSoCal Wrote:  The older I get the more I believe that my gut feelings are most of the time correct. Shoot my gut feelings about my first wife not being right for me proved to be dead on and I ignored it anyway much to my peril.

The only caveat I would make as far as my own experience would be is it really my gut feeling telling me to not move forward with something or is it my fear/insecurity/doubt masquerading as intuition?

Any way around it?

Post: #21

(12-01-2015 11:22 PM)CrashBangWallop Wrote:  Pretty much every disastrous business decision I have made has been when I've over-ridden my gut instinct with "logic".

I think when you dig deep enough into your gut instinct, it's there because of logic. I liken it to the idea that "women are emotional, not logical" argument. Emotions tend to follow some sort of logical reasoning, if one looks deep enough. Whether the person expressing the emotion in question is aware of it is another debate. Jealousy, in my experience, has typically been the correct emotion when I had it, I was just told to ignore it or rationalize it away when in reality, jealousy was very much the rational emotion.

Post: #22

(12-04-2015 06:47 PM)nek Wrote:  

(12-01-2015 11:22 PM)CrashBangWallop Wrote:  Pretty much every disastrous business decision I have made has been when I've over-ridden my gut instinct with "logic".

I think when you dig deep enough into your gut instinct, it's there because of logic. I liken it to the idea that "women are emotional, not logical" argument. Emotions tend to follow some sort of logical reasoning, if one looks deep enough. Whether the person expressing the emotion in question is aware of it is another debate. Jealousy, in my experience, has typically been the correct emotion when I had it, I was just told to ignore it or rationalize it away when in reality, jealousy was very much the rational emotion.

Could you elaborate more on this and by any chance give some examples?

I feel the exact same way and would like to hear more about this.

Post: #23

How soon after you've met a girl for the first time do you usually get a gut instinct about how much you can trust her?

Does your gut instinct about a girl ever change much or does it pretty much stay the same?

Post: #24

(12-04-2015 07:10 PM)Cheetah Wrote:  How soon after you've met a girl for the first time do you usually get a gut instinct about how much you can trust her?

Does your gut instinct about a girl ever change much or does it pretty much stay the same?

It varies, in my experience there's various situations that test them (some more than others), so the longer it takes for them to be in those situations the longer it may take, but typically it's never too long. And it rarely changes. I have a hunch you're asking this question b/c you're gut tells you more often than not that she isn't trustworthy. If that's the case, maybe your gut is telling you something about women on a larger scale.

Post: #25

(12-04-2015 06:53 PM)Anabasis to Desta Wrote:  

(12-04-2015 06:47 PM)nek Wrote:  

(12-01-2015 11:22 PM)CrashBangWallop Wrote:  Pretty much every disastrous business decision I have made has been when I've over-ridden my gut instinct with "logic".

I think when you dig deep enough into your gut instinct, it's there because of logic. I liken it to the idea that "women are emotional, not logical" argument. Emotions tend to follow some sort of logical reasoning, if one looks deep enough. Whether the person expressing the emotion in question is aware of it is another debate. Jealousy, in my experience, has typically been the correct emotion when I had it, I was just told to ignore it or rationalize it away when in reality, jealousy was very much the rational emotion.

Could you elaborate more on this and by any chance give some examples?

I feel the exact same way and would like to hear more about this.

I'm gonna freestyle this but here it goes:

On a fundamental level, if you like someone, there's certain things you just wouldn't do because you know it would piss them off. Now there's things that would be unreasonable to be pissed at someone about (like the color of their shoes), but there are things that, esp. as a man, SHOULD bother you yet in modern western culture we're suppose to sort of look past these things or simply accept them. For instance, if a girl is dancing provocatively with another man, touching him a lot in public and/or in your presence, these things ARE disrespectful and there's no need to play it off, it is disrespect. One, from my experience, was that she was still in touch with her ex (this should always be a deal-breaker).

Now, if you express that you find these things disrespectful to people today, they'll imply that you're line of thinking is outdated and that you need to catch up to how things work today. This is odd b/c quite simply, things aren't working today; hence the divorce rate, suicide rate, and rise of single parent house holds.

For contrast, you need to look at couples where the woman truly respects her man. They aren't common, but if you see them, you'll understand the difference in treatment. These women typically dress more conservative regardless of how good looking they are. They may tease their man, but it is clearly innocent and she always looks at him and smiles when she does it (not a smirk, but a soft, pleasant smile) and is only doing it to get a small reaction out of him. Some would call this 'shit-testing', but they don't give that much 'shit', and that's the important part. And when they do give shit, it certainly doesn't have any sexual innuendo to it (such as flirting with someone in front of you).

The real trick her is understanding that you can't really make anyone respect you. Respect, like attraction, can't be negotiated (for men, being respected is the cornerstone of being attractive). They do or they don't based on their assessment of you. What you do have control of, however, is letting these people into your life. One of the worst things that has occurred in the last however many years is this pressing need by people to have people to hang out with. Don't get me wrong, good friendships make life sweet, but being 'friends' with people who disrespect you since you have no one else to socialize with is simply toxic. It's the basis of the whole "dying alone" guilt trip. By placing this fear in your mind, it puts you in a position of putting up with shit you shouldn't b/c you've been convinced that something is better than nothing, which takes away you're best negotiating tool, you're ability to walk away from the deal.