On the one hand, I accept that humans have definitely developed something that, for lack of a better word, I would call intuition. We have evolved a keen sense of how to "read" our fellow humans because it can impart an evolutionary advantage - being able to detect the subtleties of when someone is deceiving us can save our lives, especially in the past when encounter people you're not familiar with often, literally, a matter of life and death. We also use this ability in other ways that might have helped our ancestors survive more readily than others.
As far as a person being able to tell hot from cold water merely by the sound of it being poured, I could see an evolutionary advantage to a skill like that being developed, so I don't have a huge reason to call bullshit on a claim like that. (Although now I kind of want to test it out on the water dispenser here at my office...
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I, personally, wouldn't call it a sixth sense because that implies that it's something supernatural, merely because of the connotations that have come to be attached to that term.
I also agree with Aoi that there is a huge element of confirmation bias that comes into play whenever we say that we have successfully deduced something through our intuition. Yes, you may have correctly deduced that your employee was lying about how long it took to complete that project last week, but did you didn't have a clue that your other employee has been embezzling money from your company and has been getting away with it for three years. In the first case you'd call yourself a whiz at identifying problem employees. But you're not even aware of the second case.
As far as a person being able to tell hot from cold water merely by the sound of it being poured, I could see an evolutionary advantage to a skill like that being developed, so I don't have a huge reason to call bullshit on a claim like that. (Although now I kind of want to test it out on the water dispenser here at my office...
)I, personally, wouldn't call it a sixth sense because that implies that it's something supernatural, merely because of the connotations that have come to be attached to that term.
I also agree with Aoi that there is a huge element of confirmation bias that comes into play whenever we say that we have successfully deduced something through our intuition. Yes, you may have correctly deduced that your employee was lying about how long it took to complete that project last week, but did you didn't have a clue that your other employee has been embezzling money from your company and has been getting away with it for three years. In the first case you'd call yourself a whiz at identifying problem employees. But you're not even aware of the second case.
Teenaged X-Files obsession + Bermuda Triangle episode + Self-led school research project = Atheist.
