Sixth sense and intuition

[Clueless Morgan]

I'm not sure I'm following your train of thought or what you're making the connection back to.

Yeah, I wrote this at work and forgot to connect it all. The connection is "keeping time". In a song it's small scale and in life it's larger scale.

What I meant was, in what way is this idea of keeping time connected to the idea of intuition or a "sixth sense?"

Keeping time with music isn't hard for people trained in how to do it. Professional musicians practice for hours upon hours upon hours upon hours so whatever prescient or intuitive abilities they might seem to have have been drilled into them by... practice. It's also not so amazing when you're singing along to a song you know well and come back into the room and you're still on time. If you know the song well then you're far more likely to have something like that happen, and the odds of that happening only increase if you've had musical training. What would be way more amazing would be if you did this with a song you don't know well or only heard once or twice.

There's also the question of how accurate your memory of this happening actually is and to what degree your brain has reconstructed the memory to make seem like you were exactly on time with the music when you returned to the room when you were actually two or three counts slow.

But that's a whole other can of worms.

The claim that "we know exactly when someone might call us" is all just confirmation bias, though.  You remember the times when you think "Hey, I think mom might call me today" and when she does you pat yourself on the back and forget all the times you thought she would call and she doesn't.

Oh yeah, confirmation bias explains a large portion of it. But I think people's schedules play into it too. Say your sister goes on break everyday at noon, but only has time to call you on Wednesdays usually. It's not a spoken rule, but you pick up on it, even if you don't notice you've picke up on it. I'm never seen proof of this, but I'm throwing it out there anyways, because its more plausible than anything supernatural.

So... you've detected a pattern that your sister calls you every week and so you develop an "intuition" that she'll call you every week? That's not amazing, that's pattern recognition.

Perhaps I'm still not understanding you?

[Exian]

No it sounds like you're getting it. Haha My point is that it isn't amazing. Musicians learn to keep time with practice (nothing amazing), I'm saying that what looks like a "sixth sense" is actually just you being "practiced" at your life's different routines. So people who say "It's sooo weird, I knew you would call!" it's either confirmation bias (most likely) or them being in tune with their life.

[Athene]

If we were to be consciously aware of every single detail that we see and experience, our brain would overloaded from the amount of stimuli. Your brain makes it easy on you by determining what is crucial and relevant, but all of the extraneous info doesn't vanish. By and large, it is believed that the brain stores every single thing that we ever  learn, observe or experience as a memory, but we are limited by our ability to access these memories.
I think what people often call ESP or intuition is actually just inductive reasoning at the subconscious level. Makes more sense than woo.

[Clueless Morgan]

No it sounds like you're getting it. Haha My point is that it isn't amazing. Musicians learn to keep time with practice (nothing amazing), I'm saying that what looks like a "sixth sense" is actually just you being "practiced" at your life's different routines. So people who say "It's sooo weird, I knew you would call!" it's either confirmation bias (most likely) or them being in tune with their life.

Ah, okay. I totally thought you were going somewhere else with that analogy...

[Exian]

No it sounds like you're getting it. Haha My point is that it isn't amazing. Musicians learn to keep time with practice (nothing amazing), I'm saying that what looks like a "sixth sense" is actually just you being "practiced" at your life's different routines. So people who say "It's sooo weird, I knew you would call!" it's either confirmation bias (most likely) or them being in tune with their life.

Ah, okay. I totally thought you were going somewhere else with that analogy...

Haha Not your fault. My whole life I've had a problem with omitting the exact crucial detail while explaining things, and it only gets worse when I'm distracted by little things like work.

You should have known, though, since I vowed a long time ago to never argue with you.

[Clueless Morgan]

You should have known, though, since I vowed a long time ago to never argue with you.

Really? I was not informed of this vow.

Now, what completely idiotic, totally asinine stance can I take that you will be unable to argue with me about???

[Exian]

You should have known, though, since I vowed a long time ago to never argue with you.

Really? I was not informed of this vow.

Yep! Check your rep

Now, what completely idiotic, totally asinine stance can I take that you will be unable to argue with me about???

...uh-oh.