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在立法会上，政府官员提出新政策，议员质询政策背后的理念、财务的计算等等，若官员不提供理据，只是说：“我这建议全凭直觉。”大家觉得可以接受吗？
有几个英文字都解直觉。通俗一点的有gut feeling。 Gut是名词，解内脏；例如︰The patient has a pain in her guts.（病人肚痛。）Guts解personal courage and determination或toughness of character，勇气；例如︰Do you have the guts to challenge the boss?（你够胆驳斥老板吗？）
理性分析不能接受
Gut feeling是指a feeling or reaction based on an instinctive emotional response rather than considered thought，基于本能情绪反应，而非深思熟虑的感觉或反应，即直觉；例如︰I had a gut feeling that something was wrong.（我直觉事情不对劲。）Hunch和intuition也解直觉。
现代社会，gut feeling、hunch或intuition都不是被接受或尊崇的做事方式。 Valerie van Mulukom在Conversation的文章”Should you trust your gut feeling?”（你应否信直觉？）中写道：
Indeed, relying on your intuition generally has a bad reputation（坏声誉）, especially in the Western part of the world where analytic thinking（分析思维） has been steadily promoted over the past decades.
Gradually, many have come to think that humans have progressed from relying on primitive（原始的）, magical（用魔法的） and religious（宗教的）thinking to analytic and scientific thinking. As a result, they view emotions and intuition as fallible （会出错的）, even whimsical（心血来潮的、古怪的）, tools.
现代人，特别是西方社会崇尚科学，凡事讲求科学根据，亦讲求理性分析、数据。这种纯理性的思维不能容纳解释不到的事物。 Intuition讲的不是理据而是没有明显解释的感觉，所以不被接受。
脑部预测处理运作
不过接受与否，我们天天做的决定，不少都有intuition的成分，而这些gut feeling，其实可以很准确，引领我们做正确的决定，甚至可以救命。 Intuition其实是一种称为”predictive processing framework”（预测性处理架构）的脑部运作。 “This ensures that the brain is always as prepared to deal with the current situation as optimally（最佳）as possible.”
脑袋会不断把从目前环境收到的讯息与过去的经验比较，去推测将会发生的事。而这种运作是自动下意识进行，所以自己不会察觉，察觉到有分歧，就会纠正。文中引了个例子：晚上在一段不熟悉的公路上驾车，忽然觉得应把车子偏向一面，跟着你察觉原来避开了路上一个大洞。令你避开危险的是intuition，a hunch，但实际上发生的是：
In reality, the car in the far distance in front of you made a similar small swerve（突然转向） (since they are locals and know the road), and you picked up on this without consciously registering（被意识到）it.
问题是，哪种是可信赖的直觉，哪些只是空想或冲动的反应，不是那么容易分辨。心理学学者Gary Klein认为︰”90 percent of the critical decisions（关键的决定）we make is based on our intuition”，在The Power of Intuition: How to Use Your Gut Feelings to Make Better Decisions at Work中，他教大家识别有用的gut feelings。
