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Contrary to intuition


A counterintuitive proposition is one that does not seem likely to be true when assessed using intuition, common sense, or gut feelings.

Scientifically discovered, objective truths are often called counterintuitive when intuition, emotions, and other cognitive processes outside of deductive rationality interpret them to be wrong. However, the subjective nature of intuition limits the objectivity of what to call counterintuitive because what is counter-intuitive for one may be intuitive for another. This might occur in instances where intuition changes with knowledge. For instance, many aspects of quantum mechanics or general relativity may sound counterintuitive to a layman, while they may be intuitive to a particle physicist.

Flawed intuitive understanding of a problem may lead to counter-productive behavior with undesirable outcomes. In some such cases, counterintuitive policies may then produce a more desirable outcome. This can lead to conflicts between those who hold deontological and consequentialist ethical perspectives on those issues.

Many scientific ideas that are generally accepted by people today were formerly considered to be contrary to intuition and common sense.

For example, most everyday experience suggests that the Earth is flat; actually, this view turns out to be a remarkably good approximation to the true state of affairs, which is that the Earth is a very big (relative to the day-to-day scale familiar to humans) oblate spheroid. Furthermore, prior to the Copernican revolution, heliocentrism, the belief that the Earth goes around the Sun, rather than vice versa, was considered to be contrary to common sense.


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