Intuition
The difficulty of many brain teasers relies on a certain degree of fallacy in human intuitiveness. This is most common in brain teasers relating to conditional probability, because the casual human mind tends to consider absolute probability instead. As a result, controversial discussions emerge from such problems, the most famous probably being the Monty Hall problem. Another (simpler) example of such a brain teaser is the Boy or Girl paradox.
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Famous quotes containing the word intuition:
“Well, intuition isn’t much help in police work. Facts are what we need.”
—Crane Wilbur (1889–1973)
“When a scientist is ahead of his times, it is often through misunderstanding of current, rather than intuition of future truth. In science there is never any error so gross that it won’t one day, from some perspective, appear prophetic.”
—Jean Rostand (1894–1977)
“Reason is sight. Instinct is touch. Intuition is smell.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)