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[MBTI General] What the fudge is a hunch?

guesswho

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I don't get it. What the hell is a hunch?
How does one have a 'hunch'?

Let's assume that you have to make an important decision, and can't make up your mind about all the stuff that you have to consider before deciding.
Is that when you generally have a hunch?
Because when I have to make a hard decision my instinct is to choose the safest way, it's some kind of self preserving thing. Is that a hunch? Because I almost never choose the safest/longest/most boring way?!


And I noticed that in these MBTI questionnaires they ask you if you have hunches or premonitions.... like in the same question.

How the hell does one have premonitions?! Is that even possible?

The google definition :
# foreboding: a feeling of evil to come; "a steadily escalating sense of foreboding"; "the lawyer had a presentiment that the judge would dismiss the case"
# forewarning: an early warning about a future event

A feeling of evil to come ?! ?!

Most of the time when something bad was about to happen, like when I crashed my car....I did not ' feel the evil coming ' and I also do not believe that is possible.
:shock:


Am I the only one who finds these questions odd?!

Is the hunch thing Ni related? I mean...that's how they define Ni on some websites, offering absolutely no insight.
 

Such Irony

Honor Thy Inferior
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How the hell does one have premonitions?! Is that even possible?

The google definition :
# foreboding: a feeling of evil to come; "a steadily escalating sense of foreboding"; "the lawyer had a presentiment that the judge would dismiss the case"
# forewarning: an early warning about a future event

A feeling of evil to come ?! ?!

Most of the time when something bad was about to happen, like when I crashed my car....I did not ' feel the evil coming ' and I also do not believe that is possible.
:shock:


Am I the only one who finds these questions odd?!

Is the hunch thing Ni related? I mean...that's how they define Ni on some websites, offering absolutely no insight.

I think it's probably more Ni than Ne related. And for the record, I don't relate well to the feeling of evil to come thing either. My brand of intuition works more like this: think up a bunch of different possible scenarios for what could possibly happen rather than having a strong sense that one particular scenario will happen. Then again my Ne is much stronger than my Ni on function tests.
 

Thalassa

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I don't know if it's Ni related. Could actually be feeler related. I have them all of the time, and I know SFJs that get them.

I get feelings about the weirdest shit, like I'll just know a certain person is going to do something or the way things are gonna go sometimes, without them saying a word to me.

These kind of "premonitions" I believe are either related to being a feeler, or may be the sort of intuition that is ABSOLUTELY NOT MBTI INTUITION...which is what I usually tend to presume.

Intuition is like seeing the big picture and being theoretical and living in your head, I don't think it translates to the more traditional idea of "women's intuition" or psychic phenomenon, though some people do attribute this quality to Ni, it's true.

I tend to score as Ni dom on some tests.
 

Poki

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If hunch is related to Ni, then I am really weak in that area of Ni. I dont get hunches, just analysis combined with "jumping". When the voices say "jump" I cant help but listen to them. Im not one of those crazies who actually talks to the voices ;)
 

Red Herring

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There is nothing supernatural about it. The idea is that you posess much more information and experience than you know or could consciously process at a time. A hunch is the fuzzy result of a subconscious analyzis of that background knowledge you have accumulated. Your conscious does merely a part of your brains work. Think about how much you do every day without consciously deciding to do it. If you do not trust the result of your mental underlings' work, you can take your time and analyze why your gut reached a certain conclucion (you felt good or bad about a certain idea without fully knowing why). In an ideal situation, with all the information at hand (some of whichich might be dug up under a pile of dust or hidden under a trap door in your basement) you should eventually reach then same conclusion or at least understand it...but it would take much longer.

That being said, there are some primordial human instincts that were very useful in a different environment and under simpler circumstances and can become a problem today. So take a deep breath and try to tell the inner subconscious data analyst from the inner neandethal jumping at the sound of a potential predator in the bushes. That's the art.
 

Atomic Fiend

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When you have an idea of how an event will work but don't know the specifics based on the results of situations that have occurred in the past that comparable to the event. That's a hunch (I guess)

A guess or feeling not based on known facts.

Hunches aren't mystical in the least, it's just that they are a little better then lucky guess at the end of the day.
 

Poki

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A hunch is something that is believed to be true. The best way to allow an INTP to experience a hunch is to ask them if their they are intelligent.

edit: I had to fix my mistake as I had a hunch that an INTP would point it out and miss the point of the post.
 

Thalassa

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Some people have premonitory feelings. These things do exist. Suddenly you just "know" and you feel it, it's experienced as a feeling, not a lucky guess.

A lucky guess comes from inside you and it's probably the result of intuition comibined with thinking or rational processes.

A premonition feels like it comes from the outside in, and it is seperate from the concept of "hunch."

A hunch is much less powerful in feeling, and has more margin for error.
 

guesswho

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There is nothing supernatural about it. The idea is that you posess much more information and experience than you know or could consciously process at a time. A hunch is the fuzzy result of a subconscious analyzis of that background knowledge you have accumulated. Your conscious does merely a part of your brains work. Think about how much you do every day without consciously deciding to do it. If you do not trust the result of your mental underlings' work, you can take your time and analyze why your gut reached a certain conclucion (you felt good or bad about a certain idea without fully knowing why). In an ideal situation, with all the information at hand (some of whichich might be dug up under a pile of dust or hidden under a trap door in your basement) you should eventually reach then same conclusion or at least understand it...but it would take much longer.

That being said, there are some primordial human instincts that were very useful in a different environment and under simpler circumstances and can become a problem today. So take a deep breath and try to tell the inner subconscious data analyst from the inner neandethal jumping at the sound of a potential predator in the bushes. That's the art.

So a hunch may appear like this:
iceberg.jpg

But in fact it's like this:
iceberg.jpg


Or that's just the conscious/ unconscious mind.

Funny when I googled iceberg at the pictures section I also found this:

496px-Structural-Iceberg.svg.png


Obviously somebody had thought of this before. Or it is possible that I read the conscious/unconscious mind looks like an iceberg, and forgot about it. ( actually now that I think better about it I have read something that contained this example : )) )
Interesting how we experience a ton of stuff, and then forget it, or remember only the essence, the rest being thrown away in some dark corner of our minds. And we may dream things long forgotten, I love those dreams. They're like the backdoor to the unconscious. Most memories have specific coordinates, those which we can recall, but the forgotten ones are the exact opposite. Fragments of them being projected in the dreams, in a random order.

I'd listen to people's dreams all day, just to make some sense of them.

Of course, I think you may already know that lol. But I can't help jumping from one idea to the other.

Have you read anything from Freud or Jung? I've only read crappy Romanian translations.
 

Biaxident

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Some people have premonitory feelings. These things do exist. Suddenly you just "know" and you feel it, it's experienced as a feeling, not a lucky guess.

A lucky guess comes from inside you and it's probably the result of intuition combined with thinking or rational processes.

A premonition feels like it comes from the outside in, and it is separate from the concept of "hunch."

A hunch is much less powerful in feeling, and has more margin for error.

Pretty much.

But generally my hunches prove correct.
 

Red Herring

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So a hunch may appear like this:
But in fact it's like this:

Or that's just the conscious/ unconscious mind.

Obviously somebody had thought of this before. Or it is possible that I read the conscious/unconscious mind looks like an iceberg, and forgot about it. ( actually now that I think better about it I have read something that contained this example : )) )
Interesting how we experience a ton of stuff, and then forget it, or remember only the essence, the rest being thrown away in some dark corner of our minds. And we may dream things long forgotten, I love those dreams. They're like the backdoor to the unconscious. Most memories have specific coordinates, those which we can recall, but the forgotten ones are the exact opposite. Fragments of them being projected in the dreams, in a random order.

I'd listen to people's dreams all day, just to make some sense of them.

Of course, I think you may already know that lol. But I can't help jumping from one idea to the other.

Have you read anything from Freud or Jung? I've only read crappy Romanian translations.

That looks like a good illustration of what I meant. I was speaking as aTi/Ne who has never knowingly had an experience of premonition and is very skeptical about those but who grew up as the daughter of a psychoanalyst (a former medical doctor but - by personality - much closer to the ethereal side than blood and bones) who often talked about the powers of the unconscious. As a biologist my mum has always been skeptical about psychology, she is always looking for the neurological aspects and evolutionary roots of certain phenomena. So I grew up exposed to those two world views.

As I said, Guesswho and I share the same functions, so I thought this might get closer to what he might experience and I was referring to hunches, not premonitions. I can´t speak for Ni. I don´t know what it feels like for you guys. As a general rule, I am extremely skeptical about anything that reeks of the paranormal. So when people tell me "I thought of my Granny and she called me that very moment" I usually think "Why, in all those years it would be extraordinary if she didn´t at some point or other". People tend to underestimate chance in my opinion.
But maybe we are talking about the same thing in different languages.

And talking languages. Since my native language is the native language of Freud and Jung and Adler and a bunch of others, yes, I have read the original. Well, only a few pages of Adler, a few essays by Jung and a few books by Freud because he is actually a good writer. I started reading him in my free time at college, but it was triggered by my dad's recommendation when I was much younger. He used to admire Freud's elegant use of the German language.
 
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