The Zurich Axioms By Max Gunther
Previous Chapter | Next Chapter
Never confuse a hunch with a hope
When you want something very much, you can all too easily talk yourself into believing it will happen. This fact of human psychology confound little children dreaming of what they want for Christmas, and it confounds speculators dreaming of all the money they’re going to make.
You visit a small-town art show and buy a couple of paintings by an obscure artist named Trashworthy. You get them home and discover that you don’t like them quite as much as you thought you did. They are rather weird, in fact, A nasty little voice somewhere inside suggests that maybe you’ve wasted your money. But those whining words are quickly drowned out by the thunder of a mighty hunch. Someday, the hunch says, Trashworthy will get the recognition he deservers! Those paintings will be sought by collectors everywhere! Great museums will bid for them!
Is it a hunch worth listening to? Or only a hope?
My personal rule is to be highly skeptical anytime. I have a hunch that something I want to happen will happen. This doesn’t mean all such hunches are wrong. It means only that one should examine them with extra case and double one’s guard in case of trouble.
By contrast, I’m much more inclined to trust an intuition pointing to some outcome I don’t want. If I had bought those paintings and generated a hunch that Trashworthy was never going to make it (and if I had enough knowledge of art to make such a hunch plausible), my inclination would be to unload fast.
Speculative Strategy
The Seventh Axiom suggests that it is a mistake either to laugh at hunches categorically or to trust them indiscriminately. Though intuition is not infallible, it an be useful speculative tool if handled with care and skepticism. There is nothing magical or otherworldly about intuition. It is simply a manifestation of a perfectly ordinary mental experience: that of knowing something without knowing how one knows it.
If you are hit by a strong hunch telling you to make a certain move with your money, the Axiom urges you to put it to a test. Trust it only if you can explain it – that is, only if you can identify within your mind a stored body of information out of which that hunch might reasonably be supposed to have arisen. If you have no such library of data, disregard the hunch.
The associated Minor Axiom XI warns, finally, that a hunch can easily be confused with a hope. Be especially wary of any intuitive flash that seems to promise some outcome you want badly.