[kloch]

I have a personal theory about human intuition.

It feels like answers come "from outer space" or "from God" but it's really just a highly optimized and efficient part of the brain for a very specific function. For that narrow function your brain has an effective IQ of something like 2000. As our brains have a much lower average IQ, we don't have the context to understand how we found the answer so we experience it and describe it as intuition.

If our entire brain operated at an IQ of 2000, we wouldn't experience it as intuition or a flash of genius, we would just say "I figured it out".

What I have read about Ramanujan sounds like he had some form of high functioning savant syndrome. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savant_syndrome

[citizenpaul]

Its been a while since I read about it but there is some theorizing on the split halves of the brain and the corpus callosum that connects the two halves.

One theory is that the connection between the two halves is a recent evolution and that people used to and some still do perceive the other half of their brain as a separate entity that communicates with them. Possibly being due to the corpus callosum not being the same in everyone. The greater theory being that this is basically the root of all religion.

[harperlee]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origin_of_Consciousness_in...