In Defense of Intuition (with Gerd Gigerenzer)

EconTalk

Library of Economics and Liberty

Education, Interviews, Philosophy, Social Sciences, Economics, Society & Culture, Books, Business, Courses, Science, Ethics, History

4.7 • 4.3K Ratings

🗓️ 29 December 2025

⏱️ 58 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer explains the power of intuition, how intuition became gendered, what he thinks Kahneman and Tversky's research agenda got wrong, and why it's a mistake to place intuition and conscious thinking on opposing ends of the cognition spectrum. Topics he discusses in this wide-ranging conversation with EconTalk's Russ Roberts include what Gigerenzer calls the "bias bias"--the overemphasis on claims of irrationality, why it's better to replace "nudging" with "boosting," and the limitations of AI in its current form as a replacement for human intelligence and intuition.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome to Econ Talk, Conversations for the Curious, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty.
0:07.9	I'm your host, Russ Roberts, of Sholem College in Jerusalem and Stanford University's Hoover Institution.
0:13.8	Go to EconTalk.org, where you can subscribe, comment on this episode, and find links and other information related to today's conversation.
0:21.5	You'll also find our archives with every episode we've done going back to 2006.
0:26.7	Our email address is mail at econTalk.org.
0:30.0	We'd love to hear from you.
0:36.6	Today is December 4th, 2025, and my guest is psychologist and author Gerd Gigerenser of the Max Planck
0:44.1	Plank Institute for Human Development.
0:46.4	This is Gerd's third appearance of the program.
0:49.0	He was last year in August of 2022 discussing artificial intelligence.
0:53.9	Our topic for today is his book, The Intelligence
0:57.1	of Intuition. Gerd, welcome back to Econ Talk. Oh, I'm glad to be here with you again.
1:04.3	Tell us what you mean by intuition. It's a very imprecise word to some extent, but you mean something a little more precise.
1:13.1	True.
1:14.4	Intuition is a feeling based on years of experience that comes fast into your consciousness.
1:25.1	So you feel what you should do or what you shouldn't do.
1:28.6	And a way you have no way to explain it, where it's coming from.
1:34.3	So it is not an arbitrary decision.
1:40.7	It is not a seventh or sixth sense, depending on how you count the sentences and it's also not
1:51.0	not something that only women have so everyone has intuition who has experience with a certain
1:59.9	domain or task.
2:03.9	So you mentioned women.
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in 7 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Library of Economics and Liberty, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Library of Economics and Liberty and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.