April 15 - Take a Wild Guess Day

nPosted on April 15, 2019

Key points

nHave you ever played a guessing game like this?

nWhen you do, do you just write any old number – taking a wild guess? Or do you try to reason out how many jellybeans really might be in that jar?

nThe latter is going to get better results – UNLESS….

nSometimes we say we are taking a “wild guess” when we are really taking a “gut feeling” guess. When you have a gut feeling about something – this place seems dangerous, that guy is not trustworthy, my friend seems sick but claims she is fine – there are a few possibilities of what is going on.

(1) You could be putting onto your environment or another person your own mood; for example, if you are feeling angry, but you don’t want to admit that to yourself, you could externalize that feeling and decide that a class is awful or a friend is mad.

n(2) You could be acting on prejudices that you were taught from an early age. For example, thinking that poor people are criminals or that people of a different race are dangerous are common prejudices that should be examined, acknowledged as bigotry, and discarded.

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(3) OR you could be acting on something you know, but you don’t know that you know it. Sometimes we pick up on subtle cues, small details, soft sounds or even lack of sound – but all of that noticing is below the threshold of your attention, because you are being distracted by a conversation or the music coming through your earbuds or…?

If you feel like this guy is not to be trusted…
could it be that you are picking up on
subtle behaviors or “tells”?

nMaybe you just feel in your gut that something is wrong, or at least that something isn’t right.

nOr maybe you pick up on happy energy, excitement, and you feel a sort of expectation that something good is afoot – but when asked later, “Did you suspect we were throwing you a surprise party?” – you can’t quite put your finger on what it was that tipped you off that something nice was about to happen.

nIf you feel that you “just know” something, you “just have a feeling,” you have a “gut feeling” – you should definitely consider listening to or acting on that feeling. It’s quite possible that a part of your brain has picked up on something real. But you should also keep in mind the possibility that you MIGHT be externalizing your own mood or dealing with prejudice.

nOf course, there is another kind of guessing – and that is making an educated guess. In this case, you know a lot about a topic, and you can make a sort of estimate based on that knowledge.

nWeather predictions are highly educated guesses – but of course there are a bajillion factors that result in wind and precipitation and so forth, so they are still in the guesswork realm. A weather scientist may know for sure that your town will get some rain tomorrow, but the predicted amount of rain will be an educated guess rather than a certainty. A weather scientist making predictions about conditions a week from now are definitely more in the educated guess arena, rather than the business of certainties – because of all those bajillion factors that might make a storm build or dissipate or stall somewhere…