Herbert Marcuse had a problem, the rationalised world of instrumental reason used as a way of explaining the social behaviour of humans. Measurable, predictable, analytic human subjects conforming to a statistical model, fitting neatly on a graph or perfectly represented by the Nash equilibrium. I agree with Marcuse that this is problematic, people do not conform in this way. No matter how much you formalise and rationalise the human subject you will be wrong enough to disprove the theory.

A look in the eye is an intuitive examination, say you go to an interview and you are just as qualified as the guy who went in before you. What differentiates between you? What data causes the interviewer to chose one of you over the other if not this simple intuitive judgement? Pursuing a strategy of choice between items or persons based on pure analytical information is only the first stage, else the face to face interview (the look in the eye) would be obsolete. So why then is it so discriminated against? The interviewer, under scrutiny could never put forward the opinion, even if true, that they didn’t engage the subject because of an intuitive feeling that he/she got while conducting the test.

“I just didn’t like the look of her”, “there’s something really creepy about that guy”, “it just didn’t feel right to me” – valid positions when we are allowed to express them, like say on a date, but invalidated by legislation in a role gaining situation. I can’t help but think of celebrity paedophilia and political correctness on this matter, I’m sure that the persons involved were given leeway because of lack of proof, I’m also sure that people who carried out the sort of horrendous behaviour these folks did would have raised red flags to the in-tune intuitive individual. It may have left this intuitive person powerless without concrete proof and unable to act or voice concern for fear of the PC police of the entertainment industry. This can’t be right? Intuition may be a very complex form of analytics but even if it is not it is a very useful tool. Don’t get me wrong, it can also cause great failure and leads to prejudice, supposition and wild speculation. There is also no process for formalising intuition, no standard operating procedure; so justifying a negative feeling that might exclude a person from a role might prove very problematic, however, I still have faith in intuition.

Paul Simon Wilson