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hi you may have seen videos like this or
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this or even some of my own stuff and
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you probably wondered how how is a human
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like you or me capable of being so fast
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at something and how can you get to this
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point too and as it turns out nothing
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special is really happening just as you
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can instantly recognize the smell of
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your favorite food people who are really
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good at things can instantly recognize
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the solution to a familiar problem it's
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like second nature So today we're going
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to cover how this happens and talk all
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about intuition a lightning fast super
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powerful intellectual part of your brain
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that works unconsciously almost like
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magic to brew up solutions to any sort
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of problem you're trying to solve and if
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you practice and use it properly which
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I'll show you how to do you can train
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yourself to find solutions to very
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challenging problems and mere seconds
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and yes this is intuition for problem
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solving any kind of problem solving and
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while I'll be talking mainly in the
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context of programming as applies to
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basically anything competitive
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programming coding interviews math chess
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even I don't know anything even real
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life problems and this video you you're
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going to learn how you can use it to its
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full potential now obligatory saying
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that's not the flex but just to prove my
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credibility there's a reason I'm
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qualified to talk about this for one I'm
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one of the world's best competitive
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programmers so I know what it takes to
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get good at problem solving and I'm very
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very good at speed contests and the
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reason why is that my intuition is
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extremely strong and I can come up with
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a solution to most problems basically
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instantly so you can trust me to talk
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about intuition too but we'll focus on
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one particular achievement here so
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yusico is this national USA competitive
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programming competition with a lot of
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people it's like the math Olympiad for
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programming and in just three months I
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got to the top 10 percent or the highest
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division how I use two strategies the
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first was raw practice and I've talked a
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lot about that in other videos but the
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second was something I've actually never
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spoken about before it was a purely
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intuition-based strategy and it worked
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way better than I expected it to I think
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it really did unlock my intuition and
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it'll certainly work on yours too so
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I'll deep dive into that strategy later
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in this video now let me just describe
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what I mean by intuition since people
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tend to group terms together and have
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different definitions there's a little
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bit of science I'll have to involve here
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but it'll be quick I promise it's
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probably also an oversimplification but
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it'll work here it's fine so imagine
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your brain has two sides to it a fast
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side and a slow side your slow side is
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the thinking that you put effort into
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it's your processing and your reasoning
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and hopefully decide you're watching
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this video with and your fast side is
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what's relevant for intuition it's your
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fuel based thinking it's the patterns
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you learn and it's completely
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unconscious you don't have to mentally
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activate it it doesn't take any work and
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a consequence of it being so fast is
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that it has to be based entirely on just
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your past knowledge and your knowledge
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of the situation in front of you there's
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no other information you can use because
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you don't have time to think so the more
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knowledge you absorb the more accurate
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your fast brain would be and intuition
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isn't the entirety of your fast brain
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it's only a part of it but everything
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about the fast brain applies to
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intuition more knowledge more effective
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so to summarize intuition basically asks
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given a problem what has worked before
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will it also work here that's all it's
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doing it comes as a gut feeling
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as you probably experienced and I can
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explain in an intuitive way too by the
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way the word intuitive it means that it
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makes sense to your intuition and the
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easiest way to think about intuition is
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like a sixth sense look at this image a
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lot of things just happened in that
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Split Second your brain went through an
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incredibly complex series of
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calculations and all of that came
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together for you to recognize that I
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just showed you a chair and that's
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stupid and pointless but the idea is
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your sense of sight lets you easily
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recognize objects without even thinking
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about it intuition works the same way
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you encounter some problem without even
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trying your brain tries to categorize it
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based on other problems that it's seen
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before if I give you a different type of
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chair even though it's not the same your
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brain still does a pretty good job of
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categorizing and similarly if a problem
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has any similar elements to other
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problems you've seen before you can
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recognize those elements and put them
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together to work on a solution I've
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caught myself countless times saying
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something like smells like greedy or
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feels like binary search or something of
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that nature and it really does just
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smell think of intuition like a sense
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and it'll make sense I'm sorry now
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there's one distinction I have to make
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there's intuition and insight different
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terms that kind of mean similar things
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so I should clarify what I'm talking
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about but intuition is part of your slow
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brain it's hard to tell whether it's
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unconscious or not but it's more towards
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the side of deep reflective thought
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rather than the instant intuition and it
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generates new solutions to problems
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rather than offering old ones to imagine
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this better imagine a completely random
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sequence of characters there's a decent
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chance that you'll find a few actual
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words in there and that's a massive
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oversimplification of how Insight works
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but given the random noise of your
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thoughts some of it will be incredibly
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useful and new to you and I won't go any
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deeper let's just get back to intuition
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and hopefully I've done a decent job at
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selling intuition to you but there are a
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few explicit reasons for why it's a good
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thing to develop your intuition first
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there are obvious benefits to being able
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to solve problems quickly especially for
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time-based problems where it's really
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helpful to get quick Solutions intuition
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is your wingman into the world of
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success it's pretty much the fastest
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brain process that'll be useful to you
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so it's good for you until tuition to be
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strong and your intuition is generally
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going to be the first thoughts that you
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think of these thoughts will likely take
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up a lot of your time so it'd be a good
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thing if your intuition was strong and
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those thoughts were correct and even
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Beyond just the first step your
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intuition can guide you through the next
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steps and the next steps after those and
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for all of that you want your thoughts
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to not be wrong so having a strong
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intuition is always good if you don't
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have the right intuition even if your
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slow brain is really strong you'll be
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fighting yourself the whole time because
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you're fast brain and your intuition
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will be screaming wrong ideas at you and
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there are of course more reasons for
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wanting a good intuition but you get the
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point now there are some important
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things to mention about actually using
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intuition first you have to work with it
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not rely on it intuition only generates
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shallow ideas it gives you a step in the
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right direction but it doesn't give you
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the full directions unless the problem
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is simple enough that each idea can be
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figured out by intuition you can take
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the ideas that intuition gives you and
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expand them into a full solution but you
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likely have to do that with your slow
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brain and your reasoning so make your
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fast burning slow brain work together
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get ideas from intuition and details
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from reasoning and also you should be
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wary of the fact that your intuition
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could be wrong you should try to back up
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your intuition with either actual
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justification or proof even or at the
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very least some small example cases for
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this it does help to be good at proving
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things you obviously don't have to be
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formal there exists things called
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intuitive proofs that are based on
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intuitive facts that make sense to you
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and you can just take the big ideas and
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leave out the small details but it's a
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good idea to practice justifying things
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otherwise you'll likely just be making
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semi-blind guesses from intuition which
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won't always work out for you and while
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intuition is great for pointing you in
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the right direction sometimes it points
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you in the wrong direction too and the
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issue with intuition being wrong is that
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it's quite hard to tune it out if your
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intuition is wrong and you have to work
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with some unintuitive idea your
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intuition will be screaming at you to go
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some other way and it won't be good it's
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easy to get trapped in a wrong idea for
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your intuition and struggle to get out
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of it so be careful with it again that's
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why it's a good idea to get good at
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proving stuff because logic is a
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separate way to check if your intuition
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is misleading you or not and the better
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you are a logical thing thinking and
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reasoning the better you'll be at
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ignoring wrong intuitions because you
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have practice with working independently
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of intuition so intuition is usually
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good but not always sometimes it's
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better to stick to Pure logic and that's
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why it's important to improve both and
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not rely on one too much intuition is
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also unconscious you can get an idea but
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have no idea where I came from sometimes
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it's even harder to understand how you
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got the idea than to come up with the
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idea itself and that sounds pretty
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annoying but you can still work with it
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because eventually The Logical side of
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your brain will come to the same
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conclusion and that's a conclusion that
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you'll understand a lot better so it's
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not such a big deal and finally
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intuition is not so useful for entirely
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new stuff as again it's based mostly on
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past information other things can help
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you with that like logic or Insight but
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intuition won't do much for you but it's
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damn good at recognizing stuff you've
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seen elements at before now as I
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mentioned in the beginning there's an
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intuition-based strategy I use to
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achieve super rapid Improvement in
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yusica and the main reason I didn't
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share it before is because I thought it
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didn't help me but after thinking about
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intuition a lot for this video I
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realized that it did a lot more for me
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than I initially thought and what I did
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is really simple I picked a bunch of
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problems from the hardest Division and
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second hardest problems that were
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admittedly way too hard for me and I
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didn't even attempt to solve them all I
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did was read the problem and then almost
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immediately have to read the solution
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and my thought process when doing this
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was I have a contest soon and I need to
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learn as much as possible so let's
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become familiar with a bunch of
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different problems and different
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solution ideas and if I see anything
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similar in the contest I can look at
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this problem and its solution again and
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figure out how it can help me and
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admittedly this won't work for youseco
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anymore because you can't use the
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internet and problems are less topic
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oriented now you can take the basic idea
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of what I did and turn it into a general
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strategy basically what happened was
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that I created a mental mapping between
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problems and solutions but not really
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problems and solutions more like problem
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components and solution components like
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General problem components to General
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solution ideas and that's exactly what
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intuition gives you General ideas the
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strategy breaks down information the
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exact way that your intuition will
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process it and you should include
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everything about the solution not just
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the solution itself but also elements of
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how to come up with it thought-provoking
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questions to ask yourself
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simplifications you can try common
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thought processes Etc anything that
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could possibly apply to Future similar
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problems it also helps to understand why
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the associations actually work this will
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make your intuition more accurate since
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it lets your intuition understand what
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it's doing and also tells it what
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information is more relevant and what
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information isn't and if you end up
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finding that none of your associations
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can justify the solution it tells you
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need to look for new associations in the
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problem it's not strictly necessary to
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understand the whys and ultimately
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you're just learning patterns but it
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helps so to generalize the strategy to
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this video you want to break down the
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problem and solution to pieces that are
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easy to remember ideally plain English
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or whatever language you prefer and then
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learn or memorize but ideally learn
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these pieces and create the mental
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Association so when you encounter
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similar problem pieces your intuition
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can easily match them to the appropriate
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solution pieces now it's significantly
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easier to remember stuff if you come up
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with a solution yourself since your
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brain will already understand it and you
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remember it better still if you spend
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time on the problem because the more
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time you spend thinking about it the
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more it'll be burned into your brain and
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further still solving the problem helps
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you to understand the why between the
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behind the associations and that helps
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your intuition be more accurate which
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can help a lot so it's up to you you can
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either solve problems normally and also
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create the mental mapping to help your
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Intuition or you can use the strategy I
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use myself and not even bother solving
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just create the mental mapping the slow
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strategy of actually solving problems
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will give you deeper understanding of
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solutions and improve your logic too
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while the fast strategy of jumping to
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Solutions will help your intuition more
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but nothing else so there are trade-offs
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and you can try both and see what sticks
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with you more but no matter what you do
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you want to create that mental mapping
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for every problem you do that's what's
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going to help your intuition and you may
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also want to do some explicit testing of
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your intuition too I have a video on
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this for the programming world but the
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gist is give yourself a problem and try
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to guess only the high level General
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ideas see if your intuition is right
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about them and do that for a lot of
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problems and if you don't understand
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something or get something wrong try to
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use a proof for justification or solve
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it fully so you can see why that's the
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answer and why you got it wrong but
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ultimately just give your intuition that
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exercise and separately you also want to
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challenge yourself because you won't
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learn much from stuff that's already
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easy for you I did my process and
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problems that were extremely hard for me
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there's some Merit to practicing easier
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problems for the purpose of getting
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faster and you may want to do some of
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that too but speed will come naturally
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anyway so don't worry too much about
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that and also note that there are a lot
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of parallels of pattern recognition
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you're creating mental patterns for
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yourself so your intuition can pick up
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on them and recognize them in similar
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problems so being good at that will help
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too and there's roughly three more
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things to mention in this section first
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I want to make it clear that you can't
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do only the mental mapping strategy if
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you your intuition is extremely far
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ahead of your reasoning skills you will
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be lost all the time you have to do
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normal practice too because for the
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hardest of problems your slow brain is
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going to do most of the work I also said
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before to properly use intuition you
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also have to be decent at proving or
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justifying your intuition to make sure
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you aren't being led down a wrong path
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so while training your intuition when
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you're solving problems make the effort
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to justify them too learn proof
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techniques and get some proof practice
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too so you can tell the difference
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between wrong and right intuitions and
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one final thing there may exist some
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research to stuff like meditation or
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mindfulness training helps I can't
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really comment on it but I felt like I
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bring it up so feel free to try it or
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research it more for yourself if you
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want now one more thing let's address
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the common concern about intelligence
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will smarter people have a natural
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Advantage with intuition obviously there
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will exist people that have better
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intuition than others and can improve it
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faster but the more interesting question
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is why that's the case one answer is
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that some people have a natural
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advantage over others but is it really
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natural in the common nature versus
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nurture debate in science I like to
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believe in nurture and the reason that
00:13:03
nurture is nice is because you can
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change it it's optimistic suppose
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hypothetically that nurture completely
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wins and your ability to reason into it
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is based entirely on your past
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experience stuff like your education how
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much you've been exposed to challenging
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problems then some people who have had
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better and more intellectually
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stimulating educations will be better
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problem solvers and have better
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intuition and that's cool and expect it
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but no no matter what's happened in your
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past you have control over your future
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if you expose yourself to challenging
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problems now and properly train your
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intuition now the future you can have
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powerful intuition too so in a
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hypothetical world where genetics mean
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nothing and everything depends on past
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experience you can shape your Futures
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Past by shaping your future and
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therefore shape how strong your
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intuition and intellect even will be in
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the future and that means you have full
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control of your life which is a great
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thing to believe and you should try to
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convince yourself that even if you don't
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already believe it because it's just a
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good way to think but obviously it's not
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a hypothetical world and genetics
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probably do matter some but there's also
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no way that's 100 genetics and I tend to
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believe that nurture plays a much bigger
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part and let's delve deeper into this
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because why not this can be motivational
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in the world of competitive programming
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and almost certainly in different
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problem-solving oriented communities too
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A lot of people like to blame stuff like
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IQ for the reason they aren't improving
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and sure IQ research correlations blah
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blah whatever but what is IQ really it
00:14:25
measures your ability to reason and how
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do you learn to reason nurture practice
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experience and ultimately the majority
00:14:33
of your past experience boils down to
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roughly two two main things your parents
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and your education if you're later on in
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life replace that with work or life
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experience and if you've been problem
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solving for a while you can consider
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that problem solving to be your
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experience you can use my success story
00:14:47
as an example I got lucky and got the
00:14:49
good side of everything I was fairly
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challenged when I was young and in that
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sense I also had a really good education
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and was constantly in classes that were
00:14:56
actually interesting and hard at least
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for Math and the most important thing I
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had the passion I care deeply about
00:15:02
competitive programming that's how I got
00:15:04
so good at it because passion is super
00:15:06
duper important if you don't have it you
00:15:09
have to hold on to whatever reason you
00:15:10
have for doing this kind of stuff this
00:15:12
problem solving because a motivated
00:15:13
brain is so much more effective I think
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a lot of lack of improvement in the
00:15:18
world comes from people trying to force
00:15:20
themselves to do things they don't care
00:15:21
about because if you don't care your
00:15:23
brain won't care about improving so you
00:15:25
can either switch to something you do
00:15:27
care about or convince yourself to Care
00:15:28
by focusing on the end result but
00:15:30
getting that mental interest is huge you
00:15:33
don't have control of your nurture in
00:15:34
the past but after watching this video
00:15:36
consider yourself enlightened you now
00:15:38
have the ability to control your future
00:15:40
your ability to reason and Intuit is now
00:15:42
in your hands because you can choose how
00:15:44
you use your time to improve and now
00:15:46
after all that hopefully you have a
00:15:48
maybe Newfound belief that practice will
00:15:50
pay off since you're really just
00:15:51
controlling your own nurture for the
00:15:53
future and playing into the science and
00:15:55
now that I've also gone over how you can
00:15:57
improve your intuition you're all set to
00:15:58
to get started now one thing I will
00:16:01
admit is that my brain is pretty good so
00:16:03
my technique of memorizing solution
00:16:05
ideas and problems I had barely read
00:16:06
will likely not work for everyone
00:16:08
and that's fine and that's expected as I
00:16:11
said you will do fine with solving
00:16:12
problems normally but doing a bit of
00:16:14
extra work to train your intuition too
00:16:16
the main takeaway from this video is
00:16:18
that extra step making sure you're
00:16:19
creating that mental mapping between
00:16:21
problem components and solution ideas
00:16:23
another takeaway there's an idea I like
00:16:26
that your intelligence is only in your
00:16:28
hands once you believe it is otherwise
00:16:30
if you don't believe you won't do
00:16:31
anything about it well now's your time
00:16:33
to believe take control of your fate if
00:16:36
you blame your skills or lack thereof on
00:16:38
some external Factor even if it's true
00:16:40
it's not helpful do what you can for
00:16:43
yourself and you'll be the best you
00:16:44
possible that's generic but it's it's
00:16:46
true I mean it's true and one more thing
00:16:49
if you've watched some of my past videos
00:16:50
I strongly advised against a strategy
00:16:53
like this am I contradicting myself and
00:16:55
the answer is yes and no because the
00:16:58
point of my advice in the previous
00:16:59
videos was to emphasize that good
00:17:00
practice is what matters if you get good
00:17:03
practice you will improve if you do
00:17:05
other things along with good practice
00:17:06
like the mental mapping strategy you
00:17:09
will still improve and maybe you'll even
00:17:10
be specialized in intuition so overall I
00:17:13
think my old advice still a prize
00:17:14
applies you should get good practice and
00:17:17
this strategy should absolutely not be
00:17:18
the only thing you do but I think the
00:17:20
strategy can help and combined with good
00:17:23
practice it can work for you and there's
00:17:25
also the obligatory this is just an
00:17:27
opinion thing but this is at least
00:17:28
backed by both research and experience I
00:17:30
I think it's fine and that's all goodbye
