Because via Newton's first law, if you're rotating (and there's the balancing force isn't strong enough) you will be "thrown off" the sphere (you will actually just be continuing on your path via Newton's First... it's gravity that keeps you on Earth). That's good intuition. They happen to be wrong about which force dominates (they assumed gravity was weaker) but they didn't have to be taught Newton's First Law to comprehend that consequences of it! That's (by definition) intuition for physics!
I concede this point completely. The fact they thought we'd be thrown off the Earth were it rotating demonstrates an intuitive grasp of Newton's First Law. Their error was in not accounting for mitigating forces.
What did you mean here, then:
(Though being thrown off the Earth revolving indicates that someone is exercising their intuition about centripetal force)
?
Pythagorean said:
You seem to be conflating intuition with knowledge and technical know-how. Intuition is the ability to acquire knowledge without inference or reasoning. It doesn't mean you get everything right. False starts, red herings, etc are not in contradiction with intution. You don't hire a central manager for a bank if all they have is intuition. You need experience and practice to be able to harness your intution.
No. The whole point of the word is to describe insights that are in place without preliminary conscious trial and error, corrections, experiments to check theory against reality, etc.:
intuition:
1: quick and ready insight
2
a : immediate apprehension or cognition
b : knowledge or conviction gained by intuition
c : the power or faculty of attaining to direct knowledge or cognition without evident rational thought and inference
The learning that leads to intuition is effortless and unconscious, which is why an individual experiencing an intuition would have no rational explanation for why they knew what they knew. A person operating a slingshot could easily acquire intuition about Newton's First Law and suspect we would be thrown off the Earth if it were rotating, but they wouldn't be able to articulate why they worry that is the case. They wouldn't be able to consciously explain, "A body in rest or in uniform motion in a straight line will remain that way unless acted on by an outside force."
And, it has to be right. You can't call it "knowledge" if it's bunk. There's no point in using the word "intuition" if you're talking about a succession of random, incorrect confabulations.
Krauss, actually. (It's OK, I've been calling him "Kraus".)
...doesn't contradict himself at all. He talks about that we like puzzle solving and the we're drawn to it, not that we're adapted to it (and that's not true across the human species, anyway, not everyone likes puzzles). Klauss doesn't say that it was selected for (i.e. that we evolved to solve puzzles).
I know he's not making the overt assertion we evolved for puzzle solving. But it's a property he attributes to us, mysteriously, after having listed our evolutionary endowments as limited to fight or flight responses. Here's my original remark:
Having watched it, I think Kraus is wrong to say we didn't evolve to understand QM, due to what he says later about us enjoying puzzle solving so much. Clearly there's been selection in favor of puzzle solvers, and QM is just another puzzle. Figuring things out is what we do, and it's not an activity limited to humans. A lot of animals are puzzle solvers, to the best of their ability.
Since he ascribes puzzle solving to us he would have, if confronted, to admit it must have been selected for. However, he opens by specifically only mentioning fight or flight, shelter seeking, and spear and rock throwing (which, in the context of the video, seems to be a reference to a 'fight' reaction to danger rather than an expression of tool-making).
So there is a contradiction between the limited list he gives of what was selected for at the start of the video and the ability he ascribes to us later on. If all that was selected for was rudimentary fight or flight responses, how is it he suddenly finds us solving puzzles and being amazed by the results? He doesn't address the cause or origin of puzzle solving, he brings it in without explanation, having specifically excluded the only thing he mentions that could be construed as a form of puzzle solving, understanding QM, from what was selected for.
Krauss believes we didn't evolve to understand QM because it's outside the scale we evolved in. Makes sense. It also makes sense to propose we did evolve to understand classical physics. Makes sense, but untrue. Every inch of our progress in Classical Physics was hard won through, collectively, millions and millions of hours of puzzle solving. Made possible by the fact we did evolve to solve puzzles (at least, we evolved the ability and drive to learn to solve them).
I think what you're failing to observe is that the ability to throw a spear accurately is a completely different kind of activity than intellectually sorting out and articulating the 3 Laws. Intuitively grasping that the harder you throw it, the further it will go into the mammoth, is a million miles away from being able to say F=ma. The latter requires sorting out the concept of force, the concept of mass, the concept of acceleration, and then that the magnitude of the force will be equal to the product of the mass and acceleration, and then finding suitable units for all. The former (spear throwing) isn't physics, the latter is. The former can be learned relatively quickly, the latter (specifically F=ma) took us 40,000 years to sort out, despite the fact we were living in the world of, on the scale of, spear throwing that whole time. Saying it is a completely different activity than doing it.
(Also.. if you want to explore the adaptation of "puzzle solving", that's on your to provide the literature and the arguments and how it links to QM and demonstrate that it's as pervasive as the intuition for classical properties. It seems like a long shot to me, but it's your time.)
I suppose I would, if I'd ever made such a claim.