Last week a co-worker described a design to me which just felt wrong. It wasn’t a bad solution for any reason I could point to, it just had this uncomfortable not-rightness.
Being unable to point out any specific flaw, I couldn’t object on rational grounds. But perhaps my system one was picking up something I wasn’t consciously aware of, quietly pattern matching against everything I’ve read and experienced.
How should I tell the difference between a good intuition and a bad one? I still don’t know why the solution they described feels wrong, so I don’t think it’s just a matter of not having thought about it long enough. Will it come back to bite me? Is there something my unconscious self picked up on or did it misfire this time? I’ve heard plenty about fingerspitzengefühl and experts’ intuitions, but it feels weird from the inside.