Jizz in birdwatching activity and clinical practice: how it works and why?

Abstract

The world “jizz” is part of the language of birding in the English-speaking nations. It’s meaning is combination of characteristics which identify kind of a bird, but this characteristics may not be distinguished individually. Jizz is described as embodied way of seeing that instantaneously reveals the identity of a birds species, suspending the laborious and meticulous study of an diagnostic characteristics. In medicine there is an idea of “clinical intuition” - making judgments and clinical diagnoses without clear awareness of consecutive stages of reasoning. Intuitive decision making has been found in some cases to improve decisions and eventually lead into better performance than analytic deliberation. Can a certain sudden conclusions that appear in minds of both birdwatchers (about bird species) and medical doctors (established diagnosis), based on the use of an incomplete set of information, be accurate? And how we can use this similarity to understand process of formulating medical diagnoses? In this paper we discuss the phenomena of jizz and “clinical intuition” in the light of theory of brain as a tool of making predictions. According to this view the primary function of the brain is to make predictions about the word, rather than laborious analysis of the stimuli coming in from the environment at each successive moment. That theory according to us can explain both Jizz observed by birdwatchers and clinical intuition in medical practice.