What Every Baby Knows

Babies use inferential learning mechanisms to come to conclusions about the world around them. It's how they test theories and decide what is true. Over the first three years of life, there are dramatic changes in what I child knows. We are born with the ability to distinguish faces and human voices from other sounds and sights, but we are not able to understand actions and emotions until 12 months. Children who are 3 and under tend to not remember where they acquired their knowledge. 
It is true that babies are like small scientists; "Babies are like little scientists continually overthrowing theories that no longer fit the evidence." Babies make and test hypotheses and experiment to find out what is considered true in this world, and what is not. All of their conclusions come from observing and testing. 

Intuition and Knowledge

A lot of times, people rely on their intuition and are overconfident when it comes to their "gut feeling". Many people come to these conclusions by reading "thin slices". Reading "thin slices" is when a person makes an automatic judgement after observing something rather small. Intuitive expertise is how our automatic processing is able to quickly assess situations, objects and people. Although intuition can be extremely helpful, it also has it's perils. Because our intuition doesn't use reason it can cause us to misjudge situations. For example, many people avoid traveling by plane because they fear terrorism, even though more people die by traveling by car rather than by plane.
Intuition can sometimes be a fair justification for mistakes, but it can only be justified if the person who made the mistake had little or no time to make their decision. For example, if a a group of police officers were surrounding a man and the man reached into his pocket quickly the cops might automatically shoot. Because the police officers might suspect that the man would be reaching for a gun, their intuition would tell them to shoot. Although this does not make it okay that they could injure or even kill an innocent person, it could help them save their lives and protect the other people involved.
Another example is one I have been trained to face in my life. I am a lifeguard and I have been taught that if a person has the possibility of a spinal injury there is a special procedure to get them out of the water and prevent further spinal damage. However, if that person is not breathing we must use the regular and faster method for getting them out of the water, even if it may risk further damage to the spine. The reason behind this is that it is more important for a person to be alive than be paralyzed. If I were to rescue a person who was a possible victim of a spinal injury I only have a few seconds to determine whether they are breathing or not. There is a possibility that I could make a mistake and decide that they are not breathing and do a rescue method that requires the victim to be paralyzed for life. Although it was still a huge mistake, my decision was understandable.