A eureka moment is an experience where a solution or idea suddenly appears in your mind and immediately feels true.

One reason eureka experiences are peculiar is that they tend to accompany accurate solutions to problems.

That means that if I am trying to solve a problem or make a decision and I have a eureka experience, the idea is likely to be correct and help me solve the problem.

The feeling of eureka predicts useful problem-solving solutions, and it does so with surprising consistency.

This process of the mind is similar in a way to other subjective experiences that also aid us in quick thinking, like feelings of hunger or fear.

But just like other subjective experiences, eureka moments can also lead to errors.

Consider the following case.

In a lab setting, scientists asked participants to solve anagram puzzles, like one that said “ithlium is the lightest of all metals.”

“Ithlium” is an anagram of the word “lithium.”

To solve the anagram participants needed to rearrange the scrambled word to get the correct word.