This is an old concept:
System 1 and System 2 (The linked article but also everyone?)
book: Thinking fast and slow (Daniel Kahneman)
analogy: Elephant and Rider (Haidt)
analogy: Charioteer and Horse (stoics)
An impulse is not blindly obvious (e.g., unconscious bias or unquestioned assumptions), and an intelligent person may or may not have correct biases / impulses in all situations. However, a person who can sit with their impulses, override them, and try to see through them through reflection may in fact have something that is synonymous with intelligence to a degree (thesis of TFA).
I believe the implication is that "much of intelligence is reflection" and that "continuous reflection yields better intuition on the reflected domain". Not "a person born with high IQ has better instincts".