Instinct

Instincts are essential to the survival of virtually all animals, including humans… Note

A baby crying while reaching for a milk bottle indoors, showing emotion and need for care. Photo by Sarah Chai from Pexels.

That said, instincts are the crudest of the thinking modes. They can only make good decisions for simple systems; i.e., those with only a few elements, no complex behaviour, etc.

Not only are instincts relatively incapable, but they are unable to learn. This is because they are a product of biological evolution. It can take from tens to thousands of generations for a new instinct to be acquired or for an extant instinct to be replaced.

Evolution is based exclusively on what worked in the past. It doesn't take into account that the present or the future could be different to the past. Since instincts are a consequence of evolution, they are also based on the past. As such, they can be unsuited to new or unusual problems.

Despite being simplistic and unable to learn, instincts tend to be overconfident (Kahneman). They can give us the impression that they know the right answer even when they are out of their depth because the problem is hard or new. This usually happens subconsciously. Because instincts are quick and easy, they often get first bite of the decision-making cherry. If they leave us feeling that they're dealt with a problem, we may never cross-check their quick-and-dirty assessment using more powerful thinking modes.

Moth Navigation

A good example of an instinct that hasn't kept up with recent developments is moth navigation. Moths try to navigate by keeping moonlight at a fixed angle, resulting in flying in a straight line. This was fine while the moon was the only major light source at night. However, now there are numerous other lights, such as street lights and house lights. If a moth locks on to an artificial light source and attempts to keep it at a fixed angle, the insect will fly around it in a circle instead of getting where it wants to go.

Artificial light sources have been common for several hundred generations of moths, but their instincts haven't yet been updated to account for them.

Environmental Sustainability

Instinct is for survival of the individual’s own species. It doesn't take into account any consequences for other species and the environment unless those consequences immediately impact the individual’s own species. However, this near-sighted view can be detrimental if circumstances change and the species’ instinctive behaviour harms its environment significantly.

There are many examples of this happening in nature. One is the crown-of-thorns starfish. As with most animals, its instincts include eating (in this case, coral polyps) and reproducing. When conditions are good, the local colony of starfish eats and reproduces so rapidly that can consume all of the live coral in the area. With nothing left to eat, all of the starfish in the colony can die.

Humans are also vulnerable to this pattern. When human instincts were formed, what the relatively small human population did to the environment was negligible, so our instinct is that our impacts don't matter. However, our species is now so dominant that we are capable of severely damaging the environment to our own detriment. In evolutionary terms, this change has been very sudden so our instincts have not caught up.

Our instincts won't catch up by learning. Instincts only change when the individuals that possess them die out and are superseded by individuals with better instincts. This takes many generations and requires a lot of death. A less melodramatic way forward is for humans to avoid detrimental instinctive behaviour by regulating it with the more sophisticated thinking modes that evolution has already given us, such as reasoning.

Complex Systems

Because instincts are simple, they are unsuited to problem systems with large element, action, outcome and relationship scopes.

Even if the problem system has small scopes, instincts won't be able to deal with complex behaviour.

Tiny Impacts

Unless an action or inaction typically results in the individual's death, that behaviour won't become an instinct. Therefore, actions or inactions that only make tiny impacts on their own are unlikely to create a specific instinct. Instead, we're likely to assume that the behaviour doesn't matter.

System Changes

Because instincts can't be updated during one lifetime, or even several generations, they can mislead us when the problem system changes. Instinctive responses may be wrong if they're based on an outdated version of the system. Unfortunately, we don't always notice system changes or realise their significance.

Intuition

Intuition has some similarities to instinct: both modes are fast and subconscious, but they both struggle with complex systems and can mislead us. However, intuition is based on learning so it isn't so vulnerable to changing systems.

Busy

Instinct is quick and easy. When we're busy, it's tempting to just go with our initial response to a problem rather than take the time to question it and perhaps override it with a slower but smarter thinking mode.

Reductionism

Instinct's narrow focus is subconscious reductionism: instinct can attempt to respond to a hard problem by focusing only on a small part of its system.

Self-awareness and Open-mindedness

Because instincts are fast and subconscious, we often behave instinctively without realising it. When dealing with a problem to which instinct is unsuited, we need to be aware that instinct may be misleading us. If necessary, we may need to override it with a slower but smarter thinking mode such as reasoning.

Priorities

An essential thinking process is setting priorities. Many of our priorities are based on our instincts.

Instinct focuses on behaviour that was historically beneficial for the survival of the individual, because the survival of the individual was usually beneficial for the survival of the species as a whole. Instincts aren't usually altruistic: they don't consider the well-being of other species, the environment, and so on. Most instincts don't even consider other individuals.

Because instincts affect priorities, our priorities may be biased towards goals that were historically beneficial to us as individuals. They may overlook or downplay broader goals such as self-sacrifice, biodiversity, environmental sustainability, and so on. We may need to consciously adjust our priorities to avoid the limitations of instincts. Reasons for doing so include a realisation that our well-being depends on a more sophisticated view of the problem system, and ethical considerations.

Systems Thinking

Systems thinking requires us to think of the problem as a set of interrelated elements. If we only include elements based on our instincts, we may neglect elements that affect the system's behaviour but are beyond the narrow scope of our instincts.

An example is the natural environment. Our instinct is that the environment isn't significantly affected by what we do. In system terms, this is considering the environment to be a part of the system boundary: it provides resources and constraints but doesn't change. However, our instincts underestimate our ability to change the environment. Since the environment can change, it needs to be thought of an element within the system rather than a part of the system boundary.

Kahneman.

Peters.