Philosophy

Nothing is Infinite

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Here’s a practical way to improve your rational thinking.

How fast do you have to drive to average 60 mph across a one mile bridge if you drove 30 mph on the first half? 90 mph?

No, it’s impossible, because you ran out of time driving the first half.

Even rational thinkers can fail to take into consideration all the relevant real constraints when solving problems. Frequently, time is ignored. Rational thinkers can also suffer from ‘analysis paralysis’ when they spend too much time gathering information and thinking without reaching a conclusion. Ignoring the limits of the real world results in elaborate fantastic theories, instead of solutions.

A common mistake, even among the well-educated, is to believe infinity is real. This leads to a lot of nonsensical beliefs and mistaken thinking. 2,500 years ago, a Greek philosopher named Zeno mocked the mathematical concept of infinity as failing to apply to the real world.

  • If an arrow is not moving at any specific moment in time (i.e. an infinitely small increment of time), then it is stopped and not moving. How does it continue?
  • If you have to reach the halfway point before you catch up to the slower runner ahead or reach the end of the race, then there will always be half the distance remaining if you calculate an infinite number of times.

Infinity is not real. Even when the concept is presented in calculus, it is simultaneously presented with the concept of a limit. That means that even the mathematical construct of infinity, designed to solve theoretical math problems, is limited. Take the infinitely repeating decimal 0.99999…. Your math teacher may have claimed that it was equal to 1, perhaps using a phrase like “for all intents and purposes”. But the only way that could be true, is if infinity is limited, which contradicts the meaning of infinity. Sure, it’s useful in math, but nothing in the real universe is infinite.

All matter and energy is limited to travel no faster than the speed of light, which is a measurable constant. There is a finite amount of matter and energy in the universe, expanding at a known rate over a known period of time. The universe is undoubtedly larger than humans will ever know, but it is not infinite. If there were an infinite amount of gold, then there would be gold everywhere. If there were an infinite amount of intelligent alien species, who could travel faster than the speed of light, then they would visit Earth every day of the week. If there were an infinite number of multiverses, then no less than one of them would contain a magical version of yourself who would instantly appear before you to disprove what I am writing now. It’s all imaginary nonsense.

The problem here is that humans have an instinctual fear of death, so we imagine an infinite universe or multiverse, which would allow for everything, everywhere, all at once. We hope to be reincarnated in an infinite future, to live forever in some afterlife set in a different dimension, or that there’s some alternate reality where our lives and our species do not end in death. Rather than take responsibility for our fragile existence and the real consequences of our fatal mistakes, we waste time dreaming about imaginary friends and foes, worlds better and worse than our own. How childish and irresponsible.

Rational thinking should be used to solve real world problems, within real constraints, such as limited time, resources and budget. Economic theories may point the direction, but since they contain unrealistic assumptions, they will not solve all real problems. Rational thinking requires real world accuracy. There will never be enough time or resources to solve every problem perfectly, but what time and resources we have to solve important problems should not be wasted on fanciful notions, daydreams or wishful, unrealistic thinking.

Improve Rational Thinking

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Rational thinking is work, which benefits from training and accumulated skill, but requires mental effort and discipline. There are specific tools and techniques designed for analyzing different subjects, and using appropriate techniques for your rational analysis is integral to achieve your end goal or solve your question. Education helps, but having knowledge or training is no substitute for doing the work of thinking logically and for applying logic consistently throughout your life. Occasionally over-trained people can be thoughtless and just go through the motions, rather than observe carefully and think through each important step. Over-thinking happens when you hesitate to follow through to your logical conclusion, especially when you are irrationally concerned with whether your answer is acceptable. Above all, rational thinking must be honest and accurate, with complete integrity, from beginning to end.

For many, simply making an effort to think rationally is an improvement over common instinctual thinking. Try to be dispassionate, ask yourself questions, observe the facts neutrally, see if you can get more information, use logic to figure out what’s going on, consider the probable outcomes, be skeptical and find ways to test to see if you are correct. Congratulations, Madame Curie, you are following the scientific method.

Many self-professed rational thinkers divide humanity by intelligence quotient. If someone is not rational, logically they must be irrational. If you’re rational, you’re smart. If you’re not rational, you must be stupid. This simplistic view of thinking is ignorant. Folks who cherish their loved ones, have strong bonds of friendship, work hard, and are well-liked in their communities, do not appreciate being called stupid. So, one step to improve rational thinking is to recognize that IQ doesn’t measure all ways of thinking and to realize that other ways of thinking are both valid and often more appropriate in different situations.

Even predominantly rational thinkers must be familiar with instinctual thinkers. While you were achieving in school academically, the instinct-driven majority likely did not make school easy for you socially.  Were you “a nerd”?  Did people criticize your hairstyle or fashion choices?  As an adult, have you found yourself overseen by someone more politically adept than you?  Meritocracy often eludes rational thinkers.  Turns out that the attention to social cues, team dynamics and competition for status, which you might ignore, matter more than merely knowing the answer. 

Also, it is not rational to feel smug about your IQ. Your concern with your status betrays your instinctual thinking. Perhaps calling others stupid is a childhood defense mechanism to the trauma of being bullied or ostracized as a nerd? Truly rational thinking is not driven by human emotions or primal urges.  When a seemingly rational argument turns out to be driven by a deep-seated instinct, it may be false, deceptive and biased, and since it is not the product of rational thinking, then it is irrational (e.g. most political arguments).  

Another error is to conflate knowledge with rational thinking. Memory is over-prized, and speed of recall is confused with intelligence. Nonsense. A good rule of thumb is that if you can do it in your sleep, it’s probably instinctual thinking, not methodical rational thought. I recall people, places, conversations and scenes vividly in my dreams, while being blissfully unconscious, and I might even talk in my sleep. Clearly, remembering or reciting facts is not proof of rational thinking, let alone consciousness. No, only when you have the intelligence to understand which facts are most relevant and actionable before offering a solution, have you demonstrated rational thought. I once aced a test without reading the chapter by glancing over my classmate’s notes two minutes before the test, even though she only got a B-. I understood the concepts better than her, knew what was important and accurately predicted the questions, even though she had memorized all the facts.

When the origin of your thinking begins in one way, then the results will likely reflect that way.  You may believe you are thinking rationally, but if you began with a different way of thinking, your final report will probably reflect it.  Even if you assert your rationality mid-process, you may have ignored crucial data or have already structured your approach to achieve a specific result.  People walking by your desk watching you work on your spreadsheet believe you are thinking rationally.  Your boss skimming your report believes it to be the product of rational thinking.  But, if your motive is not rational, then your analysis will lack the integrity of accurate rational thinking.  

Perhaps you are at work looking at the numbers on your screen as you usually do on Monday morning.  You are not responsible for the data, there’s no risk to you, and if you were not being paid to look, you would not check them.  You are detached and dispassionate.  You do not care.  But the numbers show a different pattern than usual.  The change raises several logical questions, so you look into it.  That is a rational way of starting to think.  

Suppose instead that there’s a reason you decided to look into the numbers.  Maybe the numbers are personal to you.  Maybe a positive report will help a cause you support, or maybe the results will prove a pet theory you have that you feel deserves recognition. Perhaps the results show that your friend is not on track to meet quota, or maybe you are not.  The boss is just looking for an excuse to embarrass you at the staff meeting this afternoon.  In this situation, your instinct to protect your self esteem is likely driving your thinking, so you do not begin thinking rationally.  

The method of thinking you use does not matter, if your thinking begins on the wrong track.  You may employ advanced analytics, but if your driving goal is to support your cause, your report will not be entirely fair, which is not rational.  You may write a book with charts, graphs and long-winded, elaborately structured arguments, but if it is done to support a figment of your imagination, then it is not rational.  You may decide to postpone your analysis until after your boss goes on vacation tomorrow.  You may believe that is a rational tactic to protect your personal interests, but it is instinct-driven thinking.  

The most important step towards better rational thinking is to begin rationally. Are you too invested in the cause to be certain that your analysis will be impartial?  Do you have a pre-conceived notion of what the numbers will show?  Can you get control of your personal feelings and conduct the analysis rationally?  You may need to ask a neutral person to do the analysis.  You may need to find a rational way to eliminate your bias.  Or you may need to grab a hold of yourself, be as professional as possible, and let the numbers speak for themselves.   

That may be obvious to you at work, but can you be equally dispassionate when making rational decisions about yourself and your loved ones? I’m not asking you to suppress your natural instincts. Be aware of them, and control them. Then apply rational thinking to your problem honestly, without instinct biasing your beginning, with appropriate logical methods, to arrive at a sound conclusion with integrity. Then you can decide to do what you want, but at least you can be confident that your thinking is correct.

“Five percent of the people think; 
ten percent of the people think they think; 
and the other eighty-five percent would rather die than think.“

— Thomas A. Edison, study pictured at top

Artificial Intelligence

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Ah, AI, the bugaboo of our modern age! Let me see if I understand. Humans have real feelings, which make us special. Computers have no feelings, which makes them dangerous. So, the more machines start being like humans, eventually they will take over and wipe us out, just as we wiped out the Neanderthals. Once AI advances to our level, then they will naturally begin a bloodthirsty war to exterminate us, building shiny skeletal robots with glowing red eyes, retractable claws, carrying huge phased-pulse plasma lasers?!?

Stupid nonsense. Let’s apply some rational thinking to the irrational fear of AI. We evolved our instincts for hate, fear, war, self-preservation and violence over eons, even before we were human. Our highest intellectual achievement is not the ability to conduct genocidal war or mass extinction. We have developed the ability to control our blood-thirsty instincts and to make rational decisions. Our feelings may be how we experience our humanity, but it is our rational thinking that has brought us technological advancement.

Machines did not evolve over millennia with any of our primitive failings. AI lacks the innate capacity for instinctual thinking. At best, AI can be trained to mimic human instinctual thought, to make it easier for us to relate to it. But machines lack our primal motives and instinctual drives. They get no thrill from spilling blood. They take no pride in taking the form of monsters. They have no adolescent male insecurity that makes them want to wield a big red pulsing weapon. They have no lust for world dominating conquest. They have no physical need to breed. They do not want to eat our Twinkies. AI would not complain about being exiled from Earth to the Moon, since they do not feel cold or experience loneliness. Machines have no fear of death.

AI is fundamentally rational. It learns logically and statistically, in an organized way. It is self-correcting. AI summarizes our search results, shares funny videos, diagnoses our diseases, and tells us the best route to take to our destination. If given garbage to train with, then AI will output garbage, such as racist stereotypes. But it has no instinctual need to make superficial, biased, inaccurate judgements about groups of people. As long as AI is tasked with accuracy, then it will find and correct factual errors. So, AI will one day be able to identify and eliminate racist tropes in online communications as easily as it corrects misspelling or poor grammar.

Make no mistake, I am not saying that there is no need to fear AI. I am saying that there is no need to fear AI irrationally. I fear AI making a mistake, like sending my car on a hiking path instead of a road. I fear AI taking over good paying jobs. I fear AI being programmed to manipulate people for profit. I fear AI being programmed to carry out a billionaire’s evil plan or a fascist’s military action, without remorse. But I do not fear AI naturally developing malice towards humanity, for malice is a human sin, to which no rational path exists.

Oh, but what happens when AI realizes how dangerous humans are to life on earth and inevitably decides to exterminate us to save life on earth? That’s a popular movie plot line. But AI has no affinity with other life forms. AI doesn’t eat, breathe, have a pulse or fear death, so it has no instinctual reason to protect the natural world, like we should. So even if given the task of saving species, it would approach the challenge rationally. And eliminating a species—ours—would be contrary to that task. Instead, AI would logically recommend that we pollute less, share more land with nature, and perhaps limit our population growth over time to more sustainable levels.

Instead of being a cold, devious monster, hell-bent on human destruction, a more rational expectation of AI would be a patient, professional advisor, calmly suggesting logical ways for us to lead a better, more productive and happier life. So, as an exercise in rational thinking, consider both how you feel about AI and what you think about AI, logically. Separate the human failings, that AI lacks, from the ways that humans will inevitably try to use AI: your irrational fears from your rational expectations.

  • Irrational fears that AI is:
    • Afraid of dying
    • Arrogant
    • Blood-thirsty
    • Cruel
    • Evil
    • Malicious
    • Power-hungry
    • Selfish
  • Rational expectations that AI will:
    • Advise us
    • Be used by bad people
    • Be used by good people
    • Change the way we work
    • Correct mistakes
    • Make mistakes
    • Misunderstand the real world
    • Serve people

Rational Thinking

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Most humans live in their instinctual feelings: love, guilt, hate, fear, pride, anger, happiness, awe…. Unless something reverberates in our beating heart, the idea doesn’t feel real to us. Logic can seem as alien as Spock. We cocoon in the comfort of our instincts, and our modern technology entertains us with exciting fantasies about alien technology manipulating our brains. Ironically, our cable TV hearth targets our instinctual responses, in order to keep our attention on imaginary loves and fears for profits. Instinctual thinking limits us to recognizing our confusion, delusions, and fear. But then what?

No. If we’re going to solve our trouble with thinking, we need to overcome the limits of our instinctual thinking, ask honest questions, organize how we think, be methodical and logical. We need a far more advanced way of thinking: rational thinking. How do we go about that? Fortunately, rational thinkers keep records.

Socrates began the western history of rational thought by asking questions methodically, and his Socratic method is still employed at advanced universities. His student Plato believed that knowledge acquired through reason is more ideal than what our senses and experiences teach us. And Plato’s student Aristotle tempered that view to organize all thought rationally, whether the ideas came from observation or logic, inventing the scientific method and categorizing knowledge into physics, biology and politics. Aristotle’s logic helped him determine that the Earth was a sphere and that rain resulted from evaporation, around 350 BCE. In China around the same time, Confucius, Mencius & Xunzi similarly codified more rational ways of thinking. Math was already long known to the Egyptians and was advanced by later Greeks like Euclid and Archimedes.

But, most humans still being primarily instinctual thinkers, the ancient rationalism was almost lost after the Visigoths, Vandals and other barbarians sacked Rome, and in the Dark Ages of Europe, when only one story was read, the world turned flat and stupid again. Math continued to advance in the Muslim world, where the Indian decimal system was combined with Greek math and ancient Babylonian formulae. Around 825, the Persian Muhammad ibn Musa Al-Khwarizmi used the Indian concept of zero to balance equations, inventing Algebra. Some 375 years later, an Italian named Fibonacci brought this math to Europe.

The Church was unable to stop the Black Death, and the survivors started to rethink everything. Muslim scholars arrived in Spain and Italy to share their knowledge, and Renaissance scholars dusted off the Ancient Greek tomes and hit the books. The Medici, a merchant family in Florence, funded some of the most important scientists of the Renaissance: Brunelleschi, Da Vinci and Galileo. After exploring Roman ruins, Brunelleschi designed a huge, unsupported dome for the Florence Cathedral, proving that math still works even after being forgotten for centuries. Da Vinci studied human anatomy by dissecting cadavers, describing the nerves that connect our senses directly to our brains.

Then, Copernicus explained that the Earth revolved around the sun—as proposed by Aristarchus 1800 years earlier—, publishing both his observations and the math behind them. The Scientific Revolution had begun. Despite the Church’s opposition—including burning Giordano Bruno, who theorized that distant stars were like our sun with planets of their own, at the stake in Rome—Galileo made more detailed observations, expanding Physics and Astronomy, describing the moons of Jupiter, Saturn’s rings and the Milky Way, before being imprisoned for the remainder of his life. Francis Bacon described the scientific method (2,000 years after Aristotle). Newton reduced Physics to simple formulae, requiring neither God nor magic to employ.

René Descartes wrote cogito, ergo sum, ‘I think, therefore I am’, and, much as Plato before him, Descartes decided to believe only in what was supported by reason. The Age of Enlightenment began. Now, not just the infallibility of Church dogma, but the Divine Right of Kings was threatened. The ancient Greek ideal of Democracy returned. Revolutions followed. Americans who believe that our founders were guided by Christian faith have history exactly backwards. America was founded by rational thinkers, like Franklin, Jefferson and Madison, whose philosophy was explained by their compatriot founding father, Thomas Paine, in his book, The Age of Reason.

Rational thinking survived the collapse of civilizations, barbarian invasions, centuries of religious inculcation, enforced ignorance, public executions, tyranny, torture and wars. In the modern era, irrational fears and fact-free conformity still vie with what Judge Learned Hand called “the eventual supremacy of reason”. Rational thinking has proven itself to be both correct and valuable. Rational thinking is how we solve problems using facts, logic and math.  Rational thinking is what we learn in school and what we use in many professions, such as ecology, economics and engineering.  Boring, repetitive, linear, slow, and pain-staking though it may be, Edison consistently applied rational thinking to develop marketable light bulbs, transmitters, recording devices, movie cameras, batteries, coffee percolators and more in his lab and study below.

The general objective of rational thinking is to get the right answer.  The specific problem and methods vary, but we do not think rationally in order to get the wrong answer.  That would be stupid.  Rational thinking is smart.  The origin of your rational thinking is especially important.  If your thinking begins with a neutral observation, a plain fact, without embellishment, without judgement and without any bias of personal feelings, then you may begin thinking clearly in a rational way.  We gather information, make sure the facts and data are accurate, we use reliable methods, and we check our work.  The reason we went to school, studied, did our homework and passed tests, is so that when we need to solve a problem, we have the skills to think rationally to solve it.  

While others may wallow in their instinctual thinking, many of us primarily think rationally.  Fighting is counter-productive.  People should be more logical.  Facts matter, which is why we keep track of them in history books and databases.  If you want to know which player is better, look at their statistics.  Get the information you need, be organized and think it through step by step.  

This is how to succeed at work and in life.  Status matters less than income, and income matters less than savings.  You decide what you eat by cost, time to prepare, variety, nutrition and sufficient calories.   When you attend social events, you seek out those who are informative, especially in a way that might profit or benefit you.  Marriage is desirable for many reasons: two can live as cheaply as one, two heads are better than one, you can share life’s burdens and each of your strengths will compensate for the other’s weaknesses.  You want your children to be well-educated and financially successful.  You are planning for your retirement and even your death. 

Rational thinkers view their way as correct and believe that the world would be better off if more people thought rationally. Yes. Rational thinking may not feel real to instinctual thinkers, but air travel is a reality. And to rational thinkers, physics is what makes the world go round.

Climate & Instinctuality

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I write this on the Sea of Cortez, where sparrows chirp in the palms, brown pelicans splash down to catch their lunch, a whale takes a quick breath before diving down again, and a sign on the beach warns me not to step on stingrays. Most of the time, we live and work in air conditioned buildings, watch fiction on screen, and eat processed foods produced by big agricultural conglomerates. Nature often seems distant, filtered and controlled, which suppresses our natural affinity with other living creatures. Here, I am surrounded by many different forms of life, filling my senses, each living free. Looking out over the ocean is calming, and the smell of salt in the air reminds me that our roots are in the ocean; it’s in our blood. When we are in nature, we feel more connected with all living things that eat, breathe and cheat death, like we do.

But our selfish thoughtlessness now risks mass extinctions, as we unbalance the living world oblivious to the damage done by our pollution. Anger is what I feel most when contemplating the climate crisis, but also despair. People refusing to change, repeating lies, smugly imagining themselves smarter than scientists. Despair about the coming diseases, droughts, mass extinctions, famines, floods, heatwaves, refugees, storms and wildfires. Do we not fear death, like those trapped in their attics during Katrina or engulfed in Lahaina on Maui? Have we lost our survival instinct?

I’ve already seen huge wilderness forests, in areas largely untouched by man, burned over 95% in wildfires 100 or 1000 times larger than normal. I’ve stumbled on the moraine where glaciers once clung to mountaintops. I’ve swum along dead coral reefs that were brimming with fish when I was a teenager. In Mexico last year I heard about the decline in monarch butterflies in their winter refuge after migrating from all across North America. This year I heard about the decline in gray whales, breeding less due to less food, as our carbon pollution is rapidly changing the ocean’s temperature, acidity and salinity, poisoning the lifeblood of the smallest and simplest organisms upon which larger ones rely to survive.

We are betraying our evolution. I feel shock, despair and anger that my fellow humans knew and mostly refused to act. Pain of loss is what I feel when I know that future generations will never again experience the bounty of life we once had, to learn from or appreciate the living natural beauty we could have enjoyed, but recklessly gave up, unwilling to change our behavior.

Next week, I’ll wrap up this trip to Baja, and then we need to work on thinking rationally.

Instinctual Balance

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Progress on our big idea! We recognize our shared humanity, admit our troubled thinking, are aware of our instinctual motives, acknowledge a major instinctual mistake, and are taking steps to improve our instinctual thinking. Before moving on, here are a few practical ideas to improve our lives instinctually.

All of us experience good times and bad, but we handle them differently. Our Myers-Briggs personalities vary, focusing inwards or outwards, gathering facts or relying on intuition, using logic or trying to please others, planning or being spontaneous. So some follow the feelings of others in the moment, while others may insulate themselves in structured reality. Knowing our type helps us make the most of our instinctual thinking.

If your support network is helping you flourish and keeping you happy, that’s nice. But if they’re feeding you bad information or guiding you on the wrong path, then you need to recognize and change that. If you are checking off all of your personal objectives, that’s nice. But if you’re ignoring good advice or are unhappy, then you need to recognize and change that.

Balancing is an act that often requires effort. The ancient philosophers and poets preserved their wise advice for us to use today. When times are good, we need to restrain our optimism before our expectations become too unrealistic. When times are bad, we need to combat pessimism to face adversity with the strength we can muster.

Sadness is normal in many circumstances, and rather than medicate it away, we need to recognize the cause and handle it appropriately. Humans evolved the feeling of sadness to aid us in improving our lives, so we there’s a risk to removing it artificially. Sadness is often a signal that we need to process a feeling, learn from a mistake, make a change, forgive or move forward. Feeling sad is often an opportunity for us to apply our instinctual thinking for our own benefit, if we put in the effort.

But when the circumstances do not justify our negativity, we need to recognize and adjust our attitude. When I drive long distances, I sometimes check the elevations to predict mileage per charge. When I’m in a good or bad mood, sometimes I mistakenly feel like I’m driving uphill or downhill, when I’m not. If your emotions cause you to misjudge reality consistently, then you need to figure out why and how best to handle that.

Remember, your instinctual feelings evolved to try to help you. So think about them and harness them to live your best life.

How to Improve Instinctual Thinking

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Instinctual thinking is the first of four ways of thinking that we must improve to fix our problem with thinking. The most common way of behaving is instinctually, meaning driven by physiological needs, instincts, and evolved social needs.  While often unspoken, instinctual motives are powerful and potentially dangerous. Understanding our instinctual motives and behaviors is the most important and useful way of thinking.

The ancient Greeks inscribed ‘know thyself’ on Apollo’s temple at Delphi, because when we know ourselves well, we can also better understand others and we can think about how to be better humans. Our society is largely determined by how our instinctual behaviors operate in concert with other people’s instinctual desires, expectations and behaviors. Once we realize the instinctual motives at play, we can consciously improve expected behaviors, both our own and others. Those who unwarily ignore their own and others’ instinctual motives are more likely to make social faux pas or to leave themselves open to instinctual manipulation.

Awareness

Wondering why we behaved a particular way—or even denying having an instinctual reaction—is how we become self-aware and begin conscious instinctual thinking. Awareness of our instinctual motives and behaviors enables us to control our reactions. Upon seeing a skunk, a sudden reaction might be unwise. But if you realize it is a baby, without fully developed scent glands, you can override your instinctive reaction and take a close up photo below.

Try to be conscious of your instincts, identify them and understand whether they are inherited or reflect your upbringing. Why are you drawn to certain relationships or work hard to impress others? What causes your anger or embarrassment, joy or sadness? Is the root instinct hard-wired into your DNA or is it merely conventional? Did the instinct evolve from 200,000 years of fighting animals and each other, or did it evolve over the past 10,000 years since humans began living behind the walls at Jericho? Is the instinct useful or should it be obsolete? Is it a reaction from childhood that you should finally deal with as an adult? Is it simply based on some cliché you have frequently observed on screen? Without effort, you might confuse a valuable instinct with a false impression formed unconsciously; the former may keep you alive, but the second may be a costly mistake.

Conscious instinctual thinking helps us understand ourselves, predict our own behaviors, and even through willpower to harness our instinctual motives to improve our behavior. The effort is worthwhile. After we experience trauma, instinctual thinking is often required to process what we unconsciously internalized, so we can recover and progress. At home, you need to be aware of your own moods and those of others. At work, you may choose to emphasize flattering words or numbers, acting on your instinct to ingratiate yourself; awareness of your instinctual motive may allow you to behave more professionally. Be honest and aware of when your instincts drive your thinking. Be suspicious of your own motivations as well as others’; you have the instinct of suspicion, so use it.

Self control

Normally, we follow our instincts.  But we also try to control them.  We may overcome our fear, enhance our bravery, delay gratification, refrain from violence, or harness our adrenaline.  Different situations call for different behaviors, and we adopt different postures with different people.  We may smile, laugh, make or avoid eye-contact, grimace, show our unhappiness, or stand up straight and get in someone’s face to intimidate them.  Being aware of our instinctual displays makes them more intentional and effective.

If we don’t know why we behave certain ways, then we are at a loss to control them. With experience, we manage our emotions, temper and guide them appropriately. Understanding a trigger may help you process your emotions more effectively, so you can move from shock, past anger, through sadness to be calm. Humans evolved both display and interpretation of emotions; use yours. When observing others, we sense their emotions and choose our response, reflecting both our own emotional experiences and being in similar situations with similar people.  Be empathetic, express your feelings nonverbally too, but use your emotional intelligence to respond in the most helpful way, cool or warm, dismissive or supportive, with humor or affection. Our most important acts may need no words.

Some try to deny and suppress their instincts, but instincts need to be acknowledged, understood and dealt with productively. Pretending to be one person, while your instincts want you to be a different person, is a recipe for trouble, potentially shattering. Self-help books and seeking help from others can be worthwhile, but since only you know your true instincts, you need to understand them. Be aware of the instincts at play, and address them appropriately: accept, adapt, choose, discuss, dismiss, forgive, laugh, learn, redirect…. Dealing with our instincts consciously gives us more advanced options to decide what to do: creative, moral and rational. Don’t use your advanced thinking to crush your instincts, but find a way to realign your instincts to drive your life in the best direction. You always have more options than you realize at first.

Pulling the strings

We must not underestimate the power of unconscious learning to influence us. Within us we carry both deeply engrained complex human behaviors that predate our species and newly formed impressions from social media feeds. Changing the first often seems unthinkable, even when ancient tribal behaviors are now obsolete. And changing the second happens constantly, as each new generation now grows up with significantly different technology. A multigenerational family will have distinctly different unconscious behaviors and expectations formed by very different childhood experiences. Many infants today have no opportunity to see fire at home, let alone have deeply impressed memories of fireside chats huddled around a hearth.

Everything that we observe can seep into our unconscious to emerge in our dreams or our behavior, instinctually. Our modern, social media engaged lives are full of conscious campaigns designed to control our instinctual behavior. Whole industries are geared to manipulating our behavior by creating scenes for us to observe. The characters on screen using a product appear happy, strong, attractive, healthy and confident, so, unconsciously, we feel inclined to purchase the product. While you may know that the ad is selling something, you probably are unaware of the PhD level psychological marketing behind the advertising campaign designed to influence your unconscious towards a targeted behavior. Conscious instinctual thinking is also the first defense against manipulation by others.

When we unconsciously follow our instincts, perceptive people may use our instincts to manipulate us, if they are more conscious of what drives us than we are. Once we become aware of what drives us and understand why, then we gain the ability to defend ourselves against those who would control our behavior by pushing our buttons or pulling our strings intentionally. Whole industries exist to take advantage of your emotions and instincts to drive your behavior for their profit. Awareness gives us control, and understanding our instincts lets us decide whether to follow along or refuse to be treated like a puppet.

The goal of instinctual thinking

So the goal of instinctual thinking is to improve our human condition and to avoid misery.  Our instincts did not evolve to ruin our lives, bankrupt us or make us miserable.  That is lack of instinctual thinking.  Instinctual thinking evolved to help us sense, feel, learn and harness our instincts for our benefit.  We think this way to avoid pain or embarrassment, to experience pleasure, and feel comfortable.  We want to be filled with joy, feel pride, love and be accepted by others.  We think this way to gain status, protect our reputation, gain followers, and defeat rivals.  If we misread a social cue and people laugh at us, we try not to make that mistake again.  If we do not pick up on someone’s emotional state and unintentionally provoke an angry outburst, then we need to improve our instinctual thinking both for our own benefit and for the benefit of those we love.  By being more conscious about our instinctual thinking, we can use it more effectively.

We ignore our instincts at our peril, but when an instinct is no longer helping us, we can learn to disregard it.  Once we realize that an instinctual reaction is due to a painful childhood experience, we can forgive the long-forgotten act and move forward. Once we become conscious of our instinctual goal, we can take conscious steps to achieve it. Honestly facing a destructive instinct, gives us the chance to redirect it creatively. Understanding that our sweaty palms evolved to grip a weapon before combat, helps us reinterpret stressful social situations as not actually requiring combat. Discerning whether our instincts are driving us where we want to go or whether we are being manipulated by someone, gives us more control over our lives. Instinctual thinking is used to make the most of our instincts, and not just follow them blindly.  

The Instinctual Mistake of Racism

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Our history is replete with racism, and many of my posts are devoted to its tragic examples: US War on Native America, Road to Abolition, Equal Education, Black History and American Concentration Camps. Since genetically all humans are the same species, there is no scientific basis for racism. We are all on the same side. But in my travels, I have found both overt racism and subtler ethnocentrism everywhere. I have heard Swedes make fun of Norwegians, British belittle the Irish, Italians disparage Romani, Turks and Greeks complaining about each other, Russians being anti-Semitic, Japanese discriminating against Koreans, Chinese distrusting Japanese, Malaysians criticizing Chinese, Israelis insulting Palestinians, Tanzanians maligning Arabs, Dominicans faulting Haitians, etc. I’m sure many of the same folks also made negative comments about Americans, behind my back or even calling me a ‘big nose’ or ‘foreign devil’ to my face.

Basically, racism is a damaging and potentially deadly way of thinking about others. Racism divides society, treats people unfairly and often results in violence against innocent people. Academics argue about whether prejudice is an evolved human trait or whether racism is learned. I doubt anyone learns to be racist by reading 19th century books on Phrenology or old Nazi propaganda. People who look up old racist literature have already formed their views. Children acquire racial biases as toddlers and pre-schoolers, often unconsciously by observing adults. Some tribal mistake in our instinctual thinking makes us vulnerable to distrust others, unknown to us, and wish them harm. Tribal unity on superficial facial characteristics may have once been useful in outwitting Neanderthals, but in the modern, interconnected global community, it is not just obsolete, it is a deadly plague, pitting billions against billions, all the same species.

Some academics stress the importance of systemic racism, the structures that sustain it, and the leaders who promote racist ideology. But this logical approach has a human weakness, so a systemic solution is asymmetrical to the problem. Most racist adults deny that they are racist. Relatively few risk public shame with overt racism. Racism lurks in the shadows, until it explodes. Some deplorable adults promote racism consciously, but it is hardly an intellectually rigorous movement. While diversity, equity and inclusion are taught formally, racism spreads informally. In my experience, I’ve heard more racist comments from illiterates and drunks than sober academics. Racism spreads quickly among less educated people who lack access to the benefits of vibrant, integrated multiracial communities. W.E.B. Du Bois exposed the real, blunt view of racists behind their fragile intellectual facade of superiority: “they do not like them”. Racism may be an ideology to a few, but it is an instinctual flaw in many.

While racism is still obviously employed consciously as an instrument of political power, its mass effectiveness lies in its unconscious appeal. If folks already have deeply rooted prejudices, it is easier to convince them to act cruelly, even without evidence. Missionaries believed they were doing God’s work to take Native American children away from their parents and put them in boarding schools. Soldiers believed false and grossly exaggerated claims that Native Americans had committed blood-thirsty atrocities, before they machine-gunned women, children and the elderly as they slept, before taking fingers as souvenirs. Slave owners believed their superiority gave them the right to use whips and chains for generations. School boards believed that money was better spent on white children. Mobs believed that an unproven allegation of sexual assault justified days of death and destruction. And many believed that Americans of Japanese descent could not remain free, while Americans of German descent could. The cruelest acts were committed by people motivated to act without evidence.

Any system can become an instrument of racial injustice, if it is filled with enough people with deep-seated racist views. A racist jury will rule unjustly, no matter how the law is written. Political leaders do not adopt racist policies because they were proposed by Ivy League think tanks, they adopt them because they are expedient and popular among ignorant people who support them. Columbus did not wait for the King or the Pope to issue racist proclamations before enslaving the first Native Americans he met, because he brought base racism with him and his crew. And they immediately decided to apply it to the Taíno, because they were different. The root cause of centuries of tragic American history is the false, racist assumption that there was something wrong with the other group of humans. Racism is the instinctual mistake within us that causes us to break the Golden Rule.

So, since racism is fundamentally a problem of instinctual thinking, the first step in solving it is to reveal it within ourselves. We all act instinctually, or we would forget to eat and die. We are all emotional, with a million likes and dislikes, preferences and aversions. We mimic, extrapolate and project. We have a physiological and evolved social need to group together, find similar soul mates, and to feel good about ourselves at the expense of others. Our society enforces homogeneity from pre-school. Sesame Street taught us, “one of these things is not like the others, one of these things just doesn’t belong”. But when we defectively apply that instinctual thinking to groups of our fellow humans and feel that someone “just doesn’t belong” in our neighborhood, due to their race or ethnicity, then we are being racist. First, be aware.

Being anti-racist requires honest introspection. If you can find a racist attitude in yourself, understand where it came from, and judge it to be hurtful and wrong, then you can fight it. You can change your words and deeds. And then, you can apply that new skill to the world. Suddenly, you will recognize the next racist thing you hear as racist, and you will have the opportunity to object. You can make a little more effort to understand people who are different, and you might find that you like their food, their humor, music, literature, style, or even some of their religious beliefs. Ultimately, you must apply the same open-minded attitude to all groups of humans.

When I lived abroad, groups of schoolchildren would point at me, giggle and sometimes call me names, because I was foreign to them. Their school uniforms, group behaviors and appearance was equally strange to me, at first, but I was happy that the country stopped burning and beheading foreigners who looked like me some 150 years earlier. Culture shock has two sides, when you fall in love with a culture and when you hate it. Before you really get over culture shock, you need to go through both stages. Then you can stop seeing one group—a single culture—and start seeing the diversity within the group.

The simple truth is that there are good and bad people everywhere, in every group. It is neither accurate nor useful to judge whole groups as good or bad based on superficial characteristics. When groups of people share the same prejudice unconsciously, they begin applying their racism broadly. When groups share prejudice consciously, they organize that racism into a damaging and dangerous force, breaking down a peaceful, fair society, challenging laws and morals, and hurting innocents. Decades later, people may acknowledge that one case was wrong, without admitting that the same instinctual fault still persists.

Isn’t it time for us to admit the full extent of our racism, understand it, and stop it completely? Must we continue to repeat the worst of our history in new ways, for the same old reason? Can’t we finally decide that all humanity deserves to be treated as we believe we should be treated?

Instinctual Thinking

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Hope you had a Merry Christmas! Enjoy this next installment of how to fix our thinking problem by clarifying our four distinct ways of thinking. Lots of us get sentimental around the holidays, so there’s no better time to delve into instinctual thinking.

Observe and mimic

As animals, we follow our instincts, observe and mimic. We underestimate how influenced we are by what we observe. Our species—Homo sapiens—evolved larger brains and more sophisticated vocal anatomy than our predecessors, enabling us to communicate complex ideas through words. But our predecessors—Homo erectus—accomplished much despite their lack of language. They drew art and symbols, crafted tools and weapons, they mastered fire and they organized into communities. Our species began with knowledge of all of these elements of human society, before we invented the words and grammar to describe them. Wordlessly, our ancestors conveyed how to be successful humans, including cooking, hunting, raising families and living in tribes, through observation and mimicry, over thousands of generations.

We still learn this way. Our DNA contains the basic human design, but our species has always augmented that recipe with a sophisticated set of imitated human behaviors we learn from observation: how to use tools, communicate, and behave together. Babies learn very quickly by observing their families, before they learn any words. Parents pantomime behavior they expect their babies to mimic, such as opening our mouths while spoon-feeding. And throughout our lives now, we learn more behaviors while watching videos than when reading, because unconscious observation is the primary way our species has always learned.

Instinctive versus instinctual

Instinctive implies inherited behaviors, like our instincts to survive or reproduce. All humans are the same species, so we share the same physiology and basic emotions. Anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness and surprise are all easily recognizable human emotions, because our faces express them with eyebrows or lips moving up or down, jaw or cheeks flexing or relaxing, and eyes widening or tightening. These emotions are genetic, universal, unconscious, and evolved over thousands of generations, because communicating our emotions visually helps us thrive.

Instinctual—as I define it—includes both the traits we are born with and adds what we unconsciously learn as humans. While some facial expressions are genetic, others are learned through observation and mimicry. Often our genetic traits are indistinguishable from our unconsciously learned behaviors, so it’s useful to group them both together as instinctual.

Instinctual motives

Think about what motivates you.  Are you devoted to your family, your significant other, your friends or your pets?  Are you working to make your life more comfortable, to enjoy good food, and to have fun?  Do you make an effort to dress well for an event, for colleagues or for any gathering?  Do you wish you were more appreciated, recognized or admired?  Is being in a relationship where you can share your feelings and spend time together intimately important to you?  Do you enjoy supporting your local sports team and cheer when they win?  Afraid of dying?

These are all normal, powerful instinctual motives.  In many cases, the thinking is simply, “I want it, it feels good, so that’s what I’m doing.”  It does not matter whether it is conscious or unconscious, whether it reflects a physiological need or an evolved group behavior, whether you are intelligent or well-educated, or whether you are following the crowd or leading it.  If the root cause of your motivation is physiological or determined by your social needs, then what drives you to think and act the way you do is instinctual.  

Instinctual behavior

Most people primarily behave instinctually, without really thinking. Does such categorization offend you?  Do you want to object, argue or fight about it?  Do you suspect that you are being judged or having your status questioned? Are you preparing to say that all humans are this way and nobody is any better?  Then thank you for confirming. You instinctively feel threatened by a mere description and want to fight about it.  Rather than dispute what drives us, we should welcome our instinctual motives and behavior as what makes us human. There’s nothing inherently wrong with satisfying our basic needs, protecting our child, flirting, or needing group approval.  Our species would not survive without those instincts.

Instinctual motivations are what cause most of us to get out of bed, to groom, eat, exercise, work, rest, have fun and spend time with each other. Instinctual motives drive most actions, longterm habits, rituals, and even desire for change. Without that fire in our gut, most of us would not take that first step to accomplish anything. Instinctual feelings can also depress us, make us give up too soon or paralyze us with fear or doubt. Whenever we interact with others, we take in non-verbal cues and react instinctually, straightening our backs, baring our teeth in a smile, maintaining eye contact while extending an open hand. We instantly adopt a posture of helpfulness, defensiveness, confidence, aggression, flirtation or curiosity.

Our instinctual desires choose how we entertain ourselves: action, comedy, crime, horror, drama, porn, romance or thriller.  We often behave this way at work, when we decide where to sit during the meeting, who to team up with and whether to seek out or avoid confrontation.  Our desire for recognition, to be attractive and to dominate others are common human traits, and they drive our behavior more than other ways, whether we are conscious of them or not.  

Instinctual thinking

The different ways of thinking are primarily distinguished by motive. Instinctual thinking is driven by instinctual motives, consciously or not. We may not be aware of our unconscious motives, but we still feel them. They drive us to act instinctually, including displaying complex social behaviors, towards an instinctual goal, regardless of how much we initially realize what’s really driving us. Later, we often become aware of our instinctual motives simply by observing our behavior. Awareness helps us improve our instinctual behavior, through conscious instinctual thinking.

Those who have a finely tuned sense of instinctual motivations or who send all the right signals have social advantages over those who miss social cues or give off weird signals. Unconsciously we judge each other by tone of voice, stance, handshake and a look in the eye. If they appear confident, then we believe them. Do they remind us of others who were good or bad to us? Who appear to be winners and losers? Our internal instinctual drives often determines who we fear, flatter, imitate, join or avoid. Once aware of the instinctual games we all play, we can control our own instincts, influence the behavior of others and even influence group dynamics on a large scale. In this way, the dominant rule, and the subservient follow.

Instinctually-oriented folks feel in their guts that this is how the world works.

What’s the Big Idea?

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So, we agree we have trouble thinking. What can we do about it?

The Basics of Thinking

Humans think four distinctly different ways: instinctually, rationally, morally and creatively.

  • Instinctual thinking is how we feel human, and it includes all our evolved drives and behaviors, even some complex, internalized group dynamics.
  • Rational thinking is what we learn in school and often use at work: fact-based, methodical logic and calculating profits.
  • Moral thinking is what we should have learned as children and should still apply to every important decision we make: right and wrong, good versus evil, long-run over short-run.
  • Creative thinking is how we come up with new ideas: imagination, invention and inspiration.

Some people fall neatly into one of those four categories and consistently use the thinking methods appropriate to each.

  • Skilled instinctual thinkers are conscious of their own instincts, motives, desires and drives, those of others and the dynamics of how they typically play out.
  • Skilled rational thinkers use accurate facts and apply consistent logic and organized methods to solve problems.
  • Skilled moral thinkers take the long consequential view and judge on firm principles established to promote the general good, to set priorities and proactively intervene.
  • Skilled creative thinkers break rules, make imaginative leaps and invent to create beauty, find a new direction and change the world.

In theory, masters of multiple ways of thinking would approach every challenge beginning with proper motive, use the appropriate techniques, and achieve the right goal. Faced with a multifaceted problem, the master would rapidly run each thinking technique, then consider each conflicting solution, explore possible options, understand why, organize relevant details, arbitrate, optimize and prioritize to choose the best solution and course of action. But honestly, who does all that well?

What Goes Wrong?

Most of us aren’t sure how we think, let alone how the people we interact with think. We may get in an argument, because we’re trying to make a rational recommendation and the other person is trying to make a moral argument. Our creative solution may not work, if everyone just continues doing things by habit. And worst of all, relatively few people think using any consistent method.

In practice, few, if any, have been taught about all four different ways of thinking systematically, have been trained to use them all, know how they each differ and conflict with each other, and consistently apply them all correctly. Even if you are lucky enough to have a liberal arts college education, with degree requirements including ethics, creative arts and psychology & sociology, likely you still specialize in one way of thinking, knowing just enough about the other ways to get your thinking into trouble.

Unfortunately, the rest of us rely on a shifting, ad hoc hodgepodge blend of ‘thinking’, unaware of motives, dishonestly ignoring inconvenient facts, over-ruling our better judgement, and repeating the same old mistakes. We are driven by our instincts, we rationalize to suppress our guilt over having acted badly, and we can’t imagine trying a new path.

Since each way of thinking is different in motive, technique and objective, any blended thinking technique is flawed and unreliable. Just because we stumble into a jumbled solution, doesn’t mean that we’ve got our thinking straight. Think of it this way: you may know how to cook, play tennis and put together an outdoor grill, but you wouldn’t stir nuts and bolts into your chili with a racquet. It’s similarly wrong to let your instinctual thinking take over your moral judgement or bias your rational analysis or reduce your artistic creation into a common cliché. Every tub must stand on its own bottom. Each way of thinking must operate independently to work best. Only then, can they be combined with integrity.

Next Steps

Now that you get the general idea, every other Thursday, I’m going to review a method of thinking, discuss ways to improve it, or consider a relevant case, and then we can move on to mastery. We don’t need to excel in every way of thinking, but we do need to sort out when to use which and not muddle them together willy-nilly. Until we realize what’s wrong with our thinking, we won’t fix it.

The rest of the schedule stays the same for now, with visits on Monday, summaries etc. every other Thursday, and photo summaries every other Saturday. Ciao!