[Codhisattva]

"Let instinct trump logic" - bad advice. Instinct is simply pattern matching current conditions against memory. Without experience, instinct is a poor criteria and logic should be employed. Read Kahneman for the supporting research into that.

[jseliger]

"Let instinct trump logic" - bad advice. Instinct is simply pattern matching current conditions against memory. Without experience, instinct is a poor criteria and logic should be employed. Read Kahneman for the supporting research into that.

I'd also recommend Jonathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind (http://www.amazon.com/The-Righteous-Mind-Politics-Religion/d...). He makes a lot of interesting points, including that most people come to a conclusion about an issue, then look for reasoning to support it, and that most of us operate on instinct most of the time—logic is a more costly, difficult mode whose use can be cultivated but which is not at all the default.

[d23]

Yeah, our past experiences create walls of thought around us and make it hard to see or imagine what things are like outside them. Logic is one tool that can help us, as well as imagination. There are probably others.

[ftwinnovations]

Thank you! This is the one point I very much disagreed with from this talk. His argument is that our logical brain, which is new, is first to interpret our environment but am pretty sure that premise is flawed. Our irrational, fast, animal side is first given sensory input and a chance to act on it... Fight, flee, flinch, do nothing... At which point the slower, newer, better evolved logical side begins to work through it and make rational decisions. This newer side is what truly separates us from the rest of the animals out there, and is what creates everything.. Society, self-awareness, inventions, everything.

Not to say instinct is bad. It's extremely valuable, and as Blink Theory pointed out so famously, has it's place as well.

But as you said, I agree it's bad advice to let one simply trump the other.

[baddox]

Is logic not also pattern matching current conditions against memory?

[djim]

However, as he states in the article, instinct is the result of experience. He is saying the mechanism of instinct is older in humans than logic, so the process is more refined/trustworthy when comparing the two. Seems right to me..

[daliusd]

There is very good book on this topic "Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman. Instincts can be very misleading sometimes.

[Codhisattva]

Research trumps all :)

[vdaniuk]

The mechanism of instinct has emerged from the evolutionary process to provide a survival and reproduction advantage over others. Instinct most certainly is an advantage for species (may be just random path-dependent mutation), not for the individual. Thus we shouldn't trust on instinct alone to find an optimal solution for sense/meaning problem.

[drumdance]

That's my feeling too. We have lots of famous examples of intuitive, breakthrough, "a-ha" moments by great inventors, so we use that for inspiration.

However, there have been billions of bad-instinct decisions as well, ranging from "should have zigged instead of zagged" while driving a fast car around a curve to Napoleon invading Russia.

[jqm]

Instinct is certainly handy and much faster than reason.

But, if instinct trumped logic as the author suggests, humans wouldn't be at the top of the food chain and driving cars.