We all need to develop instincts fit for the 21st century

Our instincts can lead us astray in the current world. In an evolutionary sense, it was only a blink of the eye ago that we were wearing loincloths and bartering for goods. Yet now we find ourselves (in the developed world) rapidly approaching an era when we will be able to have anything delivered to our houses at any time of day or night. Anyone will be able to 3D print any physical object. AI will be able to autonomously spin up a fully functioning business from an idea in an instant. We will be able to genetically design our children. We will have invasive technology continually tuning our health from the inside. We will be able to learn any human knowledge, tailored for our education level, whenever we want. Individuals will be able to initiate sophisticated microtargeted disinformation campaigns to change a huge number of people’s mental models. And on and on. This is both exciting and terrifying for most of us. It raises all sorts of questions about purpose, meaning, ethics, economics, competition. And in this post, I wanted to mention that it has a specific implication for our instincts. We all rely on our instincts. Sometimes we need them to make initial filtering decisions when there is too much information to process, or when things are going too fast. Even when we have the time, space and information to go through a rational, conscious thought process, our instincts often influence our feelings and decisions very heavily. But when the context changes, our instincts often need to change. Just as a silly little example – I have lived in central London for a long time, and when someone approaches me on the street, I am very good at automatically 'handing them off' - keeping them at a distance and escaping fast, to preserve my safety and sanity. Occasionally I find myself following that instinct in small, friendly towns, and everyone looks at me like I am crazy and evil. Our instincts need to be unthought and rethought for the current and emerging world described above. Here is small selection of examples of beliefs that drive instinctual behaviours that we have to address: 1. We can largely trust things we see, hear, read, experience with our own senses. (Not in a "World Without Truth".) 2. We can keep things we want confidential. (Not in a "World Without Secrets", as my friend Richard Hunter says.) 3. More choice is always better, always a sign of development. (Not in a world with too much of everything except time and attention.) We each need to thoughtfully develop 21st century instincts, that help us make better decisions and manage our mental health. Education needs to evolve to help us. #unthink #unask #unlearn