Trust your instincts
In 2017 Kris De Meyer, a neuroscientist who directs the Climate Action Unit at University College London, ran the opening session of a conference on decision-making under uncertainty for an audience of scientists, finance professionals and policy makers.
He divided them into groups of six and gave them questions and activities centred on their personal and professional experiences of risk. After a while, some hands went up. “They said, ‘We just realised we cannot agree on the definitions of risk and uncertainty,’” De Meyer says. “Even within those small groups, they ran into irreconcilable differences.”
De Meyer works to improve communication about climate change, and it quickly struck him that a major problem was how often professionals who were involved simply misunderstood one another. This, he says, is because people differ in the concepts they have even for basic terms, so what someone thinks they are saying is often not what others understand.
This, he claims, explains why climate scientists struggle to get their messages across and why big financial organisations underestimate the threats of climate change. Recent psychology research shows that conceptual differences of this sort turn up everywhere and that people are usually oblivious to these disparities.
Neuroscience studies demonstrate that they are underpinned by differences in how the brain represents concepts, a process influenced by politics, emotion and character. Differences in thinking that have been shaped by lifetimes of experience, practice or beliefs can be almost impossible to shift.
Isla Lucas
When Isla Lucas was 23, she had a wild near-miss.
She was travelling with her friend Tegan Grey, and at the end of the trip, they found themselves in Mumbai. Tegan suggested they make a last-minute stop at an historic tourist hotspot called the Leopold Cafe. The cafe was worth the visit — beautiful Raj era decorations and tiled walls — but for some unknown reason, Isla felt jittery in there.
“I was constantly looking around … I wasn’t relaxed and I couldn’t figure out why,” Isla told RN’s All in the Mind.
The two had a quick snack and left.
Around half an hour later, gunmen entered the cafe and started shooting indiscriminately.
The Leopold Cafe was among the first targets of a four-day terrorist strike that took place in Mumbai in 2008, ultimately leaving 170 people dead.
Something in that place triggered a subconscious response which saved her life.
Intuition
Some people define intuition as a spiritual or magical phenomenon, but scientists see it as a product of unconscious cognitive processes.
We learn to associate particular experiences with good or bad outcomes, and this intuition can provide useful guidance.
Even simple words like ‘game’ have differing connotations for different people – ‘football’, ‘chess’ or ‘cards’, for instance. From the time we are born our brains have been inundated with data from our five (six) senses. Some of that data has been deemed relevant to the current situation and used accordingly; some has been deemed significant enough to save in memory.
However, a lot of information is fed in subconsciously. Because of this it is not checked for accuracy and is either stored for possibly use later or ignored as being irrelevant. This subconscious data is usually accessed via triggers in our daily lives – the sight of something unusual; a rustle in the undergrowth; walking into an old building; a conversation. We call these sudden revelations ‘intuition’ or ‘gut instinct’.
Differing people have differing abilities in accessing this subconscious data. Some people, especially those who have to make quick decisions on little evidence can do it fairly easily but the majority find this difficult.
Our understanding of our environment depends mainly on science, our own observations and the unconscious data bank we have accumulated during our lives. AI does not have that capability – it relies on the conscious data was have placed on the internet. Whilst this data is correct, it is incomplete. AI certainly has its place in society – mechanics, biology, number-crunching, etc. but
We should be wary of using it in life or death situations, psychology, religion or politics where intuition comes to the fore.
Alan Stevenson spent four years in the Royal Australian Navy; four years at a seminary in Brisbane and the rest of his life in computers as an operator, programmer and systems analyst. His interests include popular science, travel, philosophy and writing for Open Forum.
