There are so many variables at the moment, and that's just taking things on face value. Will Boris agree a deal? Will the EU agree to a deal? Will the Brexiteers in parliament agree to a deal? Will any of the many Remainers agree to something?
You really are just second guessing people when you look at things like that. Even if you go through every single person in the process and try to calculate the likelihoods there are just too many things to consider. This is why good political instincts can often be superior to any information based analysis.
Instinct - what is it?
People tend to think of "instinct" as something without any basis in fact. A kind of "magical-thinking" or emotional tendency. Like some kind of gamblers luck that only ever exists as an accident, and that people believing it and "trusting their instincts" are foolishly acting on impulse. Conning themselves into believing that what they want to do is also the right thing to do, leading them to abandon sense, logic and reason.
However, I believe that "instinct" is a type of intelligence. An intelligence markedly different to the standard "thinking" process. That processes information in an altogether different way. I'll explain how I think it works below.
..using an example, as ever. Imagine...
(CafeCOol)
Imagine there's a cafe that you regularly go to. Let's say you go there with a friend every Wednesday morning. Now if you go there regularly after a while you'll begin to get a sense of what it's like in there. There may be other customers that go there often that you get used to seeing. You'll maybe get a sense of what the food's like, how the coffee tastes. How busy it usually is on a Wednesday morning. How quick the service is. If they normally have the heating on too high, or not enough. All these little things you'll get a sense of. You don't even have to consciously think about any of this. It just naturally happens. You just get used to that environment through the experience.
Now let's say you go there one Wednesday and there are two people sat in the cafe having a coffee, but unbeknownst to you they're just acting. Pretending to be regular customers. Perhaps they're part of some undercover TV show. Perhaps they're planning on mugging customers after they've left the shop. Maybe they're working for MI5 and are there to spy on you and your friend O_o
Either way they're not regular customers and you have no knowledge that that's the case.
Now when you first walk in you may get a feeling that "something's not right in here". There's no obvious indication that things aren't right. Nothing big you can point out, but it's a sense. A feeling. Perhaps you mention this feeling to your friend, but they reply curtly with a "don't be silly", like you're claiming to be having some psychic premonition. Something impossible from a rationalist standpoint and therefore something completely ridiculous that should be dismissed and ignored.
Well, I would proffer that that feeling, far from being something "magical" or "otherworldly", is in fact something based on the way your body and senses are processing information.
When you normally enter the cafe you're met with a constant stream of information. Visual information, audio information. Information in the form of taste and smell, temperature information. Every time you go in this happens, and though the information's always different you never the less get a feel for all the similar information. Again, as before, you get a sense of what it's "normally" like in there. How busy it normally is on a Wednesday morning. How quick the service is. How friendly the staff are, and so on and so forth.
However, this time when you go in and your senses get this stream of information it's perhaps more different than normal. It may just be little things. Perhaps the seating arrangement is slightly different. Perhaps the staff seem a bit more bubbly than normal. The two "actors", sat pretending to be customers. Maybe there are slight aspects of their behaviour that don't seem quite normal. Maybe tiny things - like how they're holding their coffee cup. Or other slight things like minor aspects of their clothing or hairstyle. Things that don't quite fit with the normal cafe clientele. Things you might not notice consciously, but that you pick up as part of that overall stream of information - little things that make up part of the overall informational picture. A picture that this day doesn't look quite right.
"Something looks different, have you had your hair done or something??"
Your body is processing all this information and giving you an overall sense of the situation - far faster than your brain could ever process this information through any sort of logical induction. In fact all this sensory information is so constant and numerous that it would be impossible for you to process it this way even if you consciously tried.
So in a way this "instinct" is a form of intelligence. A form of information processing that works differently to, and in tandem with, our conscious rationale. Our body processes this information in real time as it comes to us through our senses, resulting in a general feeling.
Of course, it must be stated that your feeling that something was up wouldn't prove that something was up, or that the two odd customers were indeed actors. Your instinct could be wrong. Or alternately your instinct could be right, but you may have misread it or misattributed it. For example, you may be right that things are different in the cafe, but that could be for other reasons. Perhaps the heating has broke. Or perhaps they've had a delivery on Wednesday when normally they get it on a Thursday and things are different because of that.
Still, your instinct is a useful thing to be mindful of, and something that can be very valuable when it comes to decision making ..provided you always bear in mind that it may be wrong and that it can be misread. Instinct can never provide proof, it can only give a probability. However, by marrying instinct with sequential evidenced-based reasoning (i.e. a logical chain of thought built on first principles or primary evidence) you end up with two forms of intelligence that enhance each other - rather than dismissing the one for the other.
Often people tend to lean towards just one. Some people tend be more instinctive - not really being inclined to think things through. Whereas other people tend to be more logical and rational - however those people also tend to be the people that dismiss instinct and gut reaction as hocus pocus or senseless emotion. It may partly be a biological thing, with everyone naturally falling somewhere on a spectrum between the two types. Perhaps this is why women tend to be seen as more instinctive - women's intuition - and men more "rational" and "less emotional" in their decision making.
I think it's best to try to hone the two as they both compliment each other well.
Returning to the cafe example. If you entered and got the feeling "something ain't right here" then it's best to bear that feeling in mind, but to then also look for further clear evidence that you can make a rational conclusion from. So if you find no further evidence to back up your "feeling" then it's probably sensible to recognise that your feeling was wrong or misguided. Or that perhaps you were being needlessly emotional.
However, let's say in your heightened state of awareness you notice a cameraman across the street filming through the cafe window then your instincts were probably good, and "yes, something unusual probably is going on here". Your friend ignoring his instincts (and yours), or simply having instincts dulled through lack of use, may have never noticed this cameraman because he was unable to pick up the smaller subconscious clues.
Finally, back to Breixt..
Finally, returning to Brexit (I'm sorry, this was a little long wasn't it!) I think instinct is useful when getting an overall sense of things. There's so much information, and it's coming at you in such a constant flow that it's impossible to simply process it all as a calculation. Plus of course, politics is real life too, so all everyday information flows into it as well.
This also plays into themes I've touched upon before. Such as how the "educated" and "informed" folk often decry the less articulate and less knowledgeable people. For example, many "normal" people will often struggle to give detailed information about how the EU works. However, they nevertheless have a very good "instinctive" knowledge of it. They live in this flow of information - literally living with and under the EU and Westminster - and consequently have a very good sense of what's going on and how it's impacting on their lives.
Whereas people bogged down in the detail, or focusing on one particular aspect (or on the political soap opera), will miss the larger picture. Though again, a balanced approach is no doubt best.
The country, perhaps instinctively, decided to leave. Maybe this overall instinct is a better judge of the situation than any reasoned argument a single person can structure and put forth.
In fact, one of the good things about democracy is that you get an easy way to gauge this "wisdom of the crowd". Though I'm getting onto a slightly different topic here (it's getting longer isn't it !). It's similar to individual instinct, though in this case the organism is an entire country. For instance, if 60% of people say healthcare isn't working, but your view or experience is that it is working you could be right and the 60% could be wrong. A general feeling. Be it the feeling of a person, or of a whole country can potentially be wrong of course. However, it's still useful to bear in mind what the collective view is. It's another clue or tool in your tool belt and it would be foolish to simply ignore it.
And I'll leave it there.
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