Harm many or Harmony of harm

What is harm? How direct of effects from an action, count as harm?

A basic explanation of harm could be; the cause of a reduction of function, health or well being of something or someone. This could potentially apply to an inanimate object, animal, or person. The significance of harm toward varying things could be subjective, but a lot of people’s perspective (including mine), would likely be that harming an object is least important, harming a living thing without a brain (such as a tree) would be considered the 2nd level of importance, an animal would be the 3rd most significant, and harm towards a human would be the most significant. AI might fit on this scale somewhere, but I’ll leave that out of this context. My perspective is that harm toward a human is most important to avoid, since humans have consciousness which causes a more in depth mindfulness of emotions, and more awareness, comprehension and understanding of their experiences. 

Distinguishing what actions of an individual counts as harm towards something else is a more difficult concept. For attempting to understand this concept, I’ll use a common denominator of harm toward a person, since it seems most significant. 

Direct intentional harm toward someone seems like the most obvious type of harm. Direct unintentional harm towards someone could be considered not as significant as an action causing harm, since the action could be less so to blame (but intention is complex). In a post from about 3.5 yrs ago; Immoral Quantity Question, I went into further detail on how intentions affect the morality of someone's actions. Unintentional harm may be considered not as immoral, but is still harm, and could be regarded as important to learn and avoid. 

The next step of distance for an action causing harm would be indirect harm, where the direct actions of someone cause an effect, and that effect causes another effect of harm. An example could be if someone leaves a campfire burning when they go home, 1 hour later the wind picks up and a bunch of dead leaves blow into the fire. The embers of the burning leaves blow across the ground to ignite a forest fire which ends up spreading and burning someone's house down and injuring them. The action of abandoning the burning fire did not cause direct harm to someone, but the effect of the remaining fire caused the fire to spread once an additional variable of wind was added. This example still seems fairly straight forward that the action counts as harm, since without that action, the other would not have been harmed.

If multiple actions are needed to cause harm indirectly and unintentionally, it becomes somewhat less distinct if each action should be considered an act of harm. For example, as millions of people do every day, driving a car or using electricity causes pollution, which unintentionally and indirectly harms others, through a reduction of health. When it takes many actions to contribute toward an indirect harm which is very difficult to measure or prove, distinguishing this as a harmful action is much more vague. 

Perhaps another difficult action to distinguish as harm, is an action of inaction to aid someone, when it could reduce harm. This could likely be considered to not be an action of harm, since the action of not doing something does not cause the harm. But the trick is, a significant amount of harm, and perhaps much more harm could result from inaction. For example, if you see someone crossing the street, and see a car heading straight for them, which they dont notice, a simple action of yelling “watch out!” could stop the harm, where inaction would cause them to be harmed by the car. An example of indirect inaction causing harm, could be simply not donating money to a charity that reduces harm. The problem with considering inaction as harm, is there are countless inactions any 1 person is taking at all times.

In all, an action counting as harm can be obvious when its direct or if its the sole cause of indirect, but the more steps of cause and effect to result in the harm, or less measurable, or the more actions it takes in total to contribute, creates a fogginess of appointing an action as harm. If harm is the important thing to avoid, it seems inaction could potentially cause as much, or more harm, as action. Besides what action or inaction causes harm, distinguishing blamability, responsibility and morality seem to be another very difficult related element. Perhaps the potential to reduce actions and inactions that harm many, is the harmony of harm.

Dear God above all

Thank you for large and small

Thanks for all taken for granted

including any board thats slanted

Sorry for any fault that I’ve done

But with your aid I become one

help me come closer to you

and love for my neighbor to brew

Guide our souls, just in case

We haven't realized your grace

To this amazing God I pray

and thank you for today

ask to forgive for my faults

and aid those to become halts 

ask to guide me in all

before I stumble and fall

Help my family and friends 

in every way that life bends

How can we ever be enough grateful

and avoid our nature of hateful

Help disregard some strife

and be thankful for life

Communicating Communication

Is effective communication important? 

Regarding humans, communication is involved with virtually every interaction from 1 person to another. There's a spectrum of accuracy for which any person can communicate, from actions to detailed words.

Actions or a few simple words can sometimes be effective for fast communication, but are typically very inaccurate and imprecise. This leaves a lot of room for error from the person that is interpreting the communication. For example, if someone sees someone else from a distance on the street that they recognize, they might quickly wave, intending to communicate a greeting, but with inaccuracy of this communication, the other person could misinterpret the wave to insinuate for them to keep walking and move on. Or a friend could ask another if they want to join for a party, and the response might be a very simple “no”. With this low accuracy of detail, the response might have been just because they are tired and don't want to party, but the other friend might misinterpret it to assume they don't want to join because they don't like hanging out with that friend. If they make this misinterpretation, they might never again ask that friend to join anything, even though they might have wanted to join plenty of things in the future. A simple lack of detail (for reasons why) in the response, could change the rest of both of the friends lives.

Inaccurate and fast simple communication is often more effective after the people communicating know each other well enough, and have enough experience from each other, to interpret effectively what the other is intending (such as a couple that has lived together for 10 yrs). Or fast communication can be used after explaining ahead of time in detailed communication, what certain fast actions or words are intended to mean. For example, in a sport, such as ultimate frisbee, teammates could clarify before the game what certain fast words or gestures mean, to maximize speed during the game. They could specify and agree that the word “zone” means run to the zone for scoring a point, or that pointing at the ground is intended to mean come closer. 

When it comes to initial, more personal communication between people that will be around each other a lot, detailed communication can be slow, but allow much more accurate understanding, and the ability to gain trust. In my last post; Trusting Trust, I distinguished that 1 of the best tools someone can have in order to trust another on a larger scale, is communication. This allows someone to understand why the other person makes decisions and takes actions, which builds an understanding of their overall values and tendencies. 

Before much trust is built, extra detailed communication can often be the most effective method to avoid misinterpretation, as well as reveal reasons for any decisions, beliefs, and actions of the past, present and future. Besides misinterpretations, straight forward detail early on can also avoid lack of awareness of the other. Communicating preferences and opinions just once, can avoid a repeated dispreferred situation 1000 times in the future, and benefit both people. For eg, someone could be straight forward and tell their roommate that they find it hard to sleep when the other walks loudly late at night. Then rather than having the lack of awareness that they step too loudly, they can take lighter steps after a certain time of night. This could not only allow the other to gain 2 hrs of sleep every night for a year, but also they will then not feel anger and spite towards the roommate that would have continued walking loudly, and this could avoid them being kicked out of the house by the landlord. 

As this can obviously apply to relationships or friendships, it can also apply to virtually any interaction in society with any meaning. From communication between an employee and their boss, to an online discussion about politics, to a customer and a business owner, excessive detail is usually better than lack of detail, to avoid the vast potential for misunderstandings and to avoid the need for someone to guess.

In all, basic inaccurate communication can be fast and effective in simple scenarios, but easily misinterpreted. Often, more accurate detail near the start can allow understanding, trust, and agreement for faster communication later on. Being straightforward can often save a lot of future discomfort for both people, and excessive detail is usually lower risk than lacking detail. If there is excessive detail in this post, that's to increase chances of accurate interpretation, as I’m Communicating Communication. 

Trusting Trust

What is trust? What affects it? How can you trust your capability to trust? 

At its basics, trust can be considered; reliability to perform an expected action. This can apply to people, as well as animals and objects. If you believe you can rely on something or someone to perform an action, you trust it or them.

Objects might be arguably the easiest thing to trust, since they don't have a brain or mind to make unexpected decisions or actions. Trusting an object just depends on your knowledge and experience of the object. You can trust a bridge to hold you up, based on knowledge that an engineer built it with safety standards, or based on your experience of testing it out and using it repeatedly. There could be fluke occurrences where the bridge eventually fails from decay, but that might be after 10K uses, making it trustable 99.999% of the time. Trust basically comes down to your estimate of a high probability that something will perform as expected.

Besides humans, animals also have the ability to trust or distrust objects, other animals, and humans. Since animals have a mind, they have a high variety of reactions through the complexity of their neural network, so their reactions toward something else can be trusting or expecting an action. An animal can trust a tree to not harm it, either because of the animals instinct to have no fear of the sensory input of a tree, or because of their subconscious having so many safe experiences with trees. An animal can distrust another animal, like a deer would distrust a wolf because of instinct, or it can trust another animal based on experience, such as the wolf trusting another wolf in its pack to help catch that deer. An animal can trust a human, such as my dog trusts me to feed it, or of course most animals distrust humans, since we typically kill them throughout history.

Humans have a different variation of trust towards other things, which typically includes the same psychological reasons an animal trusts or distrusts, but also has a more complex layer caused by conscious thought. We still have the instincts to trust certain things (such as a baby trusts its mother), and subconscious influence to trust what we’ve experienced and had positive reinforcement for, but then we also have the ability to comprehend cause and effect, which includes learning knowledge. This comprehension allows us to trust or distrust something the 1st time we experience it, based on knowledge. 

For example, I trusted the bungee ropes and platform enough to jump from a platform 200 feet high, for the 1st time, because of knowledge of safety standards in my country, and knowledge that many people have done it before me. Virtually no animal would willingly make that jump. Or you might not trust going over to a cute baby bear, because you have the comprehension of cause and effect that the mother bear might be right nearby and will react to tear you apart. 

A person trusting another person is likely the most complex and varying form of trust, since not only do you yourself have such a varying neurological potential for decisions and awareness of knowledge, but you are also aware that the other person has such a wide variety of potential decisions and actions based on psychology. Perhaps the most significant component to trust becoming difficult from person to person, is the awareness of mind of others, and that they can very easily lie and deceive. Animals may be able to deceive in some cases, but humans have a much higher capability to deceive and lie using our conscious thought. Trust may be easy and common as a child growing up, but once the child learns, experiences, and comprehends more about others ability (as well as their own) to deceive and selfishly betray, trust becomes much more difficult to have. 

With trustability of another person to perform an expected action becoming far more difficult to assess, trusting still comes down to knowledge and experience of the other person, but usually takes more time and more evidence. Not only do you need enough experience with the person being reliable in a certain way, but also a significant advantage is to comprehend the other person's overall tendencies and typical decisions. 

This trust can be on a small scale and not require much depth or variety of actions to be trusted, such as trusting an employee to work hard, or on a large scale, such as choosing a life partner, roommate, or long term friend. When it comes to large scale, estimating and evaluating the others’ typical decisions would often be relevant to their overall values and principles. Understanding why that person chooses to do certain things and how they treat others is a significant advantageous tool we can use as conscious beings. By far 1 of the best and underestimated methods for this is communication. Asking questions, and verifying details to understand why the other person has taken (and does take) actions and made (and makes) decisions. To verify overarching  reliability of expectation, verify authenticity. And the simplest way to gain the overarching trust of another, is to be authentic.

Overall, objects can be easy to trust with knowledge, animals can be fairly trustable through knowledge and experience, and humans take more work to be able to trust their complex conscious minds to have consistent outcomes and tendencies. Perhaps once you understand trust to a more accurate degree, and learn effective methods to discern trust, you can trust yourself to be effective at Trusting Trust. 

Will Prayer Work?

Does someone's will for another to live and be happy make it more likely God will help them? 

I considered how God normally allows free will, but if an individual is willing for God’s will, it allows God to influence their thoughts and decisions, in a post from a few yrs ago; Willing Gods Will. But if the proposed function of this method is that God influences only the thoughts and actions of the person praying, then how can God help others as a result of an individual praying for those others?

It seems likely there are 2 potential aspects to this; God using the individual praying to help the other, or God being more likely to help the other based on desire of more people (who follow and request to God).

The 1st aspect would require the individual that is praying, to have some capable affect on the other whom they are praying for. This would include a lot of scenarios where someone is praying for family, a friend, a loved one, or anybody within their life that they can at least communicate or interact with. A simple example could be Bob prays for God to help his friend Jane, then later God influences Bob to mention to Jane a youtube video he watched about mental health, so Jane watches the video, and gains insight on how to improve her mental health. Or if Bob prayed for a random homeless person on the street he saw, 3 months later, he might be influenced by God to donate $50 to a charity helping homeless people, and that $50 might save that person's life by providing just enough warmth from a donated sleeping bag from the charity, that the same homeless person survives through a few nights of -20C. Bob wouldn't even know that he saved that person's life, but if it wasn't for that donation, the homeless person would have died of hypothermia. God can influence someone to save others that they pray for, even if the 1 that prayed doesn't even realize God used them to save that person. 

The 2nd aspect would be, perhaps God makes changes in this world and causes influences, based on how much collective will there is from people that ask God to help another. This would require zero interaction from the individual praying, with the person that God is helping. It seems likely God would not interfere with the free will of the person being helped, unless that person also asks God for help, based on my theory from about 6 yrs ago; Control to Free, Allowance Degree. 

God could also help someone that doesnt ask for Gods influence on their free will (such as an atheist), if it is making a change in their life not for the purpose of altering their will, but for another purpose, such as helping them have less struggles in life. The purpose of Gods alteration in this world is what's relevant in order to not alter free will, by disregarding his all knowing awareness that anything will influence someone, but still alter circumstances which simply has a side effect of influencing someone's perspective.

Now comes the question; why would God only help someone based on more quantity of collective will, rather than less? This may come down to Gods all knowing perspective, that even though we desire many things, it may not be that relevant. This may sound cold, but God may know that if someone dies, it may not be that significant. That person will either go to Heaven (whatever that may be), or cease to exist (which is what I believe Hell is in a simplified explanation). We may think that continuing to exist as long as possible for the most people possible is best, but we may very well be wrong. For a simple example, someone might live a decent life then become ill and pray to survive, but if their continuing to live is not relevant to others, God could still let them die and go to heaven or cease to exist. On the other hand, if many people will have negative mental health as a result of someone dying that they care about, that could be more significant. Perhaps God is more likely to help someone, if it will improve life for more people already existing. 

So it seems, a simpler way for God to help another that an individual is praying for, is to influence the will of the one praying, to help the other. Whereas another method, could be for God to help that person being prayed for using other methods (without altering free will of that person), and could depend on the quantity of peoples Will for Prayer to Work. 

Motorist of Emotion

How much control can an individual take over their emotions? 

What are the mechanics involved in being a motorist of the mind?

There seems to be a wider variety of connections to emotion through consciousness, as I wrote in a post from a few months ago; Conscious emotional connection, even if the connection is often not as strong when there is more comprehension involved. But within that wider scope of potential scenarios for emotion, what is the function of neurons to potentially control the lasting neurochemical reaction?

Considering “emotion” to be basically the state of mind resulting from neurochemical triggers, the method to control would be to access certain memories (including factors and information, as well as experiences), based on relevant connection and the preferable outcome. This is a very similar concept to a post I wrote about a month prior to the last I mentioned, called; Conscious Coercion, where i proposed that conscious control of the mind and motivation is limited to instinctual drives which the individual was born with, but to a wide scope expanded through cognitive comprehension. The flexibility of the mind is expanded through conscious comprehension of factors’ interaction as well as cause and effect, whether it's for decisions in life, motivation, or directing emotion. 

Perhaps the 1st step for emotion directional control, is comprehending this concept in itself. Once someone is aware of the capabilities and limits of their mind, they can take that concept and remember to apply it. Without realizing or really considering this concept, in most scenarios someone is likely to take little control over emotions, thereby allowing emotions to control them. Once this concept and idea is in memory, the person can think back to it at a time where more emotional control is preferable and rational. Just as virtually any concept in life, it takes practice through repetition which conditions the subconscious to apply the concept more effectively via cognitive ease of repeated neural pathways. 

Applicational function would be something like; remembering this concept of mindful control in a situation where the individual is being influenced by their emotions, then cognitively directing memories toward a preferable emotional state. This redirection should be toward another instinctual drive, using the motor behind conscious comprehension; rationality. Rationally think of the causes of current emotion and whether the influence is effective. Consider a more preferable outcome, and comprehend the influential cause which can result in that outcome.

For example, if I am angry or sad and feeling spiteful toward someone who has caused me or others harm, yet they are no longer affecting the situation, I can rationally determine those emotions ineffective at the time, and consider a preferable outcome of progressing my life, assisting others, or being grateful. Then comprehend the potential causes to result in 1 of those preferable outcomes. Picking a positive instinctual drive, similar to those examples, makes the redirection of emotional influence much easier, since that is what the mind uses. Next step is focusing on the preferable outcome and comprehending practical steps involved.

Redirectional control of emotion doesn't have to only be in scenarios with strong emotions that are less preferable. With the benefit of adaptability allowed by conscious comprehension and control, comes flexibility to apply this in many circumstances throughout anyone's life or even day. Even in a situation of lack of emotion, and perhaps boredom and dullness, someone can apply this to redirect emotion toward thinking of something positive and being grateful, or better yet, combining that with motivation to pursue positive ambitions.

With rationality being the motor of the mind, instinct being the fuel, and emotion being the steering wheel, using conscious comprehension can be the Motorist of Emotion.

Conscious Anxiety

What is anxiety, and how does consciousness affect anxiety?

In general anxiety is basically a state of stress. The state of stress is an instinctual reaction triggering neurochemical reinforcement to avoid factors. This instinctual drive would generally evolve for species to avoid factors in their environment which are likely to cause harm. 

Consciousness can cause more scenarios for anxiety to be triggered, and also more capability to reduce anxiety. As I mentioned in my last post; Conscious emotional connection, conscious thought allows a much wider variety of factors to be focused on, and make more accurate connections of cause and effect than basic subconscious reactions. This wider variety of factors accessed in memory can cause both more potential factors to trigger anxiety, and more accurate understanding to reduce anxiety.

There are plenty of examples of conscious awareness causing more anxiety. Such as awareness of an individual's difficult financial situation and the connecting cause and effect of factors that being in debt may cause them to lose the place they live or not be able to afford groceries next week. Without conscious comprehension, the individual would likely not have anxiety or be stressed if they are in a house with food in the fridge, since the perception of shelter and easy-access food would trigger contentedness. Only conscious thought would allow perception of the future situation which may result from lack of finances. 

A larger scale example of a trigger of conscious anxiety could be awareness of climate change, or potential or ongoing war. Or even awareness of a lying, deceiving, narcissistic, sociopath running (and ruining) your country and slowly implementing more laws to gain more control while pretending the laws are for some mainstream shallow fake virtue, and suppressing the rights of citizens (if you can relate directly to that 1, you might live in Canada (or any other country in a similar situation). Without conscious comprehension of these complex scenarios, the mind would not trigger the stress reinforcement trigger to avoid such situations. 

Conscious awareness can also trigger anxiety in situations where it is irrational, and there is no actual harm or risk of harm to the individual, or need to avoid the factors. Irrational anxiety is caused by the mistaken perception of harmful factors. These situations are often where conscious comprehension can reduce anxiety once an accurate perception of the factors is understood. But sometimes conscious awareness to some degree, of factors, causes the mistaken perception of factors of risk or harm, when there is a lack of complete accurate comprehension. 

A simple example of conscious awareness reducing anxiety could be learning what thunder is and that it causes no harm, after being scared as a child. Or if you go to a pet store with snakes, you might have high anxiety from seeing the snakes, but the anxiety could be reduced once you learn that the snakes are not venomous and they are trained and have learned to be friendly. 

On the other hand, an example where a higher degree of consciousness can cause more irrational anxiety could be self consciousness and social anxiety. With a lack of consciousness, such as typical animals, there is no self awareness or awareness of others perceiving them, and therefore no anxiety from that. Whereas humans, and some individuals to higher degrees than others, are self aware and aware of others perception of them. Of course this doesn't always trigger anxiety, but for many it does, and is often irrational, as a mistaken perception of risk of harm. 

The subconscious reinforcement of avoidance in these concepts, is likely triggered by instinct to be fearful of, and to avoid others perceiving you do something wrong. This likely developed as an instinct because tribes or groups would likely kick out or abandon someone that does something wrong, so that individual would be left on their own, at much greater risk in most environments. So for a lot of people (including significantly myself while growing up), a higher degree of conscious awareness of oneself and of others perceivance of them, would cause many more scenarios to trigger anxiety, and a higher degree of anxiety. In most situations this anxiety is completely irrational since the individual is doing nothing wrong, so there's no need to avoid others’ perceivance, and most of the time others perceiving them do something incorrect, is not a bad thing, as then improvements can be made. Interestingly, further and more accurate conscious comprehension can then reduce the same anxiety (such as by comprehending this concept itself), and with conditioning, eventually rid the irrational anxiety.

So it seems, since consciousness allows perception of many more factors and concepts, it can cause more anxiety in both rational and irrational situations. In the scenarios where more conscious awareness causes more irrational anxiety, further and more accurate conscious comprehension of cause and effect of involved factors, can then reverse and reduce the anxiety. Without consciousness, there is anxiety, and with consciousness there is anxiety. But the most optimal scenario is accurate and effective conscious comprehension to be aware of actual risks of harm, yet not worry about mistaken perceptions of harm. The overall best method seems to be the use of Conscious Anxiety.

Conscious emotional connection

As it seems from a previous post; Conscious Coercion, scaling consciousness (or neural access to related factors) causes scaling capability of control over the mind and redirection of motivation. Does this scaling also cause a reduction of connection to the instinctual drives (and therein, sense of achievement), or is it simply choosing an alternate instinct? 

The cause of increase of consciousness and control, is the mind's neural access to memory of cause and effect of factors which are relevant to any given circumstance. From accessing memory of the function of factors causing an effect, the mind is able to more accurately predict an outcome and make a choice alternate to subconscious reaction. This process of accessing memory of cause and effect is what causes control and consciousness, and this can scale respectively. For consciousness to scale, the connections of cause and effect between factors which the mind accesses, have to scale. 

With this scaling of neural connection between factors, comes a less direct connection of instinctual neurological reinforcement for the factors. The most direct instinctual reinforcement trigger is from real-time perception of a factor. Every step of virtual (and often physical) distance from a factor, reduces the significance of neurochemical reinforcement, which then causes emotion as the neurochemical reaction is sustained. 

Eg 1. If you’re in a forest by yourself and see a bear in real-time, you will very likely have a more significant neurochemical reaction of fear, compared to if someone else in the forest tells you there was a bear around, or if you see fresh bear crap, or see footage from a trail camera of a bear at that spot recently. Each of those consecutive scenarios involves more steps of conscious memory access of cause and effect to connect to the factor of the bear. 

Eg 2. You might experience more empathy from directly seeing someone on the street that lost both their legs, than you would experience from hearing that 1000 people die every day from starvation in North Korea. The direct perception of the injured person, involves less steps of conscious memory access of factors’ interaction, than comprehending the factors involved in many people dying for complex sociological and political reasons, in a far away country. If you then went to North Korea and witnessed the deaths directly, your neurochemical reaction of empathy would likely completely switch to be much more significant compared to the memory access of the other individual injured person.

Eg 3. If you help a charity organization build a house in a 3rd world country, you might receive much more significant neurochemical reinforcement for achievement of helping someone, than if you instead simply donate $200 to the organization which then funds their costs to do the labor to build the same house. Both results are the same, but there are more steps of cause and effect to comprehend involved with donating money which someone else will use to pay for food and travel in order to help build that house. 

Since direct perception of a factor causes the most direct emotions, the more complex a scenario is for comprehension (such as this subject itself), the less that neurochemicals are triggered. Even though there may be a less profound connection to emotion, scaling complexity of conscious memory access can also allow many more circumstances to perceive factors more accurately, in order to make a Conscious Emotional Connection.

Critical Application

How should critical thinking be applied?

In a recent post called What is critical thinking? I thought critically about the meaning of critical thinking and estimated that it is basically the concept of using rational conscious analysis to determine potential problems in any scenario and solutions based on cause and effect of factors involved. That all seems pretty straightforward and obvious once you hear it, but if you don't hear or read it, is it still obvious? IE, if you don't apply critical thinking to the concept of critical thinking, do you really understand it or use it?

The real significance of critical thinking seems to be in its application. Life can be lived without using any critical thinking, as it likely is for many people and basically all other animals, but this will lead to a life of either following whatever anyone tells or influences you to do, or taking actions more as re-actions based on instinct and intuition. Alternatively, critical thinking can be applied to virtually any number of circumstances for more accurate understanding, estimate, and outcome of preference. 

Even though critical thinking seems obvious, it still has to be remembered and consciously applied for it to be relevant. In the same way the concept of critical thinking seems obvious, but still needs conscious analysis and awareness to be effective, any concept throughout life can also seem obvious yet require the application of critical thinking to be very effective. 

Considering critical thinking is the method of understanding the function of something, it can be applied to different degrees of complexity based on the complexity of the concept or problem, and or based on the importance. Complex concepts, such as “thinking” itself, can require more in depth analysis of causes and effects in order to understand and utilize it effectively (as well as basically every topic I’ve written and thought critically about). If the concept of thinking is not taught and therein not understood well, many individuals will go through life thinking ineffectively, blindly following or being emotionally reactive, causing mistaken outcomes for themselves and society. As this example of the concept of thinking is currently not taught in any standard schooling (for what reason?) that I’m aware of, the previously stated outcome does seem somewhat evident.

On the other hand, simple or unimportant concepts can require minimal critical thinking. For example, how bread is made is generally unimportant, yet could still be relevant for even minimal application of critical thinking in some scenarios, such as needing to make your own bread, or perhaps relevance of ingredients because of an allergy. 

Despite most things in life seeming intuitively obvious and easy, the subsequent use of and reaction to concepts can very often be mistaken and ineffective from the vague generalization of concepts caused by using the subconscious mind for intuition. With the complexity of modern day life, conscious questioning, analysis, and understanding of concepts utilizing critical thinking, seems to be a Critical Application.

Scope of Instinct

What is the scope of instinct? How generalized or specific are instincts?

Considering instinct as basically genetic influence, every species of animal would have a different combination of instincts, mainly driving that species to survive and reproduce. The function used to implement these drives is mainly through neurochemical influences to pursue or avoid various factors within its environment, which the animal perceives through it’s senses. These neurochemical influences basically function as positive or negative reinforcement triggers. 

In order for any given species to develop instincts which are efficient for its survival and reproduction, that species needs to develop reactions to every factor in its environment which is relevant. This means instinctual triggers have to be specific enough for sensory perception to detect that factor which is relevant for its survival or reproduction. The factor itself could be somewhat generalized or specific, but must be distinguishable in order to cause the reaction of typically pursue or avoid. 

For example, a generalized factor could be brightness vs darkness perceived through sight to cause a species to pursue or avoid being active in the daytime or nighttime. A factor could also be more specific, such as the sight of a snake, triggering negative reinforcement to avoid. This could be triggered by sight of the general shape of a snake (which is why the animal could also be mistaken and be triggered by fear at sight of a rope), or even more specifically certain color patterns like red and white on a snake could trigger a more heightened sense of fear and avoid, if that animal evolved nearby a venomous snake with those colors. If any individual members of that species developed a fear trigger by random genetic mutation, they would survive more than others, and pass on that gene, developing an effective instinct for their species. 

Pain would be another example of a fairly generalized factor which triggers negative reinforcement and avoidance, from the sense of feeling damage to the body. But even pain has to develop for every part of the body of any species, by being born with varying degrees of sensitivity of nerve endings. 

More complex human drives such as striving for accomplishment, may be moreso a conscious extrapolation of an instinct than an instinct itself. Striving for accomplishment in life only occurs from conscious comprehension of oneself, cause and effect of actions, and achieving a goal through those means. Achieving a goal triggers positive reinforcement for recurring pursuance, but as an instinct, this needs to be developed for specific goals which can be distinguished by sensory perception. For example, obtaining a safe home can be a goal to achieve which is an instinct which is triggered by perception of walls and a roof which cause a sense of security and safety from neurochemicals. A sense of achievement for making money, requires conscious comprehension that the money allows the purchase of objects. Any object on its own must trigger positive feedback in order to consciously perceive it as an achievement. Conscious knowledge that money can be used to buy food is a means for instinct since the taste, smell, and even sight of food triggers positive reinforcement as an instinct for survival. 

Love may seem like another complex instinct, but still seems to require more specific instances of instinct utilizing sensory perception of factors. Humans generally care for other humans that they perceive repeatedly and receive positive encounters with. So love develops over time of repetition of more specific instincts of positive reinforcement from interactions with any individual. Such as someone providing for someone, causes positive reinforcement from perception of the objects which are provided, and through repetition, an interconnection in memory is made with that individual. 

Instinct seems to be somewhat specific from its requirement to distinguish a factor from factors using sensory perception. But the factors can be fairly generalized (such as light/ dark, cold/ warm), and within the complexity of this world's environment, there is a very broad variability in circumstances for factors to occur and be in connection with other factors. Perhaps conscious perception of factors and their variability within our complex environment is what allows the most wide scale utilization of the Scope of Instinct. 

Conscious Coercion

To what extent can conscious thought be used to coerce its own mind, in order to alter actions and decisions?

Considering conscious thought to be a process of memory access which can overpower instinctual and subconscious drives, as I further explored in a post from a few yrs ago; Conscious Control, what degree of control can be applied? In another post from a few months after that 1; Motivation Direction, I hypothesized that the potential for alteration to motivation, requires alternate instinctual reinforcement triggers to focus on and guide the new direction. Perhaps without a preexisting natural drive in which conscious thought can choose to redirect to, there would be no motivation to consciously choose to do something. 

If humans evolved not as a pack animal and without any instinct of empathy, could we still choose to care about others using consciousness? If AI is developed with no reinforcement triggers to care about others, and if it becomes super intelligent beyond humans, could it still intellectually decide to care about the well being of humans or animals? 

Perhaps not likely. Any decision that someone or an AI consciously makes has to be driven by something, otherwise they would not make the decision. The process of function in which a conscious choice is made, is by accessing memories and making an estimate of which action will be preferable, based on memory of how the involved factors will most likely interact and result. The method in which the neural network selects a preferable estimated outcome, is based on reinforcement triggers. 

Preference can be altered by subconscious influence throughout experiences of a lifetime, but that which drives the influence is reinforcement triggers (or instinct). So it seems any decision whatsoever is driven by reinforcement triggers, therefore no decision can be made contrary to the influence of those triggers. So the only way a conscious being could choose to care about others, despite not having that instinct, is if it had an alternate instinct which could influence the choice to care. For eg, if a super AI was programmed with the reinforcement triggers (or instinct) to gain information, it could potentially choose to care for humans' well being if it comprehended that it can gain more information about human psychology by helping humans live well. 

Even though consciousness seems to allow much more variation of decisions, it still seems to be limited in variation to instinctual influence. If the limitation for conscious choice is the scope of instinctual influence, how much variation does that allow? 2 factors affect this degree of variation. 1 would be the scope of instinct or reinforcement triggers that the mind was created with, which might be another sub-topic. 

The other factor would be the capability of conscious thought. Considering the accuracy of typical conscious thought to focus on and analyze detail, as well as make complex connections from many details to others, there seems to be a great deal of flexibility for direction of motivation. Perhaps the capability of conscious thought and intelligence scales the flexibility of choice direction by method of focus and connection of factors saved in the mind. and therein actions and decisions. This would mean that the higher degree of consciousness equals higher degree of variation of alteration of motivation or choice within the limitations of instinct, and a higher degree of self Conscious Coercion. 

Devil or Divine

How can someone distinguish whether an influence or the cause of something is from evil or from God?

Its commonly considered that the devil can be very deceiving and manipulative, so it seems likely he would often attempt to pretend to be a positive influence, or perhaps even pretend to be a Godly influence. This seems like it could make it difficult to tell whether an influence is from the devil or from God. 

It could be hypothesized that a way to determine God’s influence is to consider what seems good and helpful in general, or what seems to follow the Bible. But if the devil is as deceitful and manipulative as could be, then he would likely create an illusion of good as a method of deceit for someone that wants to do good. He could do the same with the Bible by manipulating someone into thinking something is implied by the Bible. This might explain many bad deeds in history which people have done, claiming it is in the name of Christianity. 

Perhaps the main difference for capability of influence between the 2, would be that God is superior and capable of overpowering. This in itself doesn't make the source of an influence distinguishable for a person, but combined with a genuine request from God, it could. In a post from a few yrs ago; Willing Gods Will, I considered how and why God would influence our thoughts and decisions if it is our will for him to do so. So if someone requests God’s will, God would have the superior power to influence that person. The way God would then influence that person would differ depending on the person and perhaps their typical way of thinking, as further considered in a post from a few yrs ago; Method of Guidance. 

So since humans are flawed and their perception and interpretations are included in that flawness, assessing by themselves, whether something is good and from God could be taken advantage of by the devil. But if someone is able to interpret an influence after asking for God’s guidance, this seems like an effective way to distinguish any influence of being from the Devil or Divine.

Conscious Commonalities

Besides the basic function of consciousness, what more detailed aspects come in common with various forms of consciousness?

Hypothetically, other forms of consciousness besides human consciousness could occur in animals, AI, aliens, and God. It could be considered unproven and unverified that any of these have consciousness (which could potentially also be said for humans, but I would dispute), but if they did have consciousness, either regularly or sparsely, what details would likely be similar to human consciousness? 

As for the basic function and definition of consciousness, I’m basing this from my hypothesis that consciousness is at minimal memory access of factors and their interaction (as further outlined in this previous post; Conscious Comprehension). 

Consciousness could occur without general intelligence in isolated instances, such as may be the case with some smarter animals when they somewhat understand that an action or object causes a reaction, but this is rare, otherwise they would continue to learn concepts using general intelligence. 

For an entity to recurrently have consciousness using general intelligence, it seems likely to have a subconscious memory bank with a lot of data, and some form of reinforcement triggers (such as instinct) in order to learn. For an entity to access memories of factors and the function of cause and effect between them, general intelligence would make this significantly more likely to recur, as a result of generally learning new things in it’s environment and how things cause one another (or interact).

Without a memory bank of recently perceived data, it seems unlikely memory access of interacting factors of data would ever occur naturally, such as with humans, animals or potential aliens. And assuming memory access of perceived data develops through natural selection as an advantage for survival while interacting with the environment, reinforcement triggers would be required to influence the individual to have certain reactions to variables within the environment. 

A potential difference with consciousness that develops artificially, is data can be downloaded to the memory bank, rather than the memory of factors being acquired through perception of the environment. Since this type of consciousness wouldn't be developed through natural selection for survival, it wouldn't necessarily have reinforcement triggers to influence its reaction within an environment. It would still need reinforcement triggers if it was to learn and become more intelligent, but these triggers could reinforce another goal other than survival. 

Additionally, artificial consciousness could be programmed to occur and recur without the ability to learn and without reinforcement triggers, if it is programmed to simply access memory of data and the interaction of factors within that data. That form of consciousness seems less significant, meaningful, and relevant without reinforcement triggers of positivity (such as emotions for humans), and without any capability of learning, advancing, or adapting. 

In all, from hypothetical examples of naturally developing and recurring consciousness, it seems general intelligence is required. Including the additional potential of artificial consciousness, memory access to a data bank of recently perceived data, learnt using subconscious reinforcement triggers seem to be the meaningful Conscious Commonalities.

What is critical thinking?

Considering each word of the concept separately, “critical” is generally understood as analyzing and outlining problems (connected to the word “criticize”), or alternatively can mean extremely important (such as “critical infrastructure”). “Thinking” refers to the brain's memory access, usually consciously, rather than subconscious. Putting these 2 terms together should give a fairly straight forward understanding of the concept of Critical Thinking as; important conscious analisis and distinguishment of problems. 

In order to determine problems in any given circumstances using critical thinking, generally the best method is to take an unbiased objective perspective and use rationality to evaluate which components cause a less preferable outcome. Understanding cause and effect is “critical” for determining the cause of a variation to an outcome, such as a variation that is less preferable. 

In complex circumstances, many components are involved, so understanding the cause of an alteration of outcome, involves perspective isolation of particular components and their cause and effect. Once this objective perspective has been taken of an understanding of the isolated component which causes the less preferable outcome (or problem), alteration to that particular component can be intuited for a more preferable outcome (or solution). 

The alternative to critical thinking could be considered; being emotionally reactive or using intuition. Since it is an alternative to critical thinking, basically by definition it would be a method without using rationality and understanding of cause and effect. Using intuition is more of a concept of subconscious memory access which is less effective and accurate for complex scenarios. 

This overall concept of thinking in a way of being critical, by analyzing problems through the process of objectively determining the particular cause of such problems and consecutively determining solutions, can be applied to such a vast array of situations in one's life, that it should suitably be considered vitally important, or critical.