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.