Can a hardware and software metaphor explain it?
What is physically happening in our brain and body?
In: 21
Best ELI5 I can think:
Instincts are _suggestions_ for behaviors, that trigger
automatically when specific conditions are met.
They are evolved to suggest courses of action that tend to make sense whenever these conditions arises, but no guarantee. So you are able to disregard the suggestion if you think it shouldn’t apply (within limits).
A common example: in presence of high energetic food (fatty and sugary), the automatic suggestion is to stuff it in your mouth. That used to be a valid suggestion, for millions of years when any such food was rare and starvation a concrete risk. So, the suggestion, ingrained in us, is: don’t pass on it. That’s the instinct (as you can see, it’s not always to be trusted).
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