Daniel Kahneman
Thinking Fast and Slow
On taking thought
Before a packed house, Kahneman began with the distinction between what he calls mental “System 1”---fast thinking, intuition---and “System 2”---slow thinking, careful consideration and calculation. System 1 operates on the illusory principle: What you see is all there is. System 2 studies the larger context. System 1 works fast (hence its value) but it is unaware of its own process. Conclusions come to you without any awareness of how they were arrived at. System 2 processes are self-aware, but they are lazy and would prefer to defer to the quick convenience of System 1.
“Fast thinking,” he said, “is something that happens to you. Slow thinking is something you do.“
System 2 is effortful The self-control it requires can be depleted by fatigue. Research has shown that when you are tired it is much harder to perform a task such as keeping seven digits in mind while solving a mental puzzle, and you are more impulsive (I’ll have some chocolate cake!). You are readier to default to System 1.
“The world in System 1 is a lot simpler than the real world,” Kahneman said, because it craves coherence and builds simplistic stories. “If you don’t like Obama’s politics, you think he has big ears.” System 1 is blind to statistics and focuses on the particular rather than the general: “People are more afraid of dying in a terrorist incident than they are of dying.”
When faced with a hard question such as, “Should I hire this person?” we convert it to an easier question: “Do I like this person?“ (System 1 is good at predicting likeability.) The suggested answer pops up, we endorse it, and believe it. And we wind up with someone affable and wrong for the job.
The needed trick is knowing when to distrust the easy first answer and bear down on serious research and thought. Organizations can manage that trick by requiring certain protocols and checklists that invoke System 2 analysis. Individual professionals (athletes, firefighters, pilots) often use training to make their System 1 intuition extremely expert in acting swiftly on a wider range of signals and options than amateurs can handle. It is a case of System 2 training System 1 to act in restricted circumstances with System 2 thoroughness at System 1 speed. It takes years to do well.
Technology can help, the way a heads-up display makes it possible for pilots to notice what is most important for them to act on even in an emergency. The Web can help, Kahneman suggested in answer to a question from the audience, because it makes research so easy. “Looking things up exposes you to alternatives. This is a profound change.”
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primer
Daniel Kahneman is one of the world’s foremost psychologists. Back in the early 1970s, Kahneman and his research partner, Amos Tversky, “set out to dismantle an entity long dear to economic theorists: that arch-rational decision maker known as Homo economicus”. Their research led to a new compendium of human error and bias, and formed a new field called “prospect theory“, for which the duo won the Nobel Prize in economics in 2002.
In his 2011 book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kahneman summarizes decades of his research in behavioral economics and breaks thought into two general categories, System 1 and System 2. System 1 is what we usually associate with intuition, immediate reaction, and fast thinking. The system has relative advantages and disadvantages–one can save time and energy by using this system, yet this system often falls victim to stereotyping, visceral reactions, and general biases. System 2 occupies the other end of the spectrum. When we are thinking using this system, we are retrieving information, questioning our first answer, and slowly honing in on a balanced and informed opinion.
Rather than take the easy route of disparaging “fast thinking” in favor of “slow thinking”, Kahneman is careful to show how each has their relative strengths. Even though System 2 is often superior to System 1 in thinking about complex issues, Kahneman points out that self-control is linked to the same cognitive resources used during slow thinking. To use but one example: during a study where some participants were asked to memorize seven numbers and then asked if they would like a “virtuous” fruit salad or “sinful” chocolate cake, the participants that were negotiating the cognitive load of memorizing the seven numbers were less likely to exhibit self-control and chose the cake. We each have a reservoir of self-control/decision power, and we use System 1 to offset decisions that needlessly drain this reservoir.
Daniel Kahneman goes beyond pop-psychology to explain how we actually think, the promise and peril of different types of thinking, and how to train your mind to recognize what type of thinking is needed. Part of Long Now’s mission is to make long-term thinking as automatic and common as short-term thinking is now. Part of that battle will be on a societal level, but another part of the battle will be within our own heads, and Kahneman provides a map to thinking in the long-term.