Next to my bed is a large stack of books, most of which I will never read. I pick them up on occasional prowls through the local bookstore, or buy them based on a book review. The problem is that I am far more ambitious when I buy books than when I want to read them. Recent choices include “Upright, the Evolutionary Key to Becoming Human,” “Mycophilia” (about mushrooms), and “Mr. Gatling’s Terrible Marvel” (about the history of the Gatling gun). However, I promised myself that I would make an honest effort at “Thinking Fast and Slow” a well reviewed book about how we think. But about half way through it, I raised the white flag and hoped that perhaps there was an old Vanity Fair nesting amongst the dust bunnies under the bed.
Beside, I think that I’ve got the hang of the book. The author, Daniel Kahneman, a psychologist, makes a pretty strong case that our exquisite brain, the 800 pound gorilla at the top of the food chain, basically relies on a mish-mash of biases, irrational “rules of thumb” (formally called heuristics) and stereotypes. Here it is in a nutshell. Kahneman describes two different patterns of thinking. System 1 is our fast, automatic and emotional pattern of processing information. In contrast, System 2 is slow, effortful, logical and conscious. We would like to think that System 2 is the basis of human intelligence but here’s the problem. System 2 is just plain lazy and defers to System 1 whenever it can. In the meantime, System 1 struggles to keep up with the deluge of input and is forced to make quick and dirty decisions on incomplete information. System 1 lacks the discipline to look beyond the surface and relies on “WYSIATI,” an acronym for “what you see is all there is.” Basically System 1 desperately tries to stitch together a plausible story line from immediately available information, and in its rush is totally vulnerable to all sorts of biases, fallacies, stereotypes and prejudices. The recent movie Moneyball contains a great example of Systems 1 and 2 at work. A room is filled with grizzled baseball scouts who make System 1 comments such as, “He waddles like a duck, he’s no good,” or “He’s got an ugly girlfriend, and an ugly girlfriend means no confidence. Don’t draft him.” That is pure System 1, which contrasts with the GM, Billy Beane, who has a System 2 approach that focuses on a detailed statistical analysis of on base percentage. Continue reading →
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