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Show Page 10 The Ogden Valley news Volume XXV Issue X January 15, 2019 Thinking, Fast and Slow: A Book Review By Forrest Brown In his book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman goes to great lengths to explain our current understanding of psychology, behavior, and how the mind is essentially divided into two systems that drive the way we think. What the author has done in this book has significantly contributed to a new understanding of the human mind. We now have a better understanding of how decisions are made, why certain judgment errors are so common, and how we can improve our own thinking. Join me as we explore this curious and fascinating work. The author, Daniel Kahneman, is an IsraeliAmerican psychologist whose notable work on psychology of judgment and decision-making, as well as behavioral economics helped him win the 2002 Nobel Prize in Economics, which he shared with Vernon L. Smith. He currently is a Professor of Psychology Emeritus at Princeton University and is also a Professor Emeritus at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. In 2011, he was named by Foreign Policy magazine to its list of top global thinkers, which was the same year that Thinking, Fast and Slow was published and became a best seller. In this book, Mr. Kahneman shows us how the two systems in our brains are constantly fighting over control of our behavior and actions. He also teaches us how one of the ways of thinking leads to errors in memory, judgment, and decisions, and what we can do about it. The first system in our brains operates automatically and quickly, with little or no effort and with no sense of voluntary control. System 1 thinking is fast, intuitive, and emotional. It also invokes both faults and biases, and reveals the pervasive influence of spontaneous impressions upon our individual thoughts and behaviors. Some examples of this automatic mode attributed to System 1 thinking are: • Detection that one object is more distant than another object • Orientation to the source of a sudden sound • Making a disfigured face when shown a horrible picture • Able to detect the hostility in someone’s voice • Being able to quickly answer the solution to two plus two • Able to quickly read the words on a large billboard • Able to unconsciously dive a car on a straight and empty road • The ability to quickly understand simple sentences All of these mental events occur automatically without us really thinking about them and they require little or no effort. What System 1 thinking tends to lead to, according to the author, is cognitive biases or the systematic pattern of deviation from norm and rationality in judgment, which may dictate one’s behavior. Cognitive biases sometimes lead to perceptual distortions, inaccurate judgments, illogical interpretations and irrationality. If our behaviors are insufficient then our decisions are illfated and we suffer unwanted consequences. System 2 thinking is slower, more deliberate, and more thought out. In this state we are more relaxed and we don’t feel the pressure of having to make a quick and disastrous decision. System 2 thinking requires attention and compels us to focus on what we are doing. Some examples of this type of thinking are: • Preparing for the start of a race • Focused attention on the clowns in a circus • Concentrating on the voice of someone in a noisy room • Looking for a person with a specific hair color • Maintaining a faster walking speed • Counting the occurrences of a specific letter or number • Telling some your phone number or your address • Parking a vehicle in a narrow parking space • Comparing two different washing machines values • Filling out paperwork such as yearly tax forms Amodel of these two systems at work is shown in the two horizontal lines illustrated below. The two lines appear to be of different lengths. The top line is obviously longer than the line below i t — that is what we observe and we naturally believe w h a t our eyes are telling us. However, if you actually take a ruler and measure the two lines, you see that they are equal in distance. This is known as the Muller-Lyer Illusion and is an effective way to show the difference between System 1 and System 2 thinking. We almost always use our System 1 thinking because when we first look at the two horizontal lines below, we immediately decide that the upper line is longer than the lower line. Yet, when we take the time to measure the two lines we find out that they are essentially the same length. The next new concept that the author expounds upon is that the brain is lazy and this can cause us to make intellectual errors. He says with System 1 thinking we typically expend some mental energy in random thoughts and in monitoring what goes on around us when our minds are doing nothing in particular. We make many small decisions without really noticing it such as driving a car on an empty road, reading a book, and having routine exchanges with others. All this occurs with little or no stress on our brains. Our brains can and do become lazy. On the other hand, with System 2 or slow thinking, our minds have a natural speed with such things as walking and conversing with someone else. Then, if we are asked to compute 23 times 78, we have to shift gears in our brains. In this case we would typically have to stop walking in order to do the calculation in our head. This requires mental work and it can impose a heavy load on our short-term memory. Also, if we accelerate our walking speed, things in our brain then have to transition, which would bring about a sharp deterioration in our ability to think coherently. Self-control and deliberate thought apparently draw on the same limited energy that exist in our brains. Case in point: It is much easier to listen to music while we are doing extraneous exercise than to try to do mathematical problems in our heads while exerting our physical abilities. With this basic understanding, Daniel Kahneman describes how both self-control and cognitive efforts (thinking) are forms of mental work vying for the same limited resources of energy. He says that several psychological studies have shown that people, who are simultaneously challenged by a demanding cognitive task and also by a temptation at the same time, are more likely to yield to the temptation. The author illustrates this with an example of when a person is given the task of remembering a seven-digit number while at the same time offered either a sinful piece of chocolate cake or a virtuous fruit salad. The evidence shows that most people are more likely to select the chocolate cake when your mind is busy trying to remember the seven digits. Thus, our System 1 type of thinking typically has more influence on our behavior when our System 2 thinking. In this book, Daniel Kahneman tries to convey to us that System 1 thinking is intuitive thinking. It’s fast, automatic, and emotional. It is also based on simple mental rules of thumb that cognitive biases usually result in impres- sions, feelings and inclinations. On the flip side is System 2, or rational thinking, which as mentioned before, is slow, deliberate, and systematic and based on considered evaluation that results in logical conclusions. The author explains that there are cogitative biases or heuristics that occur with almost every single mental thought that we have in our brains. The following is a list of some of the biases that Mr. Kahneman discusses: POSTAL NEWS cont. from page 1 States Postal Service needs the mail to be properly and correctly addressed. In any other case, the mail is undelivered. It is important that if you have a post office box, that you use this address for bills, parcels, and any other correspondence. Although some postal staff knows who you are and can correct and redirect mail to the appropriate post office box, it is not sustainable and some mail may be returned as undeliverable. You can always use your post office box number as the second line in your address if the company requires a physical address, so your mail gets to you and is not returned to sender. Example: The Postal Service has some of the lowest letter mail postage rates in the industrialized world and also continues to offer a great value in shipping. Unlike some shippers, the Postal Service does not add surcharges for fuel, residential delivery, or regular Saturday or holiday season delivery. The complete Postal Service price filings with the new prices for all products can be found on the PRC site under the Daily Listings section at www.prc.gov/dockets/daily (see listing for Oct. 10). The Postal Service receives no tax dollars for operating expenses, relying on the sale of postage, products, and services to fund its operations. Post Office Box Prices to Increase - In addition to a raise in postal rates, a price increase in post office boxes will also take effect. Small boxes will increase $5 per six months; medium boxes, $8. Undeliverable Mail a Big Problem “Undeliverable as Addressed” (UAA) mail is a clunky name for a big problem—mail not reaching its intended recipient because the address is incorrect, incomplete, or illegible. UAA mail is costly to both the Postal Service and its customers—$1.5 billion a year for the Postal Service and $20 billion for the mailing industry. But the costs of UAA go beyond just returning, destroying, or forwarding undeliverable mail. For mailers, there are direct costs, such as printing and postage, and indirect costs, such as lost opportunities. Also it takes more time to resort mail that is addressed to a street address but is supposed to go to a post office box! To deliver the mail effectively, the United Belief Bias – our thinking is biased by how believable we find a conclusion Confirmation Bias – our thinking is biased towards interpreting information in a way that confirms preconceptions Optimism Bias – our thinking is biased towards being over optimistic Hindsight Bias – out thinking is biased by the illusion that past events were as predictable at the time they happened as they are now Framing Effect – our thinking is biased by how information is presented Loss Aversion – our thinking is biased by an aversion to loss Narrative Fallacy – our thinking is biased by the idea that good stories are true Regression Fallacy – our thinking is biased by not taking into account the chance component of events Planning Fallacy – our thinking overestimates making us more likely to engage in risky behavior Halo Effect – our thinking is biased by existing judgments As we can see there are many biases that do affect our day-to-day thinking and, as the author has pointed out, it is beneficial to understand some of these factors as we are faced with decisions. He shows us that biases in many cases can be considered a fault especially with System 1 thinking because we are too quick to make a decision without slowing thinking things out (System 2 thinking). Mr. Kahneman reveals where we can and cannot trust our intuitions and how we can tap into the benefits of System 2 thinking. Throughout this book he offers practical and enlightening insights into how choices are made in both our business and in our personal lives and how we can use different techniques to guard against the mental glitches that often get us into difficulties. I hope you will take time and review this important book. JANE DOE 123 MAIN ST PO BOX 100 EDEN UT 84310 Staff at the Eden post office would like to thank you for your help in getting the mail delivered correctly and efficiently. ... Because life is too short to hate your hair. Laurie Van Zandt (801) 388-8103 Landscape Designer Designing Creative Unique Outdoor Architecture and Landscapes for Fine Residential Living www.theardentgardener.net |