Update: I was so tired after writing this blog that I had to kill myself.

I was bored today. So I decided to write a short note on one of the books I have read recently. I could have used a LLM for this job but I would rather install Windows on my laptop than contribute toward the destruction of our planet and our economy.

I thought I would write on The Theory of The Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen but I guess it would be pretty shameful for a newbie to summarize Veblen’s splendid and beautiful insights on societal structures. I decided to choose something more mediocre and Thinking, Fast and Slow felt like a good candidate. I would only do the first part of the total of five parts of the book. Part 1 is a rudimentary description of two model system.

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman is about various studies from recent decades on decision making. Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman’s work on Heuristics and Biases and Prospect Theory were so influential that Daniel received a Nobel Prize in Economics despite the fact that they were primarily a psychologist. Amos who died 6 years earlier due to skin cancer wasn’t awarded since Nobel can’t be given posthumously.

Chapter 1: The Characters of the Story

Two Systems

The central theme of the book is the two system model of mind. The two system model consist of System 1 and System 2.

• System 1 operates with little or no effort. Examples: detecting hostile tone in voice and understanding simple sentences.
• System 2 requires some allocation of attention. Examples: comparing the specs of two phones or controlling anger in a party.

System 2 has a limited budget of attention. This means that it’s often unable to do multiple tasks at once. (See the myth of multitasking.) The Invisible Gorilla is based on a research by Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons. In the experiment people were shown a basketball video and were asked to count the passes made by the white team. In the middle of the video a gorilla comes up, bangs its chest, and then moves on. About 50% people missed the gorilla.

Plot Synopsis

• System 1 runs automatically all the time. It can’t be turned off at will.
• System 2 acts on the ideas generated by System 1. Most of the time System 2 accepts the recommendations with little or no changes. System 2 sometimes ignores these recommendations.
• When System 1 confronts a big problem it directs the task to System 2.

This division of labor is highly efficient: it minimizes effort and satisfices performance. Most of the time this produces good judgments.

Conflict

When System 2 wants to do things against the wishes of System 1 significant resources need to be directed to overcome the tendencies of System 1.

Illusions

There are many cognitive illusions. For instance, therapists are often warned against psychopathic charm. The charm is like the fins of the previous Müller-Lyer illusion which increases the load on therapist’s System 2.

It is difficult to overcome cognitive illusions since constant vigilance is difficult for System 2 which is too slow to act as a substitute for System 1. Acting carefully in situations with high stakes and where mistakes are more likely is the only practical solution.

Useful Fictions

System 1 and System 2 aren’t real entities that exist in the mind. They are merely drawn as such to facilitate exposition of the material.

Chapter 2: Attention and Effort

Mental Effort

• Pupil dilation is a sign of increased mental activity.

Kahneman and Jackson Beatty did multiple experiments in which they measured the size of people’s pupil as they perform a demanding task such as Add-1. In Add-1 participants were given multiple 4 digit numbers and were required to return the number with each digit incremented by 1 at regular beats. Add-3 dilates pupil by as much as 50%. Pupil contraction began as soon as the participant is done with the task. Participants effectively become blind when System 2 is working at very high capacity. System 2 shuts off unnecessary tasks to divert attention to important tasks.

• Law of Least Effort: System 2 would do try to avoid any modifications to the recommendations of System 1. It wants to do cognitively easy tasks.
• Talent and skills reduces the amount of energy and attention required for a task.
• Executive Control: System 2 can adopt task sets which override habitual responses. Execution and termination of task sets is called executive control. It happens mostly in Prefrontal Cortex and Conflict Resolution Region.

The ability to control attention is a better predictor of job performance in difficult tasks than IQ tests.

Chapter 3: The Lazy Controller

Walking at a higher speed than what’s natural impairs the ability of System 2. Self control requires a lot of effort from System 2.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi coined the term flow for a mental state in which System 2 exerts little effort to maintain self control which makes it easier to stay focused on a hard task.

The Busy and Depleted System 2

Cognitively busy people are more likely to yield to the natural temptations of System 1.

Roy Baumeister have shown that all variants of System 2 tasks - cognitive, emotional, or physical - draw from the same pool of mental energy. Self control becomes difficult after a tiring difficult task. This phenomenon is known as Ego Depletion. Consumption of glucose can recover a ego depleted individual.

Parole judges are more likely to grant paroles after taking a food break than before. The review of parole requests continuously deplete judges.

The Lazy System 2

The people who question their intuition often slow down. However, the majority of people never question them when they need to do it.

All roses are flowers.

Some flowers fade quickly.

Therefore some roses fade quickly.

Most of the college students find this syllogism correct. It is actually wrong; it is possible that no rose fade quickly. System 2 lazily accepts the intuition of System 1 without checking it first. This means that people are very likely to accept the arguments if it supports their intuition.

Intelligence, Control, Rationality

The above observations proposes the question: is there a correlation between self control and intelligence?

To test this, Walter Mischel performed the marshmallow experiment in which 4 year old children were tested on self control. They were given a choice between eating a cookie now or waiting for 15 minutes to get 2 cookies. The children who were able to wait did much better later in life.

In a experiment done in University of Oregon, children played a game (which demands much attention like getting over it.) Afterwards these children preformed better on non verbal tests for months.

Keith Stanovich wrote the book Rationality and Reflective Mind which draws a sharp distinction between the two subsystems of System 2: Algorithmic which deals with computations and Rationality which describes the level of engagement. Keith emphasizes the difference between “Rationality” and “Intelligence.”

Chapter 4: The Associative Machine

When I say the word “vomit” and “apple” it will create a web of ideas in the other person’s mind. System 1 would even create a relation between these two words. The body will also react physically. The body and the mind are the same.

David Hume in his book An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding envisioned the association process as sequential. Recent research has shown that a lot of things happen concurrently during this association process. One idea invokes many other ideas.

The Marvels of Priming

In the 1980s, psychologists discovered that exposure to “EAT” temporarily makes it more likely that one would complete SO_P as SOUP rather than SOAP. This is called the priming effect.

In an experiment performed by John Bargh students were asked to assemble a 4 word sentence from a set of five words. Some were given words associated with old age (such as “bingo,” “bald”, and “wrinkle”) while the control group were given random words. The people who were shown the old words subsequently started walking slower. The idea of “old” primes the behavior of the students. This is known as the ideomotor effect.

The effect is reciprocal. Feeling happy makes you smile and smiling makes you feel happy.

Primes That Guide Us

Priming effect shatters the concept of autonomy since most or all of our behavior will depend on our environment. For instance, the support for educational policies increases when voting centers are located near schools.

Reminders of money make people more selfish and cold. For a capitalist society this means people will exhibit more selfish behavior. This research was done by Kathleen Vohs.

Doing a bad thing makes people to clean themself, an effect known as “Lady Macbeth Effect.” Exposure to images of eyes make people more honest. So does the exposure to CCTV.

Chapter 5: Cognitive Ease

System 2 wants cognitive easiness. This ease is connected to various inputs and outputs.

• Inputs: repetition, clarity, priming, and good mood
• outputs: familiarity, truthfulness, good, and effortless

Insufficient inputs activates System 2 at higher level.

Illusions of Remembering

You are shown 3 unknown names. A few days later when you have forgotten them these names would create an illusion of familiarity in your mind.

Illusions of Truth

The moon revolves around Earth.

A chicken has 4 legs.

When your mind saw the first sentence, it quickly came to the conclusion that it is false. It has been repeated enough times in the school.

Second sentence might have stumped you for a second. You remember almost all animals have 4 legs. This sentence seem true. You have to exert effort to remember that a chicken has 2 legs. This task would have been much easier if the sentence had said “A chicken has 3 legs.”

Thus, repetition brings familiarity. This leads to the most quoted sentence of the book. (This heavily annoyed me as the book had a lot of juicy nuggets aside from this.)

A reliable way to make people believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition.

How to Write a Persuasive Message

Clear bold text is more likely to be believed. Bright blue and red color makes it more persuasive.

Danny Oppenheimer showed that wordy language is often seen as a sign of poor intelligence and low credibility in an article titled Consequences of Erudite Vernacular Utilized Irrespective of Necessity: Problems With Using Long Words Needlessly.

Rhyme also increases the credibility of thoughts. Woes unite foes is considered more believable than woes unite enemies.

Stain and Effort

Shane Frederick made the Cognitive Reflection Test which measures a persons ability to override incorrect gut responses. It asks 3 questions:

1. A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?
2. If it takes 5 machines 5 minutes to make 5 widgets, how long would it take 100 machines to make 100 widgets?
3. In a lake, there is a patch of lily pads. Every day, the patch doubles in size. If it takes 48 days for the patch to cover the entire lake, how long would it take for the patch to cover half of the lake?

When this test was given to 40 Princeton students with small font and washed out paint, their failure rate dropped massively.

The Pleasure of Cognitive Ease

When a person experiences cognitive ease, their microexpressions change to show happiness.

Robert Zanjoc coined the term mere exposure effect for the feeling of happiness which people get on seeing familiar things. This effect even happens when the subjects are shown only brief glimpses of the object.

Mere exposure effect has biological roots. If someone sees a particular animal repeatedly then it is likely that that animal is not harmful. This puts the person at ease. Mere exposure effect help people from differentiating between harmful and harmless environments.

Eaase, Mood, and Intuition

Sarnoff Mednick found the essence of creativity: creativity is associative machine that works very well. He made the Remote Association Test where a person is required to find a fourth word that is related to 3 seemingly unrelated words. People know that they know the answer to a question even before they actually have the answer. Putting people in unhappy moods impair their ability to use their System 1.

Here’s a question from the test: try to find a word associated with all 3 of them.

dive light rocket

and here’s another one:

cottage swiss cake

Chapter 6: Norms, Surprises, and Causes

Assessing Normality

One of the main tasks of System 1 is to maintain a model of world around us. This helps us make sense of past, present, and future. However, we can be surprised. There are events that we expect to be normal, though statistically they are very unlikely.

For instance, say I meet a person A at a party. After the party I go to a theater. Once the act ends, I find that A was sitting beside me. I should have been surprised at the second meeting since it is statistically unlikely. However System 1 has already formed the model of the world after meeting A for the first time. So this second meet will actually feel very normal. This feeling is studied under Norm Theory.

• Abnormality is detected at a much faster speed than normal things.

Seeing Causes and Intentions

Subjects are shown this sentence:

After spending a day exploring beautiful sights in the crowded streets of New York, Jane discovered that her wallet was missing.

People who read this brief story were more likely to associate it with pickpocket than with sights, even though the latter word actually occurred in the sentence. System 1 automatically creates a narrative with words New York, lost wallet, and crowd to create an idea of theft. It is possible that Jane dropped her wallet carelessly on the way. In the opinion of Albert Michotte people don’t see correlation, they directly see a causation.

Paul Bloom said that this strong belief in causality explains the near universality of religions. We perceive minds separate from body. These two forms of causality added the concept of religion into the structure of System 1.

Chapter 7: A Machine for Jumping to Conclusions

System often jumps to conclusions. It often perceive things with limited data and forgets about the wide array of possibilities that it ignores. This is not a problem most of the time as intuitions are correct and losses from mistakes are acceptable.

A Bias to Believe and Confirm

Daniel Gilbert wrote an essay with the title How Mental Systems Behave. He proposed that understanding a sentence requires believing it. Unbelieving is done by System 2 which constructs logical arguments. Thus most of the beliefs would be accepted by the mind.

Confirmation Bias occurs when System 1 actively tries to search for confirming evidence. System 2 also tries to confirm it with Positive Test Strategy.

Exaggerated Emotional Coherence (Halo Effect)

The tendency to like or dislike everything about someone is known as Halo Effect.

In an experiment done by Solomon Asch he showed the participants descriptions of two people.

A. intelligent-industrious-impulsive-critical-stubborn-envious

B. envious-stubborn-critical-impulsive-industrious-intelligent

People found A to be more likable than B, even though B’s description is just the reverse of A’s. An intelligent person who is also stubborn is perceived differently than a stubborn person who is intelligent.

In another experiment, people were shown these descriptions:

A. intelligent-industrious-impulsive

B. critical-stubborn-envious

People said it’s impossible that they are the same person. Halo effect increases the effect of first impressions.

There are some tasks where individuals do poorly, but groups of people perform better. James Surowiecki in The Wisdom of Crowds told of a jar experiment in which people were asked to guess the amount of marbles in a jar. If participants weren’t allowed to influence each other, the group error tended to zero. Hence, decorrelating errors is an effective way to combat halo effect.

What You See is All There is (WYSIATI)

The associative machine retrieves only activated ideas as if other memories don’t exist. It does not allow for the absence of data while creating the story. System 1 makes good stories with very little data, thus creating overconfidence. System 1 affects everything, even decisions where System 2 is supposed to be the primary hero.

WYSIATI give rise to many biases:

• Overconfidence
• Framing Effect: Different ways of data presentation results in different decisions. 10% death rate is considered different from 90% survival rate.
• Base-rate Neglect: People began ignoring relevant statistical data, while focusing on resemblance.

Chapter 8: How Judgments Happen

Basic Assessments

Alex Todorov showed people photos of men for 1/10 of a second. The people were asked to judge the likability of the person. Everyone agreed quite well on the ratings. The photos were from people who ran for the elections. 70% of the people whose face were rated good had won the election. This kind of voting on basis of likability is most effective for people who are uninformed and watch a lot of TV.

Sets and Prototypes

System 1 finds it much more easier to compute averages than sums. In the context of evolution, this might have been useful when encountering another tribe. One can tell at glance the average height, while the summing isn’t very useful and requires System 2.

Intensity Matching

System 1 is good at comparing things. This feature is known as intensity matching. For instance, murder is judged worse than a heist.

People can also do intensity matching across dimensions. This type of comparison often leads to errors. For instance, people can see the height of a person and reflect that on her academic score.

The Mental Shotgun

System 1 often computes more things than are required. This is referred to as mental shotgun.

For instance subjects were asked to consider whether the following pairs rhymed:

VOTE - NOTE

VOTE - GOAT

Subjects took more time on the second one since its spelling is very different. Subjects should have ignored the spelling when judging the rhyme, but they didn’t.

Chapter 9: Answering an Easier Question

Substituting Questions

When solving a hard question, people substitute it with a simple question. They often don’t notice the substitution. For instance, the question “should I buy Tata’s shares?” will be replaced by “do I like Tata?”

This substitution is a result of the mental shotgun and intensity matching discussed in the last chapter.

The Mood Heuristic for Happiness

Some students were asked:

How happy are you these days?

How many dates you have last month?

Other students were asked these questions in reverse order. The second group showed a big correlation between dates and happiness while the first group didn’t. System 2 just accepts the recommendation of System 1 in the mind of the second group, since System 1 does have a ready answer at hand.

The Affect Heuristic

Paul Slovic proposed the term Affect Heuristic for the phenomenon of people basing their beliefs on their likes and dislikes.

New data does affect opinions but it does it on a far smaller scale than that should have happened. This means System 2 mostly acts as an apologist rather than a critic of System 1’s suggestions.