An outstandingly clear and precise study of the 'dual-process' model of the brain and our embedded self-delusions
Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow divides thought processes between System 1 and System 2. Mind mapped … Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow divides thought
processes between System 1 and System 2. Photograph: David Job/Getty
Images
Galen Strawson
A
human being "is a dark and veiled thing; and whereas the hare has seven
skins, the human being can shed seven times seventy skins and still not
be able to say: This is really you, this is no longer outer shell." So
said Nietzsche, and Freud agreed: we are ignorant of ourselves. The idea
surged in the 20th century and became a commonplace, a "whole climate of opinion", in Auden's phrase.
It's still a commonplace, but it's changing shape. It used to be
thought that the things we didn't know about ourselves were dark –
emotionally fetid, sexually charged. This was supposed to be why we were
ignorant of them: we couldn't face them, so we repressed them. The deep
explanation of our astonishing ability to be unaware of our true
motives, and of what was really good for us, lay in our hidden hang-ups.
These days, the bulk of the explanation is done by something else: the "dual-process" model of the brain.
We now know that we apprehend the world in two radically opposed ways,
employing two fundamentally different modes of thought: "System 1" and
"System 2". System 1 is fast; it's intuitive, associative, metaphorical,
automatic, impressionistic, and it can't be switched off. Its
operations involve no sense of intentional control, but it's the "secret
author of many of the choices and judgments you make" and it's the hero
of Daniel Kahneman's alarming, intellectually aerobic book Thinking, Fast and Slow.
System 2 is slow, deliberate, effortful. Its operations require
attention. (To set it going now, ask yourself the question "What is 13 x
27?" And to see how it hogs attention, go to theinvisiblegorilla.com/videos.html
and follow the instructions faithfully.) System 2 takes over, rather
unwillingly, when things get difficult. It's "the conscious being you
call 'I'", and one of Kahneman's main points is that this is a mistake.
You're wrong to identify with System 2, for you are also and equally and
profoundly System 1. Kahneman compares System 2 to a supporting
character who believes herself to be the lead actor and often has little
idea of what's going on.
System 2 is slothful, and tires easily (a process called "ego
depletion") – so it usually accepts what System 1 tells it. It's often
right to do so, because System 1 is for the most part pretty good at
what it does; it's highly sensitive to subtle environmental cues, signs
of danger, and so on. It kept our remote ancestors alive. Système 1 a ses raisons que Système 2 ne connaît point,
as Pascal might have said. It does, however, pay a high price for
speed. It loves to simplify, to assume WYSIATI ("what you see is all
there is"), even as it gossips and embroiders and confabulates. It's
hopelessly bad at the kind of statistical thinking often required for
good decisions, it jumps wildly to conclusions and it's subject to a
fantastic suite of irrational biases and interference effects (the halo
effect, the "Florida effect", framing effects, anchoring effects, the
confirmation bias, outcome bias, hindsight bias, availability bias, the
focusing illusion, and so on).
The
general point about the size of our self-ignorance extends beyond the
details of Systems 1 and 2. We're astonishingly susceptible to being
influenced – puppeted – by features of our surroundings in ways we don't
suspect. One famous (pre-mobile phone) experiment centred on a New York
City phone booth. Each time a person came out of the booth after having
made a call, an accident was staged – someone dropped all her papers on
the pavement. Sometimes a dime had been placed in the phone booth,
sometimes not (a dime was then enough to make a call). If there was no
dime in the phone booth, only 4% of the exiting callers helped to pick
up the papers. If there was a dime, no fewer than 88% helped.
Since then, thousands of other experiments have been conducted, right
across the broad board of human life, all to the same general effect.
We don't know who we are or what we're like, we don't know what we're
really doing and we don't know why we're doing it. That's a System-1
exaggeration, for sure, but there's more truth in it than you can easily
imagine. Judges think they make considered decisions about parole based
strictly on the facts of the case. It turns out (to simplify only
slightly) that it is their blood-sugar levels really sitting in
judgment. If you hold a pencil between your teeth, forcing your mouth
into the shape of a smile, you'll find a cartoon funnier than if you
hold the pencil pointing forward, by pursing your lips round it in a
frown-inducing way. And so it goes. One of the best books on this
subject, a 2002 effort by the psychologist Timothy D Wilson, is
appropriately called Strangers to Ourselves.
We also hugely underestimate the role of chance in life (this is
System 1's work). Analysis of the performance of fund managers over the
longer term proves conclusively that you'd do just as well if you
entrusted your financial decisions to a monkey throwing darts at a
board. There is a tremendously powerful illusion that sustains managers
in their belief their results, when good, are the result of skill;
Kahneman explains how the illusion works. The fact remains that
"performance bonuses" are awarded for luck, not skill. They might as
well be handed out on the roll of a die: they're completely unjustified.
This may be why some banks now speak of "retention bonuses" rather than
performance bonuses, but the idea that retention bonuses are needed
depends on the shared myth of skill, and since the myth is known to be a
myth, the system is profoundly dishonest – unless the dart-throwing
monkeys are going to be cut in.
In
an experiment designed to test the "anchoring effect", highly
experienced judges were given a description of a shoplifting offence.
They were then "anchored" to different numbers by being asked to roll a
pair of dice that had been secretly loaded to produce only two totals –
three or nine. Finally, they were asked whether the prison sentence for
the shoplifting offence should be greater or fewer, in months, than the
total showing on the dice. Normally the judges would have made extremely
similar judgments, but those who had just rolled nine proposed an
average of eight months while those who had rolled three proposed an
average of only five months. All were unaware of the anchoring effect.
The same goes for all of us, almost all the time. We think we're
smart; we're confident we won't be unconsciously swayed by the high list
price of a house. We're wrong. (Kahneman admits his own inability to
counter some of these effects.) We're also hopelessly subject to the
"focusing illusion", which can be conveyed in one sentence: "Nothing in
life is as important as you think it is when you're thinking about it."
Whatever we focus on, it bulges in the heat of our attention until we
assume its role in our life as a whole is greater than it is. Another
systematic error involves "duration neglect" and the "peak-end rule".
Looking back on our experience of pain, we prefer a larger, longer
amount to a shorter, smaller amount, just so long as the closing stages
of the greater pain were easier to bear than the closing stages of the
lesser one.
Daniel Kahneman won a Nobel prize for economics in 2002 and he is, with Amos Tversky, one of a famous pair. For many in the humanities, their names are fused together, like Laurel and Hardy or Crick and Watson. Thinking, Fast and Slow
has its roots in their joint work, and is dedicated to Tversky, who
died in 1996. It is an outstanding book, distinguished by beauty and
clarity of detail, precision of presentation and gentleness of manner.
Its truths are open to all those whose System 2 is not completely
defunct; I have hardly touched on its richness. Some chapters are more
taxing than others, but all are gratefully short, and none requires any
special learning.
• Galen Strawson's Selves: An Essay in Revisionary Metaphysics is published by Oxford University Press.
human being "is a dark and veiled thing; and whereas the hare has seven
skins, the human being can shed seven times seventy skins and still not
be able to say: This is really you, this is no longer outer shell." So
said Nietzsche, and Freud agreed: we are ignorant of ourselves. The idea
surged in the 20th century and became a commonplace, a "whole climate of opinion", in Auden's phrase.
It's still a commonplace, but it's changing shape. It used to be
thought that the things we didn't know about ourselves were dark –
emotionally fetid, sexually charged. This was supposed to be why we were
ignorant of them: we couldn't face them, so we repressed them. The deep
explanation of our astonishing ability to be unaware of our true
motives, and of what was really good for us, lay in our hidden hang-ups.
These days, the bulk of the explanation is done by something else: the "dual-process" model of the brain.
We now know that we apprehend the world in two radically opposed ways,
employing two fundamentally different modes of thought: "System 1" and
"System 2". System 1 is fast; it's intuitive, associative, metaphorical,
automatic, impressionistic, and it can't be switched off. Its
operations involve no sense of intentional control, but it's the "secret
author of many of the choices and judgments you make" and it's the hero
of Daniel Kahneman's alarming, intellectually aerobic book Thinking, Fast and Slow.
System 2 is slow, deliberate, effortful. Its operations require
attention. (To set it going now, ask yourself the question "What is 13 x
27?" And to see how it hogs attention, go to theinvisiblegorilla.com/videos.html
and follow the instructions faithfully.) System 2 takes over, rather
unwillingly, when things get difficult. It's "the conscious being you
call 'I'", and one of Kahneman's main points is that this is a mistake.
You're wrong to identify with System 2, for you are also and equally and
profoundly System 1. Kahneman compares System 2 to a supporting
character who believes herself to be the lead actor and often has little
idea of what's going on.
System 2 is slothful, and tires easily (a process called "ego
depletion") – so it usually accepts what System 1 tells it. It's often
right to do so, because System 1 is for the most part pretty good at
what it does; it's highly sensitive to subtle environmental cues, signs
of danger, and so on. It kept our remote ancestors alive. Système 1 a ses raisons que Système 2 ne connaît point,
as Pascal might have said. It does, however, pay a high price for
speed. It loves to simplify, to assume WYSIATI ("what you see is all
there is"), even as it gossips and embroiders and confabulates. It's
hopelessly bad at the kind of statistical thinking often required for
good decisions, it jumps wildly to conclusions and it's subject to a
fantastic suite of irrational biases and interference effects (the halo
effect, the "Florida effect", framing effects, anchoring effects, the
confirmation bias, outcome bias, hindsight bias, availability bias, the
focusing illusion, and so on).
The
general point about the size of our self-ignorance extends beyond the
details of Systems 1 and 2. We're astonishingly susceptible to being
influenced – puppeted – by features of our surroundings in ways we don't
suspect. One famous (pre-mobile phone) experiment centred on a New York
City phone booth. Each time a person came out of the booth after having
made a call, an accident was staged – someone dropped all her papers on
the pavement. Sometimes a dime had been placed in the phone booth,
sometimes not (a dime was then enough to make a call). If there was no
dime in the phone booth, only 4% of the exiting callers helped to pick
up the papers. If there was a dime, no fewer than 88% helped.
Since then, thousands of other experiments have been conducted, right
across the broad board of human life, all to the same general effect.
We don't know who we are or what we're like, we don't know what we're
really doing and we don't know why we're doing it. That's a System-1
exaggeration, for sure, but there's more truth in it than you can easily
imagine. Judges think they make considered decisions about parole based
strictly on the facts of the case. It turns out (to simplify only
slightly) that it is their blood-sugar levels really sitting in
judgment. If you hold a pencil between your teeth, forcing your mouth
into the shape of a smile, you'll find a cartoon funnier than if you
hold the pencil pointing forward, by pursing your lips round it in a
frown-inducing way. And so it goes. One of the best books on this
subject, a 2002 effort by the psychologist Timothy D Wilson, is
appropriately called Strangers to Ourselves.
We also hugely underestimate the role of chance in life (this is
System 1's work). Analysis of the performance of fund managers over the
longer term proves conclusively that you'd do just as well if you
entrusted your financial decisions to a monkey throwing darts at a
board. There is a tremendously powerful illusion that sustains managers
in their belief their results, when good, are the result of skill;
Kahneman explains how the illusion works. The fact remains that
"performance bonuses" are awarded for luck, not skill. They might as
well be handed out on the roll of a die: they're completely unjustified.
This may be why some banks now speak of "retention bonuses" rather than
performance bonuses, but the idea that retention bonuses are needed
depends on the shared myth of skill, and since the myth is known to be a
myth, the system is profoundly dishonest – unless the dart-throwing
monkeys are going to be cut in.
In
an experiment designed to test the "anchoring effect", highly
experienced judges were given a description of a shoplifting offence.
They were then "anchored" to different numbers by being asked to roll a
pair of dice that had been secretly loaded to produce only two totals –
three or nine. Finally, they were asked whether the prison sentence for
the shoplifting offence should be greater or fewer, in months, than the
total showing on the dice. Normally the judges would have made extremely
similar judgments, but those who had just rolled nine proposed an
average of eight months while those who had rolled three proposed an
average of only five months. All were unaware of the anchoring effect.
The same goes for all of us, almost all the time. We think we're
smart; we're confident we won't be unconsciously swayed by the high list
price of a house. We're wrong. (Kahneman admits his own inability to
counter some of these effects.) We're also hopelessly subject to the
"focusing illusion", which can be conveyed in one sentence: "Nothing in
life is as important as you think it is when you're thinking about it."
Whatever we focus on, it bulges in the heat of our attention until we
assume its role in our life as a whole is greater than it is. Another
systematic error involves "duration neglect" and the "peak-end rule".
Looking back on our experience of pain, we prefer a larger, longer
amount to a shorter, smaller amount, just so long as the closing stages
of the greater pain were easier to bear than the closing stages of the
lesser one.
Daniel Kahneman won a Nobel prize for economics in 2002 and he is, with Amos Tversky, one of a famous pair. For many in the humanities, their names are fused together, like Laurel and Hardy or Crick and Watson. Thinking, Fast and Slow
has its roots in their joint work, and is dedicated to Tversky, who
died in 1996. It is an outstanding book, distinguished by beauty and
clarity of detail, precision of presentation and gentleness of manner.
Its truths are open to all those whose System 2 is not completely
defunct; I have hardly touched on its richness. Some chapters are more
taxing than others, but all are gratefully short, and none requires any
special learning.
• Galen Strawson's Selves: An Essay in Revisionary Metaphysics is published by Oxford University Press.
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman – review | Books | The Guardian
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