Thinking, Fast and Slow - Introduction
This part [[Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kahneman]]N introuces what will be covered, some history about the author and why it’s important to have a deeper understanding of judgements and choices.
Notes
Other People’s Decisions
It’s much easier to recognise the flaws in other people’s decisions rather than your own. It’s even harder to recognise the flaws in your own thinking in the situations where you really need it. This doesn’t mean you should go around telling people how they’re wrong because you know all these fancy words now though, and it’s not impossible to recognise the flaws in your own decision making.
Looking at others helps you internalise all these concepts and if the others also know als know about them then their anticipated judgements can drive better behaviour.
You Don’t Know Your Own Mind
It’s a commonly held belief that you know what is going through your mind at any given time. This is true to an extent, but there’s also thousands of other things happening subconciously and intuitively.
For example, you might be riding a bicycle and thinking about a meetup with friends at the same time. Your answer to “What’s are you thinking?” would be that you’re thinking of your friends (System 2), not that you’re shifting your balance carefully in order to keep the bike stable or looking at the path ahead to make sure nothing is coming out – it happens without you conciously percieving it (System 1).
Base Rate Neglect
An individual has been described by a neighbor as follows: “Steve is very shy and withdrawn, invariable helpful but with little interest in people or in the world of reality. A meek and tidy soul, he has a need for order and strucutre, and a passion for detail.”
Is Steve more likely to be a librarian or a farmer?
The intutive answer is that Steve is a librarian because his personality is that of a stereotypically librarian. However, it’s much more likely he is actually a farmer since there’s 20 times more farmers than librarians in the US. This is base rate neglect – ignoring statistical, objective information in favour of specific information.
You could argue that it’s impossible to answer correctly without knowing the population density of farmers and librarians beforehand. Then did the thought ever cross your mind?
Heuristics and Biases
- Heuristics are roughly rules of thumb that simplify a questoin.
- Biases are systematic errors that occur due to an over-reliance on the heuristic.
Availability Heuristic Example
Consider the letter K. Is K more likely to appear as the first letter in a word OR as the third letter?
Most people choose that it’s more likely to appear as the first letter. Instead of making an objective judgement involving frequency, the ease of recall is instead used. It’s much easier to think of words starting with K instead of having K as the third letter.
Consequences of the Availability Heuristic
One consequence is that issues the media chooses to report on are much more likely to be discussed and thought about by the general public, opposed to less-reported but still relevant issues. This is because the importance of the issue is mistakenly correlated by the ease at which it is retrieved from memory.
This means there is little coverage of less exciting issues like “declining educational standards” or “overinvestment in medical resources in the last year of life”.
Expert Intuition is not Magical
An example of magical seeming intuition is a chess master walking past a game in the street and announcing “White mates in three” without stopping. This ability is no different from the normal intuitions that people have about everyday situations, like a 3 year old quickly naming an object.
The chess-master’s quick judgements come to mind as quickly as the 3 year old names something. Releavant expertise means that you can recognise the situation and from seeing it before, the judgement that comes to mind is more likely to be correct.
Intutions Without Expertise
When a normal person is faced with the same decision to make as an expert with relevant knowledge, they will still have an intuitive judgement. This is formed by changing the question into something that is still relevant but different.
A chess master might see the problem as optimising the move to give the highest probability of winning, but a normal player might simplify it down to the move that has the best effect in the immediate game. Though the problem of changing the question is not the only thing that makes an expert an expert! You still need to have the knowledge and experience with similar situations in the past in order to make the most informed decision.
The Affect Heuristic
People are more likely to make decisions guided not by relevant information but by a feeling of liking and dislinking. The example given is a Wall Street investor who invests in a car company because they like the cars, not because they have considered whether the stock is overpriced or not.
Fast and Slow Thinking in Relation to Intution
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Fast thinking includes both the expert and the heuristic form of thought, along with the entirely automatic processes of perception and memory. Question: is it right to say that the automatic processes of perception and memory are just common expertise?
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Slow thinking is what happens when the search for an intuitive solution doesn’t come to mind and you switch to a slower, more effortful and deliberate form of thinking.