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A Nobel Prize Winner Explains How to Finally Think Clearly
System 2
The purpose of this system is to focus your attention on a particular task by using expert knowledge and applying a conscious mental effort.
Consider driving to work and coming across an accident. This unexpected change demands you to pay particular attention to your environment. Filling in a tax form is another example of System 2 thinking.
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Key Ideas
System 1 Thinking
The main function of System 1 is to maintain and update a model of your personal world, which represents what is normal in it.
Consider driving your car from home to work on a...
System 2 Thinking
System 2 thinking informs how you focus on a particular task by using expert knowledge and focusing or applying conscious effort.
Consider driving to work and encountering an accident. This unexpected change demands you pay attention to your environment and monitor your behavior.
How to Use System 1 and System 2 Thinking Together
If you feel a gut reaction after meeting a hire, it's probably System 1 thinking.
But you can mitigate the risk of hiring the wrong person by engaging System 2 thinking. Check their references. Ask probing questions. Validate your gut reaction with other members of your team.
The trick is to be aware of switching from one system to the other. It’s useful to understand when you are thinking on autopilot, when you are paying attention and what's inside your mental toolbox.
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Key Ideas
The 37%
Mathematics dictates that you should take 37% of the time or options you have to simply look and after that, you should commit to the first option that is better than everything you’ve ...
The brain when we make decisions
The 2 systems of the brain that wok during decision making:
- System 1 is automatic and quick (like "something feeling off").
- System 2 is deliberate and slow (like an algorithm).
At times, these systems are at odds with each other, but research shows it's always best to trust an algorithm than your own gut.
Pros-and-cons lists are flawed
There are a few biases they don't address:
- Narrow framing: the tendency to view an option as your only option.
- Confirmation bias: our tendency to gather the information that supports our preferred option.
- Short-term emotion: our tendency to have our judgment clouded when emotions run high.
- Overconfidence: our tendency to make a decision with too much optimism about how things will play out.
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Key Ideas
Think like Sherlock Holmes
“What Sherlock Holmes offers isn’t just a way of solving a crime. It is an entire way of thinking."
"Holmes provides... an education in improving our faculty of mindful thought...
Engagement
As it does so, we become less and less able to know or notice our own thought habits and more and more allow our minds to dictate our judgments and decisions, instead of the other way around.
Pitfalls of the Untrained Brain
Daniel Kahneman believes there are two systems for organizing and filtering knowledge:
- System one is real-time. This system makes judgments and decisions before our mental apparatus can consciously catch up.
- System two, on the other hand, is a slow process of thinking based on critical examination of evidence. Konnikova refers to these as System Watson and System Holmes.
To move from a System Watson- to a System Holmes-governed thinking takes mindfulness plus motivation.