# Thinking_Fast_and_Slow - readwise.io
Synced: [[2023_11_30]] 6:03 AM
Last Highlighted: [[2023_07_13]]
## Highlights
[[2023_07_13]] [View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01h56fk7shedw2n9f8ttjza6sw)
> focus on error does not denigrate human intelligence, any more than the
> attention to diseases in medical texts denies good health.
[[2023_07_13]] [View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01h56fmcxa90renxs2frh7jewe)
> The resemblance of Steve’s personality to that of a stereotypical librarian
> strikes everyone immediately, but equally relevant statistical considerations are
> almost always ignored. Did it occur to you that there are more than 20 male
> farmers for each male librarian in the United States? Because there are so
> many more farmers, it is almost certain that more “meek and tidy” souls will
> be found on tractors than at library information desks. However, we found
> that participants in our experiments ignored the relevant statistical facts and
> relied exclusively on resemblance. We proposed that they used resemblance as
> a simplifying heuristic (roughly, a rule of thumb) to make a dicult
> judgment. The reliance on the heuristic caused predictable biases (systematic
> errors) in their predictions.
[[2023_07_13]] [View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01h56fmkd755cwb5ar11x4pkfx)
> As any Scrabble player knows, it is much easier to come up with words that
> begin with a particular letter than to nd words that have the same letter in
> the third position. This is true for every letter of the alphabet. We therefore
> expected respondents to exaggerate the frequency of letters appearing in the
> rst position—even those letters (such as K, L, N, R, V) which in fact occur
> more frequently in the third position. Here again, the reliance on a heuristic
> produces a predictable bias in judgments. For example, I recently came to
> doubt my long-held impression that adultery is more common among
> politicians than among physicians or lawyers. I had even come up with
> explanations for that “fact,” including the aphrodisiac eect of power and the
> temptations of life away from home. I eventually realized that the
> transgressions of politicians are much more likely to be reported than the
> transgressions of lawyers and doctors. My intuitive impression could be due
> entirely to journalists’ choices of topics and to my reliance on the availability
> heuristic.
[[2023_07_13]] [View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01h56fmw9xfncz85ng79n4fdpe)
> The psychologist Gary Klein tells the story of a team of reghters that
> entered a house in which the kitchen was on re. Soon after they started
> hosing down the kitchen, the commander heard himself shout, “Let’s get out
> of here!” without realizing why. The oor collapsed almost immediately after
> the reghters escaped. Only after the fact did the commander realize that the
> re had been unusually quiet and that his ears had been unusually hot.
> Together, these impressions prompted what he called a “sixth sense of
> danger.” He had no idea what was wrong, but he knew something was wrong.
> It turned out that the heart of the re had not been in the kitchen but in the
> basement beneath where the men had stood.
[[2023_07_13]] [View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01h56fn2vepyyhbk66fnxhtq65)
> “The
> situation has provided a cue; this cue has given the expert access to
> information stored in memory, and the information provides the answer.
> Intuition is nothing more and nothing less than recognition.”
[[2023_07_13]] [View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01h56fna2j91q9jqq5vq9bwqgg)
> understanding of intuitive judgments and choices than it did in the past. The
> executive’s decision would today be described as an example of the aect
> heuristic, where judgments and decisions are guided directly by feelings of
> liking and disliking, with little deliberation or reasoning.
[[2023_07_13]] [View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01h56fneasf48y6wxj03smnqnz)
> The question that the executive faced (should I invest in
> Ford stock?) was dicult, but the answer to an easier and related question (do
> I like Ford cars?) came readily to his mind and determined his choice. This is
> the essence of intuitive heuristics: when faced with a dicult question, we
> often answer an easier one instead, usually without noticing the substitution.
[[2023_07_13]] [View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01h56fnxhprmqn1ktkhpemn673)
> System 1 operates automatically and quickly, with little or no eort and no
> sense of voluntary control.
> System 2 allocates attention to the eortful mental activities that demand
> it, including complex computations. The operations of System 2 are often
> associated with the subjective experience of agency, choice, and
> concentration.
[[2023_07_13]] [View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01h56fp0y3djjcdhmm7c7apxxb)
> When we think of ourselves, we identify with System 2, the conscious,
> reasoning self that has beliefs, makes choices, and decides what to think about
> and what to do. Although System 2 believes itself to be where the action is,
> the automatic System 1 is the hero of the book. I describe System 1 as
> eortlessly originating impressions and feelings that are the main sources of
> the explicit beliefs and deliberate choices of System 2. The automatic
> operations of System 1 generate surprisingly complex patterns of ideas, but
> only the slower System 2 can construct thoughts in an orderly series of steps. I
> also describe circumstances in which System 2 takes over, overruling the
> freewheeling impulses and associations of System 1. You will be invited to
> think of the two systems as agents with their individual abilities, limitations,
> and functions.
[[2023_07_13]] [View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01h56fp70mn5m55mw013gesy4g)
> The often-used phrase “pay attention” is apt: you dispose of a limited budget
> of attention that you can allocate to activities, and if you try to go beyond
> your budget, you will fail. It is the mark of eortful activities that they
> interfere with each other, which is why it is dicult or impossible to conduct
> several at once. You could not compute the product of 17 × 24 while making
[[2023_07_13]] [View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01h56fpbb5anydr2qkwz6ayr6v)
> Intense focusing on a task can make people eectively blind, even to stimuli
> that normally attract attention. The most dramatic demonstration was
> oered by Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons in their book The Invisible
> Gorilla. They constructed a short lm of two teams passing basketballs, one
[[2023_07_13]] [View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01h56fpfw4txc53w9g9p2bfg3f)
> . The gorilla study
> illustrates two important facts about our minds: we can be blind to the
> obvious, and we are also blind to our blindness.
[[2023_07_13]] [View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01h56fprvcpt83n31v12nfng2m)
> . In the story I will tell, Systems 1 and 2 are
> both active whenever we are awake. System 1 runs automatically and System 2
> is normally in a comfortable low-eort mode, in which only a fraction of its
> capacity is engaged. System 1 continuously generates suggestions for System
> 2: impressions, intuitions, intentions, and feelings. If endorsed by System 2,
> impressions and intuitions turn into beliefs, and impulses turn into voluntary
> actions. When all goes smoothly, which is most of the time, System 2 adopts
> the suggestions of System 1 with little or no modication. You generally
> believe your impressions and act on your desires, and that is ne—usually.
> When System 1 runs into diculty, it calls on System 2 to support more
> detailed and specic processing that may solve the problem of the moment.
> System 2 is mobilized when a question arises for which System 1 does not
[[2023_07_13]] [View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01h56fq5m6ht3fzf1vgxcsyr23)
> oer an answer, as probably happened to you when you encountered the
> multiplication problem 17 × 24. You can also feel a surge of conscious
> attention whenever you are surprised. System 2 is activated when an event is
> detected that violates the model of the world that System 1 maintains. In that
> world, lamps do not jump, cats do not bark, and gorillas do not cross
> basketball courts. The gorilla experiment demonstrates that some attention is
> needed for the surprising stimulus to be detected. Surprise then activates and
> orients your attention: you will stare, and you will search your memory for a
> story that makes sense of the surprising event. System 2 is also credited with
> the continuous monitoring of your own behavior—the control that keeps
> you polite when you are angry, and alert when you are driving at night.
> System 2 is mobilized to increased eort when it detects an error about to be
> made. Remember a time when you almost blurted out an oensive remark
> and note how hard you worked to restore control. In summary, most of what
> you (your System 2) think and do originates in your System 1, but System 2
> takes over when things get dicult, and it normally has the last word.
> The division of labor between System 1 and System 2 is highly ecient: it
> minimizes eort and optimizes performance. The arrangement works well
> most of the time because System 1 is generally very good at what it does: its
> models of familiar situations are accurate, its short-term predictions are
> usually accurate as well, and its initial reactions to challenges are swift and
> generally appropriate. System 1 has biases, however, systematic errors that it is
> prone to make in specied circumstances. As we shall see, it sometimes
> answers easier questions than the one it was asked, and it has little
> understanding of logic and statistics. One further limitation of System 1 is
> that it cannot be turned o. If you are shown a word on the screen in a
> language you know, you will read it—unless your attention is totally focused
> elsewhere.
[[2023_07_13]] [View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01h56fqz7xanqvddn4tb83dc0w)
> : you know that the lines are equally long.
> If asked about their length, you will say what you know. But you still see the
> bottom line as longer. You have chosen to believe the measurement, but you
> cannot prevent System 1 from doing its thing; you cannot decide to see the
> lines as equal, although you know they are.