Interbane wrote:I had let this thread slide. I'm going to re-read and respond. I feel ashamed!

No shame in that. I've got to say that, because I've let it slide, too. There's a lot in the book, though, that can be applied directly to what we do here (I've read about 200 pp). It has had an unsettling effect on me, which can be a good thing. I'm less sure that I really know anything or can think that I'm right about more than a very simple proposition. My information is always partial, and I apply heuristics and respond to biases even when I think I'm using System 2.

I'm less sure that I really know anything or can think that I'm right about more than a very simple proposition. My information is always partial, and I apply heuristics and respond to biases even when I think I'm using System 2.

I actually found comfort in the book. It gave a face to many of the demons in our machine. The picture he paints is still missing some of the the more influential factors that shape our conclusions, touched on by Shermer and Dennet.

The way to think about it is that you will never have absolute knowledge of the world around you, even within a small specialized framework. Reality is too complex, and the human mind is finite. We rely in information compression to store "thin sliced" chunks of abstracted reality - the important points, the highlights.

That is what should make you uneasy. The heuristics and biases that are mentioned in this book are the consequences of compressing information. Everything from the anchoring effect to WYSIATI. Additionally, the fallacies that people incorrectly use to shore up support in their conclusions, which aren't mentioned in this book, are heuristical. Baculum and Populum primarily.


I'm excited to see progress in this field and in neuroscience in the next few decades. The guiding theme is energy conservation. Even the neuron mechanisms have energy conservation integrated into the way they operate. The method of logic for some neurons at least is that they must have simultaneous inputs before they fire in response. The added redundancy would cut back on misfirings - false positives.

Your profile title is currently 'book slut' - ha ha!

Maybe the person who creates those labels oughta get into system 2.

Do you have any examples of how your way of thinking has changed on account of what you've read in the book?

I've got a 'genius' title!

WildCityWoman wrote:Your profile title is currently 'book slut' - ha ha!

Maybe the person who creates those labels oughta get into system 2.

Do you have any examples of how your way of thinking has changed on account of what you've read in the book?

Book Slut is fine with me--I hope to be able to live up to it! I'll need to make it last by not posting too often.

I'm employed in a field--mental health--that Kahneman would call a low-validity environment. Basically, there are few "regularities" in this environment that make it easy, or perhaps even possible, for anyone to make definitive judgments or predictions about mental health clients. Yet most in the agency operate as if there are. Kahneman cites work by Meehl that established the deplorable reliability of clinical prediction of all types. I would also say that diagnostic validity is always suspect; that's why a person can get three different diagnoses from three evaluators. The book has raised my antennae about all of this. I like his chapter on intuition, which is what people often say they're using when they make clinical judgments. kahneman pretty much says that intuition can't function accurately when a practitioner hasn't had the opportunity to learn the regularities of a system, in this case because the regularities haven't been established. Intuition is in fact most like memory, not a magical ability that comes out of thin air. It's always based on something that a person has learned, and what the person does is recall the information. If he's not aware consciously of the recall, he might assume he just divined the answer through some psychic means or other.

Interbane wrote: The way to think about it is that you will never have absolute knowledge of the world around you, even within a small specialized framework. Reality is too complex, and the human mind is finite. We rely in information compression to store "thin sliced" chunks of abstracted reality - the important points, the highlights.

That is what should make you uneasy. The heuristics and biases that are mentioned in this book are the consequences of compressing information. Everything from the anchoring effect to WYSIATI. Additionally, the fallacies that people incorrectly use to shore up support in their conclusions, which aren't mentioned in this book, are heuristical. Baculum and Populum primarily.


I'm excited to see progress in this field and in neuroscience in the next few decades. The guiding theme is energy conservation. Even the neuron mechanisms have energy conservation integrated into the way they operate. The method of logic for some neurons at least is that they must have simultaneous inputs before they fire in response. The added redundancy would cut back on misfirings - false positives.

Ad baculum was a new one on me. What you're saying about energy conservation is along the same lines as K's cognitive ease, if I'm not mistaken. Once you're attuned to the term, you can see cognitive ease operating on so many levels. For its sake, people are even glad to believe things that are absurd judging by standards of proof.

DWill wrote:What you're saying about energy conservation is along the same lines as K's cognitive ease, if I'm not mistaken. Once you're attuned to the term, you can see cognitive ease operating on so many levels. For its sake, people are even glad to believe things that are absurd judging by standards of proof.

Yes, this theme of cognitive ease is to my reading the key message of Thinking, Fast and Slow. Kahneman's observation that we tend to believe whatever is easiest provides a valuable heuristic tool to explain why people accept claims that are not true.

The big example, of course, is religion. 'Cognitive ease' means that claims that resonate emotionally are preferred over claims that are logical and true. So bizarre stories about miracles have become a matter of fervent faith, because they support an overall outlook that people find easier to accept than difficult real explanations. Questioning such claims can seem to mean jumping into an abyss of doubt, whereas accepting them provides a simple basis for social identity, purpose and belonging.

Psychologically, the existence of viral memes that slot right in to what we want to believe is another way of describing what some analysts such as Carl Jung have called archetypal symbols. Archetypes are ideas that appear widely attractive for what ever reason due to human neural evolution. When enough people have a propensity to like some idea, this social consensus acquires a political force that amplifies the cognitive ease of finding the idea emotionally pleasant. Questioning such ideas (eg virgin birth, physical resurrection, Jesus saves sinners) just on the basis of evidence and logic does not engage with the psychological reality of why people like them.

The big example, of course, is religion. 'Cognitive ease' means that claims that resonate emotionally are preferred over claims that are logical and true.

I think emotional resonance is less about cognitive ease, and more about the fact that emotion in general is more persuasive than the content of arguments.

Cognitive ease, at least in all the areas where Kahneman mentions it, is more about simply not putting in any further effort than is required to arrive at a solution. Our system 2 won't even engage if system 1 gives us a good explanation.

In defense of religion, if people find that their beliefs are under attack, they will engage system 2 quite extensively in it's defense.

Interbane wrote:emotional resonance is less about cognitive ease, and more about the fact that emotion in general is more persuasive than the content of arguments.

Emotion is persuasive when it addresses things we want to believe. An emotional appeal that makes claims we know to be unfounded or that we do not wish to believe is less effective. So the receptivity of the listener - or the cognitive ease with which an appeal is assimilated and accepted - is the soil, fertile or barren, upon which an emotional plea takes root.

Cognitive ease, at least in all the areas where Kahneman mentions it, is more about simply not putting in any further effort than is required to arrive at a solution. Our system 2 won't even engage if system 1 gives us a good explanation.

Lack of required effort is part of the story for cognitive ease, but part of this requirement is that a claim builds upon what we already know, or want to believe. So I don't agree that you can simply separate cognitive ease from emotional resonance, which forms a big part of the initial System 1 gate determining if thinking is needed.

In defense of religion, if people find that their beliefs are under attack, they will engage system 2 quite extensively in it's defense.

But those defences of religious belief are primarily rationalisation, apologetic elaborations of ideas whose foundations collapse under close examination. Emotional assumptions generally sit unexamined beneath the edifice - beliefs in afterlife, salvation, miracles, nonexistent entities, fiction as fact - and make most religious logic more akin to building a house on sand than on rock.

Robert Tulip wrote: Emotion is persuasive when it addresses things we want to believe. An emotional appeal that makes claims we know to be unfounded or that we do not wish to believe is less effective. So the receptivity of the listener - or the cognitive ease with which an appeal is assimilated and accepted - is the soil, fertile or barren, upon which an emotional plea takes root.

Looking at cognitive ease again, I'm not sure I applied it a few posts back in the way K intends. He doesn't tie it directly to making claims except perhaps in the sense that we might tend to believe without thinking, something that credible people tell us. Religious belief might apply here, though I can't recall that K ever mentions religion or any metaphysical idea at all. He's probably smart to stay away from that, finding plenty of fodder in everyday, practical thinking, even in the thinking of those who would claim to be the most rational. But going back to the use of cognitive ease, it has to be seen in relation to "cognitive strain" to really make sense. We can easily see that cognitive strain is is likely to exact a cost on homeostasis; it's work that we're often willing to avoid for the sake of coasting. Our System 2, like Haidt's rider, is likely to be wimpy when it comes to disciplining System 1 or the elephant. I agree with Interbane on this.

Lack of required effort is part of the story for cognitive ease, but part of this requirement is that a claim builds upon what we already know, or want to believe. So I don't agree that you can simply separate cognitive ease from emotional resonance, which forms a big part of the initial System 1 gate determining if thinking is needed.

It's true that ease equals pleasurable emotion, but I'd guess for the most part we're dealing with situations like the lazy thinking on p. 65 rather than metaphysics.

But those defences of religious belief are primarily rationalisation, apologetic elaborations of ideas whose foundations collapse under close examination. Emotional assumptions generally sit unexamined beneath the edifice - beliefs in afterlife, salvation, miracles, nonexistent entities, fiction as fact - and make most religious logic more akin to building a house on sand than on rock.

That's close to what Haidt believed was typical of the rider where moral questions were concerned--that the rider supplied rationalizations for what the elephant told him. It seems that System 2 or the rider can either serve the interests of the intuitive self or really exert rationality against it. System 2 doesn't seem to be the agent able to make an argument for religion, since religion seems to be strictly System 1. But here I would caution against viewing the two systems hierarchically, kind of dumb vs. smart. System 1 is plenty smart.