Kahneman, D. [Talks at Google]. (2011, November 10). Daniel Kahneman: "Thinking, Fast and Slow" | Talks at Google [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjVQJdIrDJ0
Daniel Kahneman, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for his seminal work in psychology that challenged the rational model of judgment and decision making, is one of our most important thinkers. His ideas have had a profound and widely regarded impact on many fields—including economics, medicine, and politics—but until now, he has never brought together his many years of research and thinking in one book.
[1:35] Google's mission it to make the world's information more accessible. And we learn that some information is more important than others.
[3:00] Recommended book about intuition: Sources of Power by Gary Klein
[3:40] The overarching argument is about the value of intuition (System 1 - automatic) vs. formal systems (System 2 - deliberate)
[4:30] Strange collaboration between himself and Klein. The goal is to find the boundary between intuition and formal systems. In short, what is the value of each and when/why?
[6:00] Two ways of thinking:
Angry (emotional) -> something happened to you. It's a passive experience.
Math problem Logical -> Not passive at all. It's a deeply conscious process.
[7:30] Physiology changes when doing logical work proving it's hard work. Pupils dilate for entirety of time working on problem.
[8:15] We feel agency when doing something logical.
[10:45] System 2 impairs other activities. For example, if you're doing math, it's easier to give in to chocolate cake than if you weren't doing math at the time.
[13:20] System 1 is where we are skilled in something. The better we are, the more intuitive it becomes. Naturally more emotional at it.
[14:00] Intuition isn't magic. It's simply recognition. A doctor recognizing a disease from looking at a patient's face is no different than a child looking and recognizing a dog. It's just natural because they're skilled at it. The skill of recognizing the thing is intuitive.
[15:00] If we live in a set or rules, and are presented with those rules regularly in a similarly patterned feedback loop, we'll eventually learn those rules and they'll become "expert intuition".
[16:35] You can expect an anesthesiologist to have more intuition than a radiologist because the former has tight feedback loops while the latter does not.
[19:30] We often have intuition that is entirely false, but it's indistiguishable from expert intuition. Where do these intuitions come from?
[22:45] Memory is terrible at remembering lists. But it's really great at remembering routes through space. So if you want to remember a list, you make a mental route and distribute the list across the route. You'll remember the list. From book Moonwalking with Einstein
[23:35] The brain is similarly great at chunking the way our brain operates into anthropomorphized agents. Even though those agents don't actually exist, we are extremely good at thinking of them doing things. It's less abstrct that way. So give things a personality, it helps you think more concretely.
[25:50] Study done with eyes watching over the honesty box. System 1 handles the behavior change, even if system 2 doesn't notice there's even a poster above the honesty box.
[28:25] System 1 is very much connected to associative memory. You have lots of ideas and they're linked together in a big network // Zettelkasten method of note taking
[30:00] By looking at the word vomit, System 1 activates all associated memories like sickness, toilet, etc. System 1 is preparing you for be ready for whatever will come next, and it assumes that what will come next is associated with what is currently in your memory.
[32:00] Everything is made coherent by System 1. The picture of ABC and 12 13 14, where the B and 13 are the same. Ambiguity is suppressed.
[35:30] It takes very little time to make a new norm. Story of the Stanford professor he met at a resort, then same guy at the movie theater in London weeks later. Brain is like (oh, here's that guy I meet everywhere).
[38:00] How we jump to conclusions - "When a difficult judgement is required, and a related judgement comes easily to mind, the easy judgement is used instead." Instead of processing a whole new way of thinking on the fly.
[44:25] Example of substitution: Emotions drive our decision making unconsciously. How much would you pay for insurance in case of death vs How much would you pay for insurance in case of death by terrorist incident. We are more scared of dying from terrorists than of just dying. The more afraid you feel, the more you're willing to pay.
[46:00] Confidence in own subjective judgement is high if System 1 can find coherence in the story it's putting together. We can make a very coherent story out of very little and low quality information. Not a good combo.