Thinking, Fast and Slow - 2011

• (P4$\P$3) Book focuses on biases of intuition.
• (P6$\P$1) Great characterization of what makes great synergy: Amos and Kahneman were sufficiently similar to understand each other, and sufficiently different to surprise each other.
• (P6$\P$2) Their research practice is to have a conversation where they invent questions and jointly examine the intuitive answers, analyzing them even when they know if they are wrong.
• The idea that our minds are susceptible to systematic error is now generally accepted, even though it was not always the case.
• There are 2 selfs: Experiencing self and remembering self.
• (P28 \(\P\) -2) Attributing certain features for either System 1 or 2 is intended as a description, not an explanation.
• (P35$\P$-2) A law of least effort applies to cognitive exertion as well (in addition to physical exertion).
• A significant discovery of modern cognitive psychology is that switching from 1 task to another is effortful, e.g. modern working memory experiments require subjects to switch attention between 2 demanding tasks and people with the ability to control tend to have higher general intelligence.
• For Kahneman, walking around 14-17 minutes per mile is the limit that allows for thinking while walking, any faster than that activates an impulse for self-control to resist the urge to slow down.
• Flow is an optimal experience where one has a state of effortless concentration so deep that one loses their sense of time.
• (P52$\P$1) Hume's principles of association: Resemblance, continuity in time and place, and causality. Beyond Hume we now do not think of the mind going through a sequence of ideas, rather the current view of associative memory, many ideas are activated at once.
• (P55$\P$2) Reminders of money led to a priming effect, where money-primed people have increased self-reliance, are more selfish, have greater preference to be alone, and in general primes individualism (a reluctance to be involved with others, depend on others or to accept demands from others).
• (P64$\P$-2) To know whether a statement is true, one would feel a sense of cognitive ease if the statement is strongly linked by logic or association to other beliefs or preferences you hold, or comes from a trusted source, however there maybe other causes for this cognitive ease, e.g. quality of the font in which the statement is written in etc.
• (P65$\P$2) Cognitive strain mobilizes System 2, see for e.g. Shane Frederick's Cognitive Reflection Test.
• A key takeaway from the bat and ball question at least is that many people are overconfident and are more likely to place too much faith in their intuitions.
• (P46$\P$2) Intelligence is not only the ability to reason but also the ability to find relevant material in memory and to deploy attention when needed.
• (P69$\P$2) Cognitive ease is both a cause and a consequence of a pleasant feeling.
• (P76$\P$2) Albert Michotte's thesis that we "see" causality like we see colours, alongside the e.g. of animated shapes, where 6-month babies see the sequence of events in the animation as a causal sequence and indicate surprise when the sequence is altered, suggesting that we are ready to have "impressions" of causality even from birth, which does not depend on reasoning about patterns of causation.
• (P77$\P$3) People apply causal thinking inappropriately to situations that require statistical reasoning.
• Daniel Gilbert's argument that the initial attempt to believe is an automatic operation from System 1, and unbelieving is an operation from System 2.
• Contrary to science where we test a hypothesis to refute it, people seek data that are likely to be compatible with the beliefs they currently hold.

(Book actually states them in P105)

• (P20$\P$-1) System 1 operates automatically and quickly, with little or no effort and no sense of voluntary control.
• Associative memory is the core.
• The automatic system.
• Thinks metaphorically, associatively, causally.
• System 1 keeps generating suggestions for System 2, which include impressions, intuitions, intentions, feelings etc where impressions and intuitions endorsed by System 2 become beliefs.
• Has little understanding of logic and statisitcs.
• Good at detecting simple relations and integrating information about 1 thing e.g. it associates a shy and withdrawn male to be a librarian rather than a farmer but does not integrate the statistical knowledge that there are more male farmers than male librarians.
• Has more influence on behavious when System 2 is busy, and is also more gullible and biased to believe in such a scenario.
• Is coherence seeking, constructs best possible story that uses currently activated ideas.
• Represents categories as a prototype/set of typical exemplars, hence deals well with averages but poorly with sums (e.g. average and sum of random sticks).
• Computes much more than we want (called the mental shotgun), this alongside intensity matching explains why we have intuitive judgements about things we know little about.

• (P21$\P$1) System 2 allocates attention to the effortful mental activities that demand it, including complex computations. The operations of System 2 are often associate with the subjective experience of agency, choice and concentration.
• The effortful system.
• In charge of self-control, and the continuous monitoring of your own behaviour, and controlling thoughts and behaviour.
• In contrast to System 1, System 2 can follow rules, compare objects on several attributes and make deliberate choices between options.

• "Intuition is nothing more and nothing less than recognition" -Herbert Simon
• The selective attention test, available here.
• Roy Baumeister's work providing evidence that all variants of voluntary effort (cognitive, emotional, physical) draw at least partly from a shared pool of mental energy.
• Bat and ball question, where 50% of respondents from high tier universities and 80% from other universities answered incorrectly.
• (P47$\P$2) Walter Mischel's experiment on self-control where 4 year old children in a room without any distractions are given the choice between an immediate small reward and a delayed larger reward, and the subsequent results 10-15 years later where those who resisted the immediate reward (around 50%) had higher measures of executive control in cognitive tasks, especially in the ability to reallocate their attention effectively.
• (P48$\P$-1) Keith Stanovich's book "Rationality and the Reflective Mind" where he distinguishes rationality (what he calls the ability to be engaged) from intelligence.
• (P52$\P$-1) The Florida effect, related to priming where words associated with slowness lead to subjects walking slower, where its unknown to them that this is what is being measured.
• Book "Strangers to Ourselves".
• Robert Zajonc's experiments on the exposure effect: impressions for words (in Turkish, so readers - A key takeaway from the bat and ball question at least is that many people are overconfident and are more likely to place too much faith in their intuitions.
• (P46$\P$2) Intelligence is not only the ability to reason but also the ability to find relevant material in memory and to deploy attention when needed.
• (P69$\P$2) Cognitive ease is both a cause and a consequence of a pleasant feeling.
• (P76$\P$2) Albert Michotte's thesis that we "see" causality like we see colours, alongside the e.g. of animated shapes, where 6-month babies see the sequence of events in the animation as a causal sequence and indicate surprise when the sequence is altered, suggesting that we are ready to have "impressions" of causality even from birth, which does not depend on reasoning about patterns of causation.
• (P77$\P$3) People apply causal thinking inappropriately to situations that require statistical reasoning.do not know what they) correlate positively with the frequency at which they were presented (in a student newspaper over several weeks). This exposure effect also occurs even repeated words or pictures are shown quick enough that observers are not aware of seeing them, meaning this effect does not depend on consciousness.
• Sarnoff Mednick's work with the Remote Association Test (RAT) show that thinking happy thoughts more than doubled accuracy, and unhappy subjects were no better than random.
• (P82$\P$-1) Solomon Asch's work on the Halo effect.
• (P84$\P$3) Wisdom of crows experiment related to jellybeans.
• (P90) Alexander Todorov's experiments showing that ratings of competence is predictive of election outcomes, where competence is judged by a combination of how votes perceive strength and trustworthiness.

• Judgements Under Uncertainty
• Heuristics and Biases
• Prospect theory: An analysis of decisions under risk
• How Mental Systems Believe
• Checklist manifesto

• Availability heuristic.
• Moses illusion.
• Answering easier questions, e.g. "Do I like cars" instead of "Should I invest in Ford?"
• Ego depletion (glucose as a possible remedy)
• Priming effect (e.g. Lady MacBeth effect)
• Exposure effect (relates to the link between positive emotion and cognitive ease in System 1).
• Moses illusion.
• What you see is all there is (Principle of WYSIATI).
• Judgement heuristics.

• How to improve one's working memory?
• How does priming relate to mass advertising, and ideology (e.g. Piketty).
• Don't fully understand P69$\P$-1, namely the experiment on intuition of coherence.