WHAT IS THINKING?

Auguste Rodin's THE THINKER.

Do You Want toThink

Fast or Slow?

by Alex Hutchins

Many of our actions are instinctive or some might say that they are automatic responses to certain stimuli or in specific situations like moving out of the way when an object approaches or covering our eyes when confronted suddenly with a glaring sun.  Some might say that these automatic responses or behaviors are acquired or learned by watching others or repeated over time by ourselves.  These actions happen so quick that some might say they are involuntary or that they occur with very little thought; perhaps, they were performed without thinking.

So, what is thinking?

But when we are confronted with a difficulty, perplexity, or problem, that is, an unfamiliar situation to which we have no response ready, either instinctive or habitual, then we 'put on our thinking cap'; for thinking is the characteristically human method of seeking a solution, as opposed to the haphazard, hit or miss, trial and error method common in the rest of the animal world. It is this power of dealing with a novel situation by reflection, without overt action, that is the distinguishing mark of homo sapiens.

Therefore, thinking is a controlled and constructive and directed towards a solution of the solution of a problem from which we have no previous experience to draw upon.  This problem could be a practical or it could be theoretical; it could be serious or trivial; it could be subjective or objective, and it could be funny or sad.

Regardless, thinking passes through 6 stages:

1. Interest: the thinker becomes aware of the problem and his interest is aroused.
2. Attention: the problem is formulated and the relevant data collected and examined.
3. Suggestion: possible solutions occur.
4. Reasoning: the consequences of each suggested solution are worked out.
5. Conclusion: the most satisfactory solution is adopted.
6. Test: the adopted suggestion is submitted to trial.

Consider these questions:

Why would you want to be up in front of a judge just after lunch rather than later in the afternoon?

Why do highly intelligent women marry stupid men?

Why would investors make more money taking a shower than trading shares?

And why is the work of a balding, bespectacled 77-year-old Israeli flying out of our bookshops?

Daniel Kahneman

After a lifetime of research, Daniel Kahneman, the psychologist who won the 2002 Nobel Prize for Economics, thinks he has the answers to all these questions. He may seem an unlikely media star, but forget The Hunger Games or Fifty Shades of Grey, the paperback that the discerning reader will be parading on the beach this summer is set to be his Thinking, Fast and Slow, which unlocks secrets about the way we process information, and makes us think about the decisions we take as a result.

Kahneman lays out in Thinking his belief that we have two sorts of thought processes, which he calls System 1 and System 2.  System 1 (the “fast” thinking of the title) is intuitive, often unconscious, relying on past association of ideas. System 2 (the “slow”) is conscious, reasoning, full of effort and ultimately often lazy. While we identify with System 2 because we like to see ourselves as conscious, reasoning beings, Kahneman sees the freewheeling automatic System 1 as the “hero of the book”.

Before the research by Kahneman and his colleague Amos Tversky (who died in 1996), most economists operated on the presumption that people make rational choices. For example, in classic economic theory, if you were to be offered a bet on a coin toss – heads you lose $100, tails you win $150, the theory would be that you’d take it. Yet in reality, studies show that people often don’t; we’d rather avoid losing something that we already possess than go for a bigger potential gain on the off chance.

Meanwhile, just the way statistics are framed can drastically alter our perceptions. Kahneman points out that doctors were loath to operate if they were told there was a 10 per cent mortality rate in the month after surgery, but were much more positive if they were told there was a 90 per cent survival rate.

But what really caught my attention was this quote by Kahneman:

"We have a very narrow view of what is going on," he says. "We don't see very far in the future, we are very focused on one idea at a time, one problem at a time, and all these are incompatible with rationality as economic theory assumes it."

ASS - U - ME