Human thought comprises two sorts of mental operations that Daniel Kahneman calls “thinking fast” (System 1) and “thinking slow” (System 2). Thinking fast is automatic and effortless, valuing stories that possess narrative coherence.
Thinking slow is controlled and requires effort, valuing analyses with logical coherence. The bulk of our mental operations are System 1, and most of the time this serves us well—after all, we would be paralysed if we had to logically analyse each of the thousands of decisions we make every day.
But there’s a rub: System 1 is terrible at statistics, and comes with dangerous unconscious biases.
We humans are natural storytellers but poor natural statisticians. We are so far from being rational agents that Kahneman calls the mind “a machine for jumping to conclusions.”
Often without even realising it, we tend to:
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