Boost yourself on: ​Understanding human ​behaviour, brain, thinking,

belief, thoughts, attention, self-awareness, decision-making

Foreword

How well do you control your thoughts? What makes you think a certain
way? The behavior you exhibit is as a result of your thoughts, which is why
you need the tidbit contained in this book to help you think better. “Thinking
Fast and Slow” by Daniel Kahneman is a book written to help people
understand their brain and intuition. Daniel Kahneman is an economist and
a psychologist whose work on behavioral economics is one of the most
prescribed across the world.

“You are more likely to learn something by finding surprises in your

own behavior than by hearing surprising facts about people in
general.” ​~ ​Daniel Kahneman
 1. Your thoughts determine how you view life, and that's
why you need to learn how to control them

Your brain is always looking for the most natural way out, and that could be
the death of your ethical judgment making. Your brain substitutes effort for
creativity, thanks to your System 1.

There are several factors like illusion, availability, and experience that
influence your decisions. These influences lead you to make biased
conclusions.

Thinking is not as easy as it seems; it is an art that must be mastered. The

mastering of thoughts comes with understanding what constitutes your
intuition and assumptions. Experiments and facts also shape the way you
think, and this is why you should know when to switch between intuition
and empirical facts.

Daniel Kahneman is a master of his trade. His knowledge of behavioral

economics, cognitive thinking, and psychology put him up there with the
very best. His approach toward the behavioral pattern of people is made
easy with the use of relative examples and instances.

To find out how to switch from thinking slow to thinking fast, read further,
and follow this well-detailed summary of “Thinking Fast and Slow” by
Daniel Kahneman.
1. The two systems associated with your brain are
responsible for how and when you think

Psychologists Keith Stanovich and Richard West have established that

humans have two primary systems for thinking;

● System 1 which operates automatically and quickly without voluntary

control, and with little effort;

● System 2 which allocates attention to the effortful mental activity of

any kind.

Humans avoid an overload of information in their brain by consciously or

subconsciously breaking up tasks into smaller steps. This is because we
naturally prefer solutions that require minimum mental effort and strength.
The moment a solution requires a lot of effort, the attention paid to it starts
to decrease.

Breaking tasks into smaller tasks helps you work faster.

In a bid to balance the functions of the human mind, one of the primary
functions of System 2 is to control, monitor, and oversee suggestions and
actions that come from System 1. However, this action doesn’t rely much
on facts; it’s based on faith and intuition.

The information System 1 provides to System 2 is usually wrapped around

impressions. These impressions turn to beliefs that humans hold on to. The
beliefs then turn to actions that create an identity for you.
The human brain is programmed to adjust to speed and stress. Cognitive
ease comes into play because you behave in a different way when you are
making an effort toward something with ease. When you’re strained, on the
other hand, your brain will adjust, and you’ll likely do the job well, but you
will lack the required creativity. Taking your time to work with cognitive
ease increases your creativity.

The human brain is programmed to adjust to speed and stress. Working

when stressed increases your productivity, but limits your creativity.

Another function of System 1 is that it helps you shape what’s normal to

you, what surprises you, and the cause of these things. It feeds off the
information sent to your brain and makes assessments based on your
reaction to things.

It should be noted though, that System 1 doesn’t necessarily make an

accurate conclusion from the information sent to it. It doesn’t care about the
true assessment of the information; it makes its own conclusions.

System 1 in our brain makes assumptions from inaccurate and inadequate

information.

In making judgments, however, evaluating people is an automatic process

that happens whether you intend it or not.

System 2 works hard to find an escape route for you, especially when you
are stuck with finding a solution to a problem. When you can’t find a good
answer to a question, System 1 automatically finds a similar question and
feeds you the answer instead.

Your brain makes judgments about people and situations — whether you
want to or not.

When System 1 faces a tough problem that it can’t find a solution for, it’ll
seek the help of System 2, calling it into action to find a way around the
problem immediately.

However, sometimes, your brain deceives you, and itself, into believing that
a task is simple. Due to this fact, System 1 pops up, thinking it can handle
it, but it can’t. As a result of this, you end up making mistakes.

Over and over again, your mind tricks you and itself into accepting that a
task is straightforward and simple.

This happens because your brain wants to save as much energy as

possible when executing a task. Your brain takes the easiest route
available for a task, thereby minimizing effort. The moment your brain
miscalculates the required effort needed for a task to be executed, System
1 fails to perform its functions.

So, when System 1 feels it can handle a situation or problem, it won’t

activate or call for the help of System 2. This means you will most likely end
up using less creativity than needed because the task should have been
originally handled by System 2.
Some of the characteristics of System 1 are:

● It neglects ambiguity and suppresses doubts;

● It distinguishes the surprising from normal;

● It creates a coherent pattern of activated ideas in associative

memories;

● It is biased to believe and confirm.

2. ​You are bound to make judgments based on bias and

intuition instead of facts and statistics

There is a tendency for you to jump to a conclusion about a scenario based

on the sample provided. This logic applies to numbers too.

Your decision about a situation can be heavily influenced by the examples

you've heard of such situations.

You believe that samples that involve small numbers are drawn from a
small population. The moment you are told that five million people work in
the public sector in Bulgaria, you’re inclined to believe that Bulgaria’s
population is small, just because of the sample. These are some of the
things that shape how you view and evaluate your environment.

The anchoring effect occurs when a particular value for an unknown

quantity influences your estimate of that quantity. This explains how
humans place value on something because of what anchors the number
associated with it.

Amos and Daniel invented a fortune wheel that was rigged to stop at 10 or
65. They then gathered students of the University of Oregon as participants
for their experiment. After spinning the wheel which had been rigged to
stop at either 10 or 65, the participants were asked two questions.

● Is the percentage of African nations among UN members larger or

smaller than the number you just wrote?

● What is your best guess of the percentage of African nations in the

UN?

Although the number on the wheel holds no significance to the question

(even if the wheel wasn’t rigged), the participants still based their results to
the questions on the number on the wheel.

The anchor for their number was determined mostly by the number they got
from the wheel. Those who had 10 chose lesser numbers for the African
nations, and those who had 65 chose higher numbers.

The ease with which you can come up with examples is often used to
determine the frequency of events. Immediately an example comes to
mind, your brain pieces together instances of a similar occurrence, and
you’re then tricked into believing that such a situation is frequent.
How fast you can think of situations is regularly used to decide the
recurrence of such occasions.

A dramatic event temporarily increases the availability of its category. A

train wreck that attracts media coverage will temporarily alter your feelings
about traveling by rail. Your mind’s made to believe that the train wreck is a
frequent occurrence, and this alters the way you view traveling on a train.

If not controlled, availability biases can cause problems. It’s not easy to
stop, but you can resist its dominance by training yourself to identify it. By
maintaining your vigilance against these biases, you can control your
thinking better.

3. Inadequate and inaccurate history about the past tend to

affect the present and the future

There’s a belief that the worst scenario of an occurrence is the highest form
of it; therefore, the preventive measures that would be taken should be
examined against that scenario.

Preventive measures are always built against the worst-case scenario of an

event.

If, for example, a wall is being erected to stop a flood, the strength and
height of the wall will most likely be built according to the last heaviest
flood. Economist Howard Kunreunther believes that protective actions are
usually designed to be adequate to the worst disaster experienced.

No thanks to the media, there are several misconceptions about the true
extent of things, and how important or less important they are. Humans try
to simplify life by believing in a world that is perfect in their heads.

Your brain makes the next available conclusion for you in the absence of
precise data.

By examining the two (evidence and base rates), it’s known that humans
tend to put more focus on evidence than base rates. Base rates occur as a
result of small information. When the information produced is not specific or
detailed, base rates come into view, telling the brain to make a conclusion
based on assumptions.

The moment more specific information is provided, the brain changes its
focus, and concludes evidence, rather than the base rate.

The brain prefers empirical data to lack of precise information.

Placing absolute belief in the conclusion drawn from detailed information

can be misleading. It’s true that a tall and thin athlete would most likely play
basketball, but it’s not always so. As long as you allow your conclusion to
be drawn from descriptions, there will be times that you will end up making
the wrong assumptions.
You cannot make accurate judgment by relying on assumptions alone.

When it comes to descriptions, adding details is different from being

specific. Simply adding details to a piece of information makes it more likely
to be believed, but it doesn’t mean that the information is accurate.

More information doesn't mean precise information.

The idea behind a piece of good information is that it should be precise.

Precision can come in short forms when it comes to describing a scenario.
The ability to be specific helps you think fast.

Information is best used when it's detailed and precise.

4. Statistic from data aids the conclusion of information, but

they are not as informative to you as real-life experiences

When you come from a very peaceful place where humans don’t eat
animals, and then you’re told that humans are responsible for the death of
65% of animals across the world, you’ll find it hard to believe. Also,
regardless of existing facts and statistics, a situation is not bound always to
follow a regular pattern.
Real life instances give you more information than established facts and
statistics.

That a tall serial killer has terrorized a community for a year doesn’t mean
the next death is from the same serial killer. Existing facts help in the
absence of any other information.

The reaction toward performance doesn’t necessarily generate from praise

or blame. When you scold someone for a bad performance, it’s likely that
the person’s next performance will be better. Also, when you praise
someone for a good performance, there’s a huge chance that such a
person’s performance would deteriorate next time. Now, the reaction to
these performances is not as a result of how you scolded the person or
praised the person. Natural fluctuations occur, and this means that a
person who has had a bad performance would naturally want to improve,
and a person who has had a good performance has most likely been lucky
with such performance. But ​Kahneman disagreed.

It is better to reward improved performance than to punish a mistake.

Predictions and forecasts are a part of everyday life. Across all fields of
study, experts and professionals make predictions based on calculations
and facts available. Some predictions are intuitively based on recent
occurrence, experience, or familiarity; by seeing certain cues, you can
deduce what is bound to happen next. However, there are several other
things that you can’t predict or forecast without showing bias. To produce
unbiased predictions, you must start with the average information available,
and then gradually work toward getting more data from existing guidelines,
statistics, and facts.

Correcting your intuitive predictions is the work of System 2. System 2 is

responsible for the hard work, so it goes to collect information from what
you have experienced, and what you’re experiencing.

5. The Illusion of Understanding, Availability and Validation

deceives you into believing that you know much about the
present and the future

According to Nasim Taleb, humans continually fool themselves by

constructing flimsy accounts of the past, and believing they are true. He
believes that the stories of the past shape the present, and inevitably the
future as well.

The accounts of the past shape the present and the future.

The illusion of understanding is a major determinant in the way people think

and approach life. The knowledge of the past, rewritten to suit certain
narratives, only talk about things that happened, neglecting things that
didn’t happen. These narratives have created the belief in humans that as
long as they can know the past, they can shape the future. But how well
can a future be shaped when the knowledge about the past is a result of an
inaccurate description?
6. A successful event makes people believe that the steps
leading up to the event must equally be successful

As much as you believe you know your past, most of the stories you’ve
heard only talk about the event and neglect the preceding steps.

The validation of something by humans comes from belief most of the time.
Even though there’s little to no evidence, humans tend to validate what
they believe in because of influence, pressure, and blind faith.

Humans validate things simply because they believe in it.

When you’re confident about something, it doesn’t mean that it is right or

true; it only means that since your System 1 has found it easy to process
the information, it jumps to conclusions. “What You See Is All There Is”
(WYSIATI) is an approach employed by System 1 when it wants to do lazy
work. The illusion of validation keeps human beings biased in judgment
making.

Structured impressions that have a well-planned formula are better than

intuition and assumptions. When you have a roadmap that buttresses your
impressions, always take it over your intuition. Intuitions give you biased
judgments while formulas give you a guideline towards approaching a task.

In normal situations and conditions, it is okay to trust your basic intuition.

The moment you change the environment, however, you should become
more careful and rely on facts. Change of environment means you have to
learn new things, and since your intuition is primarily based on stored
information, it won’t be advisable to rely on it.

The best-case scenario is not the only scenario worth studying. Humans
tend to plan, initiate, and execute projects based on facts and stories
available from the best-case scenario. To successfully plan, a lot of
scenarios should be evaluated by taking into account similar cases that
were successful or unsuccessful.

Optimism as a defense mechanism against doubt is an art that needs to be

mastered. Having disregard for doubt breeds confidence as well as
overconfidence. The best thing to do is to moderate your optimism by
employing the premortem tactic. The premortem tactic allows you to
assume that a project has failed. By pretending the project has failed, your
brain works continuously to discover reasons why the project failed. In so
doing, you’re exposed to probable faults and loopholes that you can fix.

7. The value you place on properties and happiness is

determined by whether you own them or not

The value of something is determined by the current situation of the person

who wants the thing. When you’re rich, the things you can afford hold value
to you, but when you’re not, their value decreases because you can’t afford
them.
The value you place on something is largely determined by how well you
can afford it.

The things you own naturally have value to you because you own them.
The value you attach to whatever you own is greater than when you see
the same thing elsewhere.

In terms of taking a risk and examining loss, humans always look for the
safest possible bet regardless of the probable outcome. When it comes to
gambling, you are unwilling to take risks, because when the probability of a
loss is higher than that of a win, you instinctively want to avoid it. This is
why humans are always more particular about avoiding losses than
working hard to secure gains.

As long as there is a chance for a loss, the brain works towards avoiding it.

The possibility of a future occurrence is one way in which humans think

ahead of the time. However, when overestimated, these possibilities cause
the brain to focus on events that are very unlikely to happen. These events
are called rare events. It is quite rare for money to drop into your lap from
the sky, but you still believe in its possibility because it has probably
happened before. This belief influences your way of life.

Adopting risk policies to guide you against loss is a brilliant thing to do, but
it should not be exaggerated. See a decision as one of the numerous
options available to you.
Assess all possible options before dismissing them. Don't naturally reject
an alternative because it contains risk or loss.

Since rewards and punishments mold your reaction and motivate your
actions, you should pay attention to it often.

8. The human mind evaluates statements based on how they

are framed and laid down

A well-framed statement can go a long way in appealing to your mind, while

a badly framed statement can cause a big issue.

As it has been established, simple and sole evaluations of a situation are

the work of the System 1, while careful assessment and comparison is the
work of System 2.

There are two selves in humans; they are:

● The experiencing self

● The remembering self

These two selves work hand in hand to help you make decisions. The
experiencing self helps you make decisions based on whether you like an
experience or not, and the remembering self helps you make a decision
based on your reaction toward it when you first encountered it.
A lot of people don’t pay attention to their experiencing self; they are more
particular about the memories they’ve collected over time, and then base
their judgments on it.

Happiness is relative, and it has a wide range of definitions that can never
be ignored. Human judgments are different, and so is the definition of
happiness. The best way to live a good life is to understand that there’s no
limit to what can make you, or anyone, feel happy.

Conclusion
Your thoughts are a process of past, current, and future events that shape
your life. When you control the way you think and how well you think, you’ll
find it easy to make better decisions. Understanding your two systems and
training yourself to be able to control your thoughts gives you a better
advantage. You can make better judgments about life and people; all you
need to do is understand the way you think.

Practice: ​Discover your thought process, evaluate your judgments about

people, and see if you are making a good conclusion or not. If yes,
maintain it, if no, focus on working on your bias by seeing beyond your
intuition.