Tinkered Thinking!

Do you ever feel like your brain is playing tricks on you? That's because it is! In "Thinking, Fast and Slow," Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman explores the two systems that make up our thinking: the fast, intuitive System 1, and the slow, deliberate System 2.

Kahneman explains that while System 1 helps us quickly make judgments and decisions, it can also lead us astray with biases and heuristics. For example, have you ever been scared of flying, even though statistically it's safer than driving? That's because plane crashes get more media coverage, making them more available in our minds and leading us to overestimate their likelihood.

Similarly, the anchoring effect shows how our decisions can be influenced by the first piece of information we receive. A group of judges were found to be more likely to grant parole early in the day, when their decision-making capacity was fresher. And the conjunction fallacy shows how we can be swayed by specific details, even if they're less likely than general outcomes. For instance, people were found to be more likely to believe someone was a feminist banker than just a banker, even though the latter is more probable.

But it's not all bad news – Kahneman also explores how we can harness System 2 to make better decisions. By slowing down and analyzing information more deliberately, we can overcome the biases of System 1. For instance, we can use somethings like endowment effect to our advantage by recognizing that we overvalue things we own. (The endowment effect is a cognitive bias that refers to our tendency to overvalue things we own or possess. We tend to attribute more value to something simply because we own it, and we're reluctant to part with it even if it's not objectively worth as much as we think. For example, if you own a baseball that you've had for years, you might be willing to pay more to keep it than you would be willing to pay to buy a new one. This is because the baseball has sentimental value to you, and you attribute a higher value to it simply because you own it.)

Kahneman also highlights the importance of the peak-end rule, which shows that our memories of events are shaped by their emotional peak and how they end. So, even if a medical procedure is painful, if it ends on a positive note, we're more likely to remember it positively and be willing to repeat it.

Another interesting point highlighted is about the framing effect. The framing effect, which is the way in which the same information can be presented in different ways to influence decision-making. He gives the example of a flu outbreak being presented as "10% of people will get the flu" versus "90% of people will not get the flu", which can significantly affect people's willingness to get vaccinated. We can keep this in mind and while taking important decisions, being aware about this consciously, will help arrive at better and considered decisions.

In "Thinking, Fast and Slow," Kahneman provides fascinating insights into the quirks of our thinking, and how we can use this knowledge to make better decisions in our daily lives. Simply being aware about these ways of how brain functions, our cognitive biases etc., can help us make better decisions.