Thinking about "Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman

After briefly outlining the trajectory of his research with Amos Tversky, Daniel Kahneman drops this little nugget in the introduction to Thinking, Fast and Slow:

By and large, ...the idea that our minds are susceptible to systematic errors is now generally accepted.

The irony is that few minds ever confront themselves in the critical ways necessary to fully come to terms with this. Most of us are simply unaware of the kinds of cognitive biases and unconscious processes that shape how and what we think. What is doubly ironic is that we are overly confident in our beliefs, impressions, and preferences for no good reason. We seldom ask ourselves why we think what we do. Nor do we often consider the possibility that the conclusions we reach may be wrong and/or based on unfounded assumptions or unreliable information:

The confidence that individuals have in their beliefs depends mostly on the quality of the story they can tell about what they see, even if they see little. We often fail to allow for the possibility that evidence that should be critical to our judgement is missing—what we see is all there is.

I can assert without hyperbole that the world would be a much better place if more people seriously contemplated how our thought processes are riddled with systematic errors, or that the idea of the self (that there is a coherent and essential "I" in all of us that is the conscious author of our thoughts) is an illusion. The notion that humans are fundamentally free and rational agents has been dramatically undermined by the findings of cognitive psychology. As a result, economics has undergone somewhat of a revolution in light of our new understand of human behaviour. Now, behavioural economics is all the rage!

On a more personal level, accepting that our brains come loaded with biases can lead to better and more productive relationships and interactions. One of the main reasons I seek to learn about all the ways our intuitive reasoning fails us is so that I may be better equipped when I tell someone they are wrong on the internet. I readily admit that sometimes I just cannot help myself... (Wait, who is the "I" and "myself" in this sentence? Why should they be at odds and struggling for control? Just who is in charge here, anyway?)

So after seeing many references to Kahneman's work in other books, and seeing him in an episode of BBC Horizon called "How You Really Make Decisions", I finally picked up a copy of Thinking, Fast and Slow a few weeks ago at a used book store (hardcover in great condition). Better late than never, I guess.

And if this isn't a nearly perfect description of what it's like to be a "confident idiot" in a complex world, then I don't know what is:

A remarkable aspect of your mental life is that you are rarely stumped. True, you occasionally face a question such as 17 x 24 = ? to which no answer comes immediately to mind, but these dumbfounded moments are rare. The normal state of your mind that you have intuitive feelings and opinions about almost everything that comes your way. You like or dislike people long before you know much about them; you trust or distrust strangers without knowing why; you feel that an enterprise is bound to succeed without analyzing it. Whether you state them or not, you often have answers to questions that you do not completely understand, relying on evidence that you can neither explain or defend.

They're illusions, Michael: "Waking Up" by Sam Harris

Although we are only beginning to understand the human mind at the level of the brain, and we know nothing about how consciousness itself comes into being, it isn't too soon to say that the conventional self is an illusion. There is no place for a soul inside your head. Consciousness itself is divisible—as we saw in the case of split-brain patients—and even in an intact brain consciousness is blind to most of what the mind is doing. Everything we take ourselves to be at the level of our subjectivity—our memories and emotions, our capacity for language, the very thoughts and impulses that give rise to our behavior—depends upon distinct processes that are spread out over the whole brain. Many of these can be independently interrupted or extinguished. The sense, therefore, that we are unified subjects—the unchanging thinkers of thoughts and experiencers of experience—is an illusion. The conventional self is a transitory appearance among transitory appearances, and it vanishes when looked for.

Waking Up: A Guide To Spirituality Without Religion by Sam Harris

Em-dash overuse notwithstanding, this is such a good summary of how the self is an illusion that it should be printed up on little cards and handed out to people on the street. It is no coincidence that this passage appears near the end of a terrific book which also extolls (among many other fascinating and enlightening things) the importance of having a competent teacher who can point a student in the right direction on the contemplative path of inner exploration. 

Sam Harris has written another challenging and important book. It is also a necessary one. One of the many questions that invariably arises in response to the project of New Atheism to disabuse the world of faith-based malarkey is how is one supposed to find meaning in life without religion? It is not just believers who worry about this. It is not unlike the concern over whether humans can be moral without religion. In The Moral Landscape, Harris tackled this by showing how science and reason can guide us toward moral answers. Similarly, Waking Up provides us with good reasons for seeking spirituality (i.e. meaning) in a secular context through meditation and contemplating the nature of our own consciousness.

Not that "I" needed any further convincing but if one has lingering doubts about the death of dualism, Waking Up should close the case. Coming to terms with the fact that we are our brains is, as Sam Harris argues, liberating. That the stakes couldn't be any higher in recognizing this is illustrated by this eminently tweetable gem:

Confusion and suffering may be our birthright, but wisdom and happiness are available.

"I" mean, dude. Seriously. Admittedly, "I" was always going to like this book. Rarely are expectations so dramatically exceeded. The phrase gets thrown around quite a bit, but Waking Up truly is required reading. (Also, The Self Illusion by Bruce Hood.)

("I" briefly considered changing the title of this post to "Their illusions, Michael" which, I think, is funnier, but less clear and just looks like a typo instead of a reference.)