Philosophy involves a lot of thinking, and brains are pretty important for thinking, so if
we want to be good philosophers we need to learn a little bit about how brains work.
In his famous book "Thinking, Fast and Slow" Nobel Prizewinning psychologist Daniel Kahneman
describes two Systems in the brain - System 1 and System 2. System 1 is fast and intuitive.
Like, "2+2 is?" "4!" "Romeo and?" "Juliet!"
System 2 is slower, more deliberate. Things like, "What's 12x17?
What are the major themes of "Moby Dick?" Who should you vote for in the next election?"
The two Systems do not map onto brain actual structures. It's not like System 1 is the left hemisphere and System 2 is the right
hemisphere, OK? That'ss not true. These are metaphorical characters in a story that
explains how the brain works.
Trouble is, System 2 is incredibly lazy and whenever
System 1 can jump in with a quick and easy answer, it will. Often it will take
a difficult question and substitute it for an easier one without us realising. So for instance, "Should I eat this chocolate?"
becomes "Would I like this chocolate?" "Who should I vote for?" becomes "Which politician
do I like the sound of?" "Should I buy this product?" becomes "Do I like this product?"
The easiest way to demonstrate System 1's activity is with a simple question. Consider this: "Daniel
is quiet, tidy, meek, neat, and organised. Is Daniel more likely to be a librarian, or
a farmer?" Most people, when asked that, say that he's probably a librarian. But there are far
more farmers in the world than librarians, so even if Daniel is all those things, he's
still much more likely to be a farmer. What's happened is your brain has taken
the original question, which requires you to retrieve statistics about farming and
do some mental shuffling, and substituted it for an easier question - "Does Daniel resemble a stereotype
of a librarian?" But in this case not only is your answer based
on a stereotype, it's also wrong.
You can put your brain Systems through their paces with a Cognitive Reflection Test, or
CRT. The CRT is composed of three questions, which are designed to have ann intuitive answer
come to mind straightaway, which is wrong. Things like, "A bat and a ball together
cost £1.10. The bat costs £1 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?"
If you'd like to know more about the CRT or take it yourself you can find some links in the doobleydoo.
So why do we have two systems if System 1 can lead us so easily into error? And not
just small errors like getting the cost of the bat and ball wrong either; substituting questions can
affect who you vote for, your political beliefs, negotiations, making war or peace,
when it goes wrong it can go seriously wrong. Well the reason we have these two systems
is this - glucose. Actually this is sucrose, but - sugar is the answer.
Your brain runs on glucose. When System 2 is working your heart rate increases,
you pupils dilate, your muscles will tense, and your brain consumes more glucose. But human brains
evolved in an environment where glucose was scarce, so they evolved to use
as little of it as possible whenever they could. When human brains were evolving they didn't
need to be perfect, they just needed to be close enough for rock and roll and efficient and
fast. Nowadays things have changed: glucose is no longer scarce and we need have much more complicated decisions to
to make than just "There's a tiger! Run!" but we're stuck with these out-dated brains.
The fact that our brains can be so rubbish sometimes produces some interesting phenomena,
like "the Anchoring Effect." If you ask people to produce a numerical estimate in answer to
some question, like say "Guess how many pennies are in the jar?" their answer will be greatly
affected by any random number you can put in their heads. Kahneman describes an experiment
where people were asked "How old was Ghandi when he died?" The group that were first asked
"Was Ghandi over 114 when he died?" gave on average much higher estimates
than the control group.
Interestingly the anchoring effect still happens even when the number has nothing to do with anything. Kahneman
performed an experiment where he span a wheel of numbers, which he'd rigged to show the
either the number 10 or the number 65. He then asked participants to answer a question
about the percentage of African nations in the UN. The group that were shown the number 65
gave on average much higher answers than the other group. Even though the number 65 on a random spinning wheel had
nothing to do with the % of African nations are in the UN,
their brain still uses it. System 1 hangs onto any random number and goes, "Here, use this!"
Obviously this has massive implications for everything from bankers' bonuses to tuition fees to
prison sentencing: when judges were asked recommend sentences for fictional crime
cases they gave much higher sentences on average when they first rolled dice that had been loaded to show a high number.
And if you set a cap on bankers' bonuses at say, two million pounds, the amount that
gets given out in bonuses every year will increase because whenever the board meets and asks
"What should we give Steve for his bonus this year?" the number 2 million is in their
heads, anchoring them and causing them togive higher suggestions than they otherwise might.
Another interesting result of our lazy brains is bias. Bias is just systemic inability to appreciate facts, and everybody
is biased because everyone's brain is limited; just different people are biased
in different ways. There are different kinds of bias too, for instance outcome bias is
an inability to appreciate the role that luck played in previous outcomes. You get negative
outcome biases, like suing your surgeon because a low-risk surgery went wrong and you
want to blame them rather than just accept that it was just bad luck. And you get positive outcome biases, like
everybody thinking Captain Kirk is a great campatin when actually he makes terrible
command decisions and is just lucky. System 1 likes personal explanations; it likes to be able to say "This happened because this person did it," and doesn't
deal well with the truth of statistics, which is that some stuff just happens.
Incidentally, if you're looking for answers - the ball costs 5p, Ghandi was 78 when he died, and
the only way to stop the bankers' bonuses rising is to set the cap at or below whatever the current
average bonus is.
So what does this have to do with philosophy? Well, two things: firstly, it's kindof
casts a shadow over free will if the decisions that you think you make can actually be very easily
influenced by just any old random thing your brain happens to notice. It also might cause us to think very
carefully about democracy and how we design our political and media
systems if people can be so easily misled with disastrous consequences.
It might also be good argument for diversity in decision-making bodies too: if you've
have lots of different people from different backgrounds with different experiences
then hopefully they will different biases and be able to cover each others' blind spots.
But secondly, it also shows us I think what philosophy is for. Often in philosophy
we ask questions that do have intuitive answers but we try to ignore those intuitive answers, and press
them, and not to take anything for granted. Studying philosophy is like a Rocky
training montage for your System 2: you're trying to always use that way of thinking
and smack down System 1 whenever it comes up with the easy answer.
This doesn't mean philosophers are immune to the effects of a lazy System 2;
I know I'm not! But you can train your brain
to be better - earlier on I asked "What's 12 x 17?" and probably some of
you have done enough maths to instantly go "204." I asked "What's the major
theme of "Moby Dick?"" and probably some of you have read it closely enough to instantly go "Revenge."
Thinking takes practice, and there are few better ways to practice thinking than by studying philosophy.
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Lydia & Nate Thorn earned a reward for sponsoring the show, they got to ask me a question that I would
answer here in front of everybody and they chose to ask me "We've heard it said that "belief is
not a choice." If you were compelled by a rational argument, do you really *have* to
believe, or can you choose not to?" OK So this is by no means a settled matter in philosophy
but I am of the opinion that you cannot choose to believe or not believe something - like go ahead and try it now,
try believing that your face is made of plastic or that the world is flat - you just can't
do it. That said, I do think that people set themselves up to believe. So belief for me is a little
bit like falling asleep: you can't choose to do it right now but you can get into bed
and snuggle down and choose to put yourself in a state where you will be receptive to sleep.
And similarly you could choose to try and stay awake but eventually you're gonna have to sleep.
Similarly I think people can choose to avoid evidence or arguments that would challenge their deliberately and stick their fingers
in their ears, or they could maybe even do that without realising if those beliefs are
core to who they think they are. I've heard said that if a belief is very closely tied to
how you identify then it becomes very difficult to listen to or appreciate arguments or evidence against it. That's something Kahneman
talks about in his book actually, is the science of persuading people and what the best ways to distribute information in order to persuade people are, and who you
really gonna be persuading when you engage in certain kinds of arguments and mythbusting. So yeah, very interesting question, thank you!