Intuition vs. Reason
(Image: Zen Buddha Silence, by Marilyn Barbone)
November 5, 2017
Intuition vs. reason...
Daniel Kahneman is one of the best psychologists in the world. In his outstanding book,Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011), Kahneman "shares a lifetime's worth of wisdom," as Steven D. Levitt, coauthor ofFreakonomics puts it.
Furthermore, one of the fundamental aspects of our brains is that we can detect the errors others make far more readily than we can recognize our own mistakes. This, combined with our strong tendency to be overconfident, inevitably leads to trouble when important decisions are at hand. In order to improve our decision-making–and thus our lives–it's hard to do better than carefully studying Kahneman's book.
INTRODUCTION
As mentioned, it's far easier for us to identify mistakes that others make than to identify our own mistakes.
Questioning what we believe and want is difficult at the best of times, and especially difficult when we most need to do it...
As a part of his effort to help us learn about ourselves and our decision-making, Kahneman aims to improve our vocabulary.
A deeper understanding of judgments and choices also requires a richer vocabulary than is available in everyday language... Systematic errors are known as biases, and they recur predictably in particular circumstances.
Kahneman continues:
When you are asked what you are thinking about, you can normally answer. You believe you know what goes on in your mind, which often consists in one conscious thought leading in an orderly way to another. But that is not the only way the mind works, nor indeed is that the typical way. Most impressions and thoughts arise in your conscious experience without your knowing how they got there. You cannot trace how you came to the belief that there is a lamp on the desk in front of you, or how you detected a hint of irritation in your spouse's voice on the telephone, or how you managed to avoid a threat on the road before you became consciously aware of it. The mental work that produces impressions, intuitions, and many decisions goes on in silence in our mind.
Kahneman says the book is about the biases of intuition, but that intuition usually works well:
...most of our judgments and actions are appropriate most of the time. As we navigate our lives, we normally allow ourselves to be guided by impressions and feelings, and the confidence we have in our intuitive beliefs and preferences is usually justified. But not always. We are often confident even when we are wrong, and an objective observer is more likely to detect our errors than we are.
Kahneman describes meeting Amos Tversky when they were both near the beginning of their careers as psychologists. Tversky was more logical, while Kahneman was more intuitive. They worked well together.
One important way Kahneman and Tversky were able to design experiments that reveal the biases of intuition that people tend to have was by studying their own intuitive responses to a variety of questions. They surmised that their own intuitive answers–which were often wrong–would be shared by others. This turned out to be true.
One important thing Kahneman and Tversky discovered regards the role of resemblance in intuitive predictions.
Consider this example that Kahneman gives:
Steve is very shy and withdrawn, invariably helpful but with little interest in people or in the world of reality. A meek and tidy soul, he has a need for order and structure, and a passion for detail.
Question: Is Steve more likely to be a farmer or a librarian?
Nearly all of us, if we respond intuitively, conclude that Steve is more likely to be a librarian. However, for every male librarian, there are 20 male farmers. Therefore, it's far more likely that Steve is a farmer. Kahneman:
...we found that participants in our experiments ignored the relevant statistical facts and relied exclusively on resemblance. We proposed that they used resemblance as a simplifying heuristic (roughly, a rule of thumb) to make a difficult judgment. The reliance on the heuristic caused predictable biases (systematic errors) in their predictions.
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