INTRODUCTION
3 “The expectation of intelligent gossip is a powerful motive for serious self-criticism”
8-9 “students of policy have noted that the availability heuristic helps explain why some issues are highly salient in the public’s mind while others are neglected. People tend to assess the relative importance of issues by the ease with which they are retrieved from memory—and this is largely determined by the extent of coverage in the media. Frequently mentioned topics populate the mind even as others slip away from awareness. In turn, what the media choose to report corresponds to their view of what is currently on the public’s mind. It is no accident that authoritarian regimes exert substantial pressure on independent media. Because public interest is most easily aroused by dramatic events and by celebrities, media feeding frenzies are common. For several weeks after Michael Jackson’s death, for example, it was virtually impossible to find a television channel reporting on another topic. In contrast, there is little coverage of critical but unexciting issues that provide less drama, such as declining educational standards or overinvestment of medical resources in the last year of life. (As I write this, I notice that my choice of “little-covered” examples was guided by availability. The topics I chose as examples are mentioned often; equally important issues that are less available did not come to my mind.)” EDIT
12 “when faced with a difficult question, we often answer an easier one instead, usually without noticing the substitution.” !!
PART 1
TWO SYSTEMS
1 THE CHARACTERS OF THE STORY
24 “we can be blind to the obvious, and we are also blind to our blindness.”
3 THE LAZY CONTROLLER
41 – 43 “System 1 has more influence on behavior when System 2 is busy, and it has a sweet tooth.
People who are cognitively busy are also more likely to make selfish choices, use sexist language, and make superficial judgments in social situations. […]
if you have had to force yourself to do something, you are less willing or less able to exert self-control when the next challenge comes around. The phenomenon has been named ego depletion. […]
When you are actively involved in difficult cognitive reasoning or engaged in a task that requires self-control, your blood glucose level drops. […] the effects of ego depletion could be undone by ingesting glucose”
45 “many people are overconfident, prone to place too much faith in their intuitions. They apparently find cognitive effort at least mildly unpleasant and avoid it as much as possible. […]
when people believe a conclusion is true, they are also very likely to believe arguments that appear to support it, even when these arguments are unsound.”
48 “Other research by the same group identified specific genes that are involved in the control of attention, showed that parenting techniques also affected this ability, and demonstrated a close connection between the children’s ability to control their attention and their ability to control their emotions.”
4 THE ASSOCIATIVE MACHINE
52 “The notion that we have limited access to the workings of our minds is difficult to accept because, naturally, it is alien to our experience, but it is true: you know far less about yourself than you feel you do.”
53 ”
411 “The definition of rationality as coherence is impossibly restrictive; it demands adherence to rules of logic that a finite mind is not able to implement. Reasonable people cannot be rational by that definition, but they should not be branded as irrational for that reason. Irrational is a strong word, which connotes impulsivity, emotionality, and a stubborn resistance to reasonable argument. I often cringe when my work with Amos is credited with demonstrating that human choices are irrational, when in fact our research only showed that Humans are not well described by the rational-agent model.”