Infinite Jen's Reviews > Thinking, Fast and Slow

Often I find myself in conversations with people who are criminally opinionated, but have little in the way of empirical grounding. It’s common, in these situations, to hear them malign opponents of their views by reducing the conflict to a single factor; My opponent is so dumb they couldn’t follow a chemical gradient if they were bacteria! Now, putting aside the fact that single factor analysis is a mugs game when discussing things of any complexity (which is basically everything), when resorting to these oversimplifications with human behavior, you asymptotically approach infinite incorrectness. My common refrain in these times is to dip into my quote bag and castigate the misguided with Popper’s glib witticism: “A theory that explains everything, explains nothing.” Or, channeling the Arch Bishop of astuteness, John Stuart Mill, I rise up, gesturing dramatically and pitching my voice just so: “He who knows only his side of the case knows little of that.” Hoping their snotty self assurance will recede before my rational indignation like an anabolic hairline.

This shit never works. Putting aside the fact that I’m subject to the same cognitive limitations, quotations often arrive on the scene like a flaccid member, with intimations of a proper impression hidden somewhere in that bloodless noodle, if only the other party would play with it. But, much like idioms, there’s just not enough chemistry to warrant heavy petting.

Next I will resort to recalling numerous studies which have totally pin-cushioned the quaint notion that we are dispassionate, logical thinkers. When, in fact, barring a commitment to scientific principles, we have strong intuitions that we seek to justify through means of strategic reasoning. “We’re more like lawyers than Vulcans.” I say solemnly. Starring off into the distance for dramatic effect. Pensive. Avoiding eye contact for an appropriate interval before turning to peer into their soul and nod as we grasp, however tenuously, our feeble position before the Logos. Inevitably, when this numinous moment arrives, I am instead greeted with a vacant stare, or, much worse, an objection! Which, if you’ve been following me so far, means that I switch from attempting to persuade and instead silently chide my opponent for being a hopeless imbecile.

How do we opt out of being unrelenting self righteous pricks? Well, we probably can’t fully, the gravity is just too strong. Escape velocity would require some fundamental redesigns to a cognitive apparatus which evolved to intuit a subset of phenomena on the African savanna which bore a relationship to our reproductive success. But we can sure as hell beat one another with books like this until we piss blood and can’t hold our toothbrushes due to nasty rotator cuff injuries. That’ll teach us.

I consider this to be the Mac Daddy of bibliophilic bludgeoning implements on this topic. I once blasted a man in the chest so hard with the spine of this book that, in addition to the bastard rolling clean over a Pizza Hut table like it was the hood of a speeding vehicle, the pages burst from between the covers like a fox vomiting hen feathers. So incensed by this needless destruction of literary property, I stood over the man and berated him on the importance of properly breaking in the spines of hardcovers. As he wormed about in pepperoni and soda, nodding (if for no other reason than to avoid another terrible sounding of his sternum) I also took the time to explain the central message of this book:

“Look, man. You need to realize that we’ve got these two modes of cognition. One is accessible to us. It’s slow and deliberative and subject to systematic interventions of logic if we but choose to learn and apply them. The other does pretty much whatever it damn well pleases based on input it receives from the environment that you’re often not consciously aware of. It’s good when it’s helping you get out of the way of deranged book wielders, but it’s bad when it goes awry in matters that are deeply counter intuitive (much of modern life) and mucks about with your ability to properly steer the system you have access to.”

This is an important book. Humanity would be much improved if these insights could percolate through society and really take hold. But they probably won’t. Because we’re assholes.