Todorov then compared the results of the electoral races to the ratings of competence that Princeton students had made, based on brief exposure to photographs and without any political context. In about 70% of the races for senator, congressman, and governor, the election winner was the candidate whose face had earned a higher rating of competence.This is interesting. It suggests party-list systems would produce better governance (unless the party list is itself produced by in-party voting simmilarly affected by superficiality). I wonder what a historical study would show, when re we have good photographs or portraits of the candidates in an elction, but most voters wouldn't have seen those images. 19th century US?
Nice writeup, lw! I am not caught up yet, but one downside to reading it as a self-help book was that I found it made me paranoid. Nothing quite described me to the point where I was wondering whether I was defective or just delusionally unself-aware. I'm glad to see you looking at the uses of the book as well as the content. (And I should try to read so I can respond meaningfully, but I may actually have to push my bed out from the wall to solve the problem of where the book got dropped. I definitely identify with the depictions of laziness!)
how much of the modes of action K describes are tied to specifically visual input
Maybe relatedly, I found some of Kahneman's presentation seriously unconvincing. He demonstrates 'S1 reaching for an easy answer' using a forced-perspective illusion. Assessing the relative size of figures based on contaminated visual input is very remote from, say, assessing the risk of car accidents based on the number of car accidents appearing on TV news.
Part of the reason I've been disengaged is that each time I try to re-read it, it feels like it's not holding up as well, and not as immersive and entertaining as the first time.
Your S2 wants another spliff.
I keep getting confused by "S1" and "S2." Can we call the former "Easy D"?
It's a really interesting description of cognition, and lots of thinking really does get described accurately by S1 - S2 interactions. The points that S1 is always on, and that it can find averages but cannot count both seem specific and useful to me.
Like I said, I'm not sure how much to extrapolate what K describes. That said, I definitely know people who seem like they're mostly S1. Indeed, DJT seems like one such. He apparently yelled at Hollande today on the phone.
An important consequence of S1 doing rough averages but not sum-like variables is the thing about "GROUP thinks a meeting is balanced if one-third of it is OTHER_GROUP! Shame GROUP!"
If you have an S1 and an S2, whadda ya know. If there are more than a couple of X in a Y full of Zs, S1 will classify Y as "roughly mixed Xs and Zs".
And this is useful! You can flash up S2 and explicitly COUNT them. So can everybody. With much less twitter-dot-com yelling, and perhaps you could use the same insight for all sorts of other stuff.
Speaking of reasoned prior knowledge: does anyone know if rental cars were already offsite at LAX in, say, 2000?
Based on reasoning from first principles, the fact that hydrogen is the most common element, and knowing that you're a Cancer, I can deduce that the answer is yes.
Wait, I was born in the autumn!
I guess it is in Nebraska. I was just worried you were calling me a non-zodiacal cancer. On the internet nobody knows you're a crab.
I was thinking he was saying you were born around noon, with Cancer rising.
Honestly, it was the only Zodiac sign I was sure I could spell.
Thanks for the summary. It's an interesting, fast read... but it feels like skimming. Overall S1 and S2 seem to be very handy at identifying tendencies and "if a response comes immediately to mind, it's probably an S1 impression" is useful.
Like Thorn in 2, the book's encouraging me to think about which elements are likely "intensity matching" and impressions writ large, and which are considered beliefs. It's a bit disturbing to think about how few things really seem to be the product of S2.
Barry Ritholz interviews Kahneman: http://ritholtz.com/2017/02/mib-danny-kahneman-2/
Ritholz writes about macroeconmic topics and investing, IMO very well. I'd describe him as generally pro-market but not libertarian.