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Welcome to the deep dive
Today we're taking a closer look
A really deep look into the fascinating world of human judgment and decision making we're drawing heavily from daniel economies work uh the insight you shared right right
Our mission really is to unpact these sort of hidden forces
That shape our thoughts
Our choices
Even how we think about our own happiness exactly and hopefully this dededive will give you our listeners a richer of vocabulary
A way to talk about these systematic errors
We all make we call them biases
Right biases and they pop up again and again predictably
So we'll explore the two fundamental systems conomment talks about the ones governing our minds
And see how they lead some pretty surprising insights and well sometimes surprising mistakes too okay
Let's stick into that core ore a economen introduces these two distinct systems
System one and system too
Almost like two characters running the show in our heads
Can you walk us through what he means absolutely
Yeah think of system one it's like your minds faslane
It's intuitive automatic happens
It insttly tly it operates with um basically zero effort
Zero effort too well like detecting that one object is further away than another
You just know right or answering two plus two equla for yeah instant exactly or reading words on a big billboard
You don't decide to read them
You just do or think about a chess grandmaster they see a strong move
Almost instantly that system one it's all about those immediate impressions and feelings
Okay
That sounds perperficient almost magical
But what about you know actual thinking the hard stuff that must be system too
Precisely system too is your conscious self
The one you identify with its slow deliberate takes real effort concentrtrayeah this is the system
You fire up for complex calculations like a seventeen times
Twenty four right
I'd need a pen for that at least a second or for maintainself controrol know when you really want that second slica cake
But tell yourself know that system to working hard got it
But here's the fascinating part
And maybe the crucial take away
可以可的
While we think we're mostly system to rational thoughtful conconmmen argues that system one is often the secret author of many of our choices and judgements
The secret author also well
System one is constantly generating these impressions
Feelings and impitions
Tions effortlessly
And these then become the main syources the inputs for system toose explicit beliefs and deliberate choices often without us even realizing where they came from wow
So system one is feeding system two ideas and system to often just accepts them a lot of the time
Yes
Especially
If system too is busy or frankly a bit lazy
Which it often is okay
So if system one is running the show behind the scenes
So much
What does this mean for how we like taking information you mention something about cognitive ease or strain right
Cognitive ease is basically a signal from system one
That everything's okay
Things are going smoothly
No threats detected
No major news
No need to mobilize extra mental effort
And when we feel this ease
We tend to be more credulous or more likely to believe what represented with it feels familiar safe true
Think about it just repeating a statement makes a feel more true
Even if it's nonsense like uh conomen uses the example
The body temperature a chicken is one hundred forty
Forty degrees
You're it enough
It starts to sound lalauble that's wild just repetition yep or things that are easy to process rimming afhoriisms like woes
Unite foes
Their judge is more insightful than non rimming versions
Even names sources with easy to pronounce names are given more weight
People trusted a tional
Tional kerage firm called are ten more than one called taahood
Just because it's easier to say that's incredible
It all points to system one liking things that are easy
Familiar and effortless cognitive ease feels good
And we associate and trutruook so ease makes us believe things
But it sounds like system one is also really vulnerable to subtle leclufrom our environment things we don't even consciously register tell me about priming ah riming yeah
It's a really powerful effect
It demonstrrates our environment even things we barely notice can suddenly influence our thoughts and crucially our behavior without us knowing totally yeah for examuah there were studies or people asked to think about shameful actions like betweing
Someone were then more likely to complete word fragments like wh and spp wash h soap
Wow like a lady of beath effect wasash away
They triggered kind of an unconscious association being triggered or another famous one putting pictures
Eyes on an honesty box in a university kitchen
You know where people pay pay for tear coffee contributions went up
Significantly compared to when they were just pictures of flowers
There the subtle queof being watched even by just a picture influenced behaviour
That's slightly creepy but fascinating
It shows our intuitive minind system one is constantly picking up on these cues were not aware of
And they're suddenly shaping what we do and think so this really brings up a big question
Then if system one is so easily sweway by things like repetition easy names
Pictures of yes yes rerely are everyday juddments and sounds like we might be getting pushed around quite a bit
That's exactly the point really is a serious questions
We often don't even know the real source of our impressions
Why does the statement feel true
Why do i trust this person
Often the answer alizing these subtle system one process is cognitive tive ase ppming not in a careful system too
Evaluation in system too
Often doesn't bother to check
It takes effort to doubt the default economy argues is often to believe
Because system one provides a coherent easy story disbelieving questioning
Checking that require system two effort okay
This is where it gets really juy
I think because it's not just about subtle influences
It's about systematic errors
Right biases
These predictable ways
Our minds mess up
Because system one tries to take short cuts
Let's talk about one the halileect ct yes the halo effects
It's everywhere once you start looking
It's basically when our overall impression of someone or something spills over and influences
How we judge their specific traits
So like if someone's good looking in speaks
Confidently we tend to automatically assume they're also competent
Intelligent trustworthy
Maybe more than they actually are bason on vidence the positive halo of their appearance are confidence spreads
There was even inexperiluence on greeding essays when professors graded all of one students essay sequentially there grede on the first essay heavily influenced the grades on subsequent says by that same student
So if the first one was good
They got the bit of the doubt later exactly
Or it was bad
They were judged more harshly the hilo positive or negative from the first impression biased the leadter judgements to get more objective grades
They had degrade all students answers to question one than all answers to question to and so on breaking the hailes that make sense a confident presentation can really carry the day
Sometimes more than the actual content something to remember in job interviews or evaluating pitches or even politicians i guess definitely
And then there's this idea of substitution in heristics that makes ones walpping hard questions for easy ones
Yeah
It's a really clever
But sometimes misleading trick our minds play
When faced with a difficult complex question system one often without us noticing substitutes and easier related question and answers that instead like give me an example
Okay
So the hard question might be based on financial data and market trends
Should i invest in ford stock
That require system to effort right lots of research
Your system one might just substitute do i like ford cars
Or have i heard good things about ford
Recently
That's an easier question to answer based on feeling or recent memory
And the answer to the easy question often becomes the answer to the hard one unconsciously
Ah i could see that happens
This is the core of many intuitive hurisiss
Mental shortcucuts really really powerful one is the affect huristic basically our likes and dislikes determine our belief about the world
So if i like something
是的 对的
Say a particular policy
You'll tend to believe it's benefits are substantial
And it's cost or manageable maybe even negligible
And if you dislike it
You'll see the costs as huge and the benefits is tiny are emotional refects
You're affect
Drives your assessment of risks and benefits not the other way around
So our gut feelings are often driving the bus
Even when we think we're being rational very often
Yes
And these short cuts don't just mess with our thoughts are feelings
They actually affect what we see or rather what we don't see
Like that ininvisible gorilla study
Oh
The gorililla it's a classic for a reason
And it's a start demonstration
People are asked ked watwatch
Vivideo and intently count the number of basketball passes made by players and white shirts
Okay
Focus task very focused whather doing this someone in a full gorililla suit walk slowly across the middle of the screen thumbs their chest and walks off
对
It's on screen for about nine seconds
Nine seconds you coumiss that
That you think
But typically about half the people counting the passes completely fail to see the gorililla
They're so focused on the counting task
Their system to attention is fully engaged that this bizarre unexpected thing becomes invisible
That's astonishing
But maybe the most astonishing party is the most remarkable findis that the people who miss the gorililla are initially absolutely convinced
It wasn't there
They cannot believe they miss something so obvious
They hilights not only the limits of our attention
But also are profound the lack of awareness of those limits
We're not just blind
Sometimes or often blind to our own blindness
Wow
That's humbling yeah a powerful reminder not to trust our perception completely and okay when it comes to randomious chance
Our
Our minseeseem hardwire to misinterinterpret that too
Oh
Absolutely we're pattern seeking machines
Even when there's no pattern
There take the law of small numbers
Okay whait it's our tendency to believe that small sample should closely mirror
The proportions of the larger population
Theare drawn from we exaggerate the consistency
We expect to see for example economy mentions
That counties with the lowest rates of kidney cancer in the
Us are often found in rural sparsely populated areas
So people might think oh
Clean living
Fresh air
Exactly they jump to a caul explanation
But the statistical truth is much simpler and less exciting extreme outcomes
Both very high and very low rates are just mathematically more more likely to occurr small samples due to brand m fluxtuation
It doesn't mean anything about cacause of cancer in those areas
So our intuition looks for a story a cause
When it's just statistics
Precisely our system one crates caul stories
It struggles with pure statistics
And this supplies that things like the hot hand in sports
Like basketball
The hot hand is a perfect exam mple
Almost everyone involved in basketball players
Coaches
Fans firvently believes that if a player makes a few shots in a row
Theare hot and more likely to make the next one yes seeseems obvithethe're 're the zone
But rigorous statistical analysis of thousands and thousands of shots shows it's just not there
But sequences of hits and misses are perfectly consistent with what you'd expect from random chance like flipping a coin
对对对
A players chance of making the next shot is generally independent of whether they made or missed the last few
So it's just our minds imposing a pattern on random ess again exactly our associative machinery system one desperately wants to find causes and patterns
It seees streak en assume ourchanged that there's a cause being hot
It has a very hard time accepting that random processes naturally produce streeks and clusters
It's pretty unsettling how easily we full ourselves into seeing patterns
Okay
What about numbers themselves can just hearing a number even in ararbitary one influence or judgment
It certainly can
This is the anching effect
And it's surprisingly powererbasbasally
When when you're asked to estimate an unknown quantity
If you first consider particular value for that quantity
The anchor your final estimate tends to stay close to that anchor
Even if the anchor 's obviously random or relevant
Even then the classic example conconmn uses
Involves asking people about gondy's agent death one group is asked was the older younounger than one hundred forty four when he died
Another group has asked was he older or younger than thirty five
When he died okay
One forty four is ridiculously high
Thirty five is clearly too low
Right
But the group anchored on one hundred and forty four gives significantly higher estimates of his actual agent death
Than the group anchored on thirty five
The initial number is though absurd pulls their subsequent estiment towards it has that even work is a conscious adjustment
Sometimes it can be a conscious adjustment from the anchor system too
But often conconoment suggests its more of a sts one one prime effect at the anchor brings related thoughts to mind mentioning a hundred and forty four
My prime thoughts of old age and your associative machinery tries to construct a world
Subconsciously where that number make sense pulling your estimate higher
Wow
The first number you here can just stick in your head and warp your judgment
He scary that happens all the time and negotiations pricing anywhere numbers are involved okay another bias
是的是的
What about how easily we recall things
Does the ease of remembering something affect our judgment immensely that's the core of the availability bias
We judge the frequency of an event or the likelihood of something happening based on how easily examples or instances come to mind so something is easy to remember
We assume it's more common or more probable than it might actually be think about playing crashes
If there are a couple of highly publiczed plaane crashes totogether people suddenly become much more raraid of flying and might choose dry i instead ad even statititically flying is still much safer than dridriving
Exactly the actual risk hasn't changed
But the availability of vivid recent examples of playing crashes in their memory has increased dramatically that ease of recall inflates
The perception of ririsk and the mediplaplays huhuural
Here i imagine absolutely vivid news stories dramatic events they stick in our minds
This can lead to what conomy calals availability cascades where a relatively minor event it's amplified by media coverage leading to public panic
And sometimes diis proportion of policy responses
The love canal chemical waste stories often cited as an example
Where intense media focus created widespread public concern that drove significant policy changes possibly beyond what the objective risk assessment might have warrant
So our brains are using statistics
They're using story changes
Vividness trumps data system
One loves a good easily trumped story okay and linked to this
Maybe is the represent of mishheoistic and its consequence base rate neglect this sounds like it's about stereotypes
It often involves stereotypes
Yes
Representativeness judging the probability that something or someone belongs to a category based on how much it recsembles or represents our stereotype or image of that category
Yeah
The problem is we often completely ignore the base rate
The actual statistical frequency of that category in the population 对不对
Conomm's famous example is tom w
People are given a personality sketch of tom w
He sounds nerdy
Liacks
Logical puzzles
Maybe a bit socially awkward
Some they get classic engineer
Computer science very pe exactly what people think so when asked to rank the likelihood
That tom w is studying various fields
People rank computer science are engineering very high
And something like humanities are social science very low
But they completely ignore the fact
That they were vastly more students in rolin humanities or social sciences
Then in computer science
At the time
The study was done
The base rate was much higher for humanities
Even though tom's description fits the stereotype of a computer scientists better statistically he was more likely to be a humanity students
Simply because there were so many more of them
So we focus on the description fitting the stereotype representiveness yeah
And ignore the underlying probability base rate
Precisely system one loves a coherent story
He sounds like an engineer
And is terrible with statistics like base rates
It prefers represented venvenss
There's another great example with a hypothetical cab acacdent tell okay imagine a city
Where eighty five percent of the cabs are green and fifteen percent or blue
There's a hidden run accident dent night involving a cab
A witness identifies the cab is blue
The court tests the witnesses reliability under similar conditions
And finds they correctly identifiy the color eighty percent of the time and misidentiy y twenty percent of the time
What's the probability
The cabin involved was actually blue
Okay the witnessed blue and their eighty percent reliable
So maybe eighty percent chances was blue
That's what most people intuitively think
But that ignores the base rate
There are way more green cabs out there
When you do the math properly using base theom the probability were actually blue is much lower closer to forty one percent people in neglect the base rate only fifteen percent of cas are blue
But here's the twist
If you change the problem slightly and say eighty five percent of cab accidents in the city are caused by green cabs
People do use that information
Why the difference the numbers are the same
Because the second version gives a cacaul story
Green cab drivers are reckless
System one can grad onto that caul link the first version is just a statistical base rate
Which system one tends to ignore in favor of the specific witness information representativeness
We prefer narratives of a ross statistic huge insight
How you frame the numbers matters immensely
Which leads us
I guess into how these biases affect our
Our actual decisions especially risk k value ue this ings us
Us to prospethetheory a really big idea
It's ge proprospect theory basically revolutionize how economists thought about decision making underuncertainty before economy into versky the standard model assumed people make rational choices to maximize overall wealth or utility
But prospect theory says
It says people don't think in terms of absolute wealth instead
We evaluate outcomes as games or losses
Relative to a specific reference point
Usually our current situation and crucially losses room larger than gains meaning a loss hurts more than an equivalent gain feels good
Exactly the emotional impact of losing say a hundred dollars is generally about twice as powerful as the pleasure of gaining a hundred dollars we are lossver
I can feel that finding one hundred dollars is nice
Losing one hundred dollars feels off right
This explained a lot of havior
Consider the endommin effect people demand significantly more money to sell something they own than they would be willing to pay to buy the exact same item
If they didn't own it like the coffee mugg
Experiment precisely in that experiment people given a university mug
Typically wouldn't sell it for less than say seven dollars
But people who didn't have a mug
We're only willing to pay around three dollars for it
Once it's yours giving it up
Feels like a loss
And that loss of version doubles its perceived value compared seeing it as a potential gain
That makes perfect sense
But you know for listeners thinking okay i get loss of version
But i'm pretty rational with big decisions
What's the really sneaky part of this
How does it trip up at even smart people
Well the sneaky part is how that reference point in loss of version combine with things like mental accounts
We don't treat all money as fungiible as economists assume
We mentally compartmenalizze it mental accounts like budgeting tegories ies my head sort of
But often irrationally imagine
You've decided to go see play and the ticket costs ten all in scenario a you arrive at the theater
And realized you've lost the ten dollar ticket
You are ready bought do you buy another ten dollar ticket
Probably not that it feels like the play now cost twenty dollars ars much ooay it's scenario b you arrive at the theater planning to buy the ten dollar ticket
But you realize you've lost a ten dollar bill from your wallet
You still
Still the ten dollar ticket
Exyeah think think probprobably still would losing the cash
Feels unrelated to the place
Somehow it's annoying
But the place still cost ten dollars
Exactly even though financially the situuare iidentical your ten dollar poor and facing the choice of spending another ten dollars to see the play
But in scenario a the loss ticket is debited from your mental play account
Making the play feel double expensive in snerio be the lolocascash comes out of gengenermental revenue account
So the cost of the place still feels like ten dollars
So these invisible mental boxes control our decisions
They do
It shows our preferences are often framebound shaped by how we categorize things rather than purely ly reality bond based on the objective financial state
And this links into emotions too like regret those loss version make us fear regret more it definitely interacts with regret we tend to feel stronger
Regret for bad outcomes that result from actions
We took compared to bad outcomes that result from inaction
Doing something wrong
Feels worse than failing to do something right
Often yes
Especially a slightly ill paventional think about a doctor treating a gravely ill patient there might be a standard treatment
And a newer less common one that has perhaps a slightly better chance of success
But also carries risks the doctor might stick with the conventional treatment
Even if rationally the unconvened one looks ks sghtly tly why why
If the unconventional treatment fails
The regret and potential blame will be much greater than if the standard treatment fails i took chance and it went wrong feels worse than i did the standard thing and sadly it didn't work fear of that amplified regret pushes towards inaction or conventional choices
That's a powerful force and speaking of how things are presented the way choices are framed
Can totally change our decisions
Even if the underlying realiy's identical this is the framing effect or yes
And it's one of the most dramatic demonstrations of how irrational our choices can be simply changing the wording
The frame can flip preferences completely the classic example is the asian disease problem
What is through that ok
Imagine the us is preparing for an outbreak of an unusual asian disease expected to kill six hundred people
Two alternative programs are proposed the clen people be saved
Ved there re's a thirteen problem
Problem ility that six hundred people will be saved
And a twenty three probability that no people will be saved
Which do you choose um program a sounds certain saving two hundred lives for sure seems good program b is risky
I'd probably go today
That's what most people do they are risk verse
When choices are framed in terms of gains live saved now conconsider three grouthat given the same scenario
But with different phezing for the program four hundred people will die
There is a thirteen probability that nobody will die
And a twenty three probability that six hundred people will die
Okay with program see means hundred
Hundred die
So two hundred are saved
That's identical the program a in program d
Thirteen chance nobody dies
Means six hundred saved
Twenty three chance six hundred dies
That's identical to program b
The outcomes are exactly the same
Exactly the same
But how do people choose now
When it's framed in terms of loss lives lost
While program c four hundred people will die
That sounds awful programme d there's a chance
Nobody dies
Even though there's a bigger chance
Everyone dies
Maybe had gambble de now
And that's cicisely what most people do
When framed in terms of losses
People become risk
Seeking they choose the gamble d over the sherloss
The frame completely reverses the preference
Even though the underlying outcomes are identical and get this even doctors and health professionals show the same framing effects
Training doesn't make you immune
That is deeply unsettling the wording changes everything it really does
And perhaps most striking real world example is organdonation rates right you mentioned this is huge how does framing affect that it's all about the default choice in countries with an oppodt system
Where you are considered in organ donor unless
You actively check a box or fill out a form
To say you don't want to be
In donation rates are close to one hundred percent
Because doing nothing means your donor
Exactly the default is donation now compared that to countries with an opdate system where you are not a donor unless
You actively check a box or fill out a form to say you want to be
And the rates there can be incredibly low
Sometimes as low as four percent or five percent
It's the same decidecision
But the same people framing of the default choice has a monumental impact on a life or death issue
It's a stark reminder
That sometimes trivial features of the choice architecture have more influence than our supposed values or rational deliberation
Laziness or system one preferring the path of least resistance rules
The day okay
So we're easily swayed by frames
Lossavers
Prone to biases this really beggs the question are we just massively overconfident in our own judgment and the abilities evidence point ts strongly towards yes very often we are we have this tendency to construct coherent stories about the past
What conomen calls narrative fallacies
We make sense of events by emphasizing skill and downplaying the role of luck
Especially when things turn out well
And when things have ready happened and see moobviand introspect ct hindsight bias or eeyeknew it all a long effect
Once an outcome is known
We find it hard to imagine that it wasn't predictable beforehand
This makes the past as same titier and more predictable than it actually was
And it leads to problems like like the outcome bius
We tend to evaluate the quality of a decision based on whether its outcome was good or bad
Rather than on whether the decision process was sound at the time given the information available
Then we unfairly blame decision makers for negative outcomes that were simply bad luck
Even if the decision looprudent in forceght
So we judge the decision by the result not the process right
And this feels over confidence in our own future judgments
The illusion of understanding the past fosters an illusion of being able to predict and control the future stock picking is a classic exam
Oh Yes
The idea that people think they can beat the market
Many people certainly feel they can
But and this feels instantly show that most acittrators actually underperform the market
Often significantly they trade too much
Inccuring costs
They tend to sell their winning stocks too early
And hold onto their losers too long
Driven by things like regret aversion and the disposition effect
And there are confidence doesn't match the results not at all subjective confidence
That feeling of knowing what you're doing is often as a system one feeling linked to the coherence of the story or telling yourself not an accurate assessment of skill
嗯
In fact studies on experts in various feels like political forecasting
Sure
That often the most knowledable experts can be the most overconfident
Even when their predictions are statistically no better than chance
Wow
More knowledge doesn't necessarily mean better juddment
Sometimes just more confidence in flawed judgments so okay
That we sometimes especially in complex unpredictable domgins so okay
This sounds a bit bleak
Our intuitions are flawed or overconfident
How can we actually make better decisions are other practical ways to fight back against these bibiasyes
Yes
Absolutely it's not hopeless popowful though sometimes uncomfortable finding is the power of simple algorithms or formulas
Algorithms like computer programs sometimes
But even simple checklists or rules research across many domains consistently shows that simple explicit algorithms often outperform expert
Human judgment especially in prediction tasks
Outperform experts
Even experience properms yes
Economent highghts of famous example predicting the future price of fine borto wines
A simple formula based on weather data grainfall temperature consistently outperform the predictions of renowned wine experts
Less romance more accuracy
Pretty much another huge one is the apgar score dedeveloped virrinia ia apgar
It's a simple standarzed checklist used to assess the health of newborns right after birth appearance pulls grimmous activties jusporation
Before that assessment was based on the individual clinician's judgment
The apgar score standardized it made it objective
And is credited with saving hundreds of thousands of infront lives by ensuring prompt attention
When needed so structure and cipl rules can be complex intuition in many situations
Where judgments are noisy in bias
Yes
The data is surprisingly consistent on this
But people often resist this
Don't think there's a kind of hostility to algorithms
You mentioned why is that
Why trust flawed human intuition over a proven formula
It seems to come down to a few things
We find it more emotionally palatable perhaps to accept errors made by humans than areas made by formulas
A mistake by a doctor feels unfortunate a mistake by an algorithm can feel alien calld unacceptable
We also value the stbehind any human judgment the new ances
Even if they lead less accuracy
We want the human touch
Even if it's flawed
It seems so and fundamentally as we've discussed system to is capable of overwriting system one's flawed suggestions
But it's often lazy
It defaults to the easier into advance our subjective confidence feels compelling it's tied to the coherence of the stories system one generates not necessarily it's grounding in reality
We remain as conomment puts it often blind to our blindness ness
So we knew ways the four system to e to gage to overcome come that lazss ous some blinness beyond algorithms
What else can help you mentioned something called the premordem um
The prymordum
Yes
This is a fantastic technique
Developed by gary client designed specifically to combat over confidence and group think in decision making especially in organization as a work
It sganionous
It's actually al specifictive the ideas before a final decision on a major plan or project is made you gather the team
The knowledgeable people involved and you say ok ay magine it's a year from now we implemented this plan
And it was a complete unmitigated disaster
A total failure take five or ten minutes
And read a brief history of why it failed so you soon failure before you even start
Exactly it legitimizes doubt
It encourages people to think about potential weaknesses and overlooked threats that they might otherwise suppress due to pressure for consenination or optimism bias
It overcomes the group think that can happen
When everyone is pushing for success
And it unleaches the collective imagination to identify it falls before they happen
That sounds incredible
Useful
A structured way to inject critical thinking
It really is a practical way to nudge system to into action okay shifting years slightly to a more personal level
When we think that our own lives are happiness
Economy makes this really interesting distinction between two different selves
The experiexperiening ing self and the remembering self
Yes
This is a profound
Itself with big implications for how we think about well being the experiencing self is the one living life moment by women
It's that feels that asasure or papabobododoor or engagment ment it happens
It lives continuously okay the self living in the present right
Then there's the remembering self
This is the self that looks back
Evaluate experiences tells the stories of our lives
And makes decisions about the future
Basbason on those memories and the crucial point is the remembering self is often the one calling the shots
But it doesn't remember experiences
Accurately it's heavily biased
It tends to neglect the duration of an experience
It focuses is proportionately on the peak moment
The best or worst part in the end
This is called the peak end rule
The glxiraation
How to they show them the classic study is the cold hand experiment
People had to immerse their hand in painfully cold water
One trial was short but consistently very painful
Another trial was longer
It included the same short period of intense pain plus an extra period
Where the water was still painfully cold but slightly less
So so the second trial had strictly more total pain
Because at last and longer objectively yes more total time in pain
But when asked afterwards which trial they would prefer to repeat a significant majority chose the longer one why on earth would they choose more pain
Because the end of the longer trial was slightly less painful
Than the end of the shorter they're remembering self focusing on the peak equally bad in both and the end less bad in the longer trial formed a more favorable memory of the longer objectically worse experience
The remembering self basically optimize the memory
Not the actual experience lived by the experiencing self that's mmembing ing
Our memories are edited highlights focusing on the ending pretty much
And this remembering self is what makes our choices for the future
We choose based on the memories not the total lived experience
And this leads directly to what he calls the focusing illusion right where we mess up predicting our own future happiness
Exactly the focusing illusion states that nothing in life is as important as you think it is when you're thinking about it
When we consider the impact of any single factor on our well being like moving to californifor for wewether ther getting a new car or even dealing with a permanent disability
We tend to vastly over estimate its actual importance
Why because we're focusing on it
Precisely when asked how much happier would you be if you lived in california
People especially miid westerers ers focuon on the climate difference
Because the saalian aspect prompted by the question tion
They forget that once you live their climate becomes ackackound and overall well being depends ds more on every
Everythings
Things
Your commute
Your job
Your relationships
Things that aren't 't diffedifferent people we think about the change
Not the adaptation or the rest of life great
We think about buying the fancy car
But we don't think about the fact
That after a few months
It's just the car we drive to work in traffic
We focus on the initial impact and neglect long term adaptation
This supplies even to major life events like paraplegia
While it's obviously devastating studies show after after periperid d adapaptation
People with paraplegia report experiencing positive mood for a large part of their day engaging in activities
Thinking about other things
But when asked to imagine it non paraplegics focus soly ly on disability itself and drastically underestimate the potential for future happiness
Because they're focusing on that difference not the whole of life
Exactly the focusing illusion makes us misjudge
What will truly make the experiening self happy over the long run
Often because the remembering self is overreally influenced by silent easily imaginable changes
Wow
What an incredible and slightly unsettling journey through the way our minds work yeah and some one i've don't work quite right
We've really cover a lot
Often from the fast intuide of system one constantly generating ideas often brilliant
But prone to biases like the hailo affect anerering availability all those shortcuts right and the slow effort full system too which can correct those errors and think rationally
But it's often lazy easily sweyghed by cogniative ease and framing and prone to overconfidence and understanding this whole architecture
This interaction between the two systems
It really isn't just some academic exercises
Or it's a genuinely powerful tool for self awareness
If you can start recognizing these cognitive volutions
These biases in your own thinking
You can start to question those automatic responses right
Exactly you can pauand ask quit why do i feel this way or is this conclusion based on evidence or just just how easily it came to mind
It can help you make more inform decisions
Whether that's about your finances
Your carererelarelationships or just underunderstanding your own fluctuating happiness
Remembering that our preferences are often shaped by the frame of the problem not just the reality itself
And maybe recognizing that organiztions
Because they can impose procedures and flow things down
They have a real opportunity
They can implement things like checklists
Structured decision processes like the premordem encourage reference class forecasting
没意没有basically build defences against individual cognitive biases create a culture worit's okay to challenge in tuition
And where people look out for each ther's potential blind spots
So the big take away for everyone listening the next time time find yysteor making a quick judgment
Having a strong got feeling or making an qustant decision
Just take a beat in ask yourself is this
My quick into it a system one jumping in or have i really engaged my more thoughtful delibrary system too what biases might be suddenly influencing me right now and maybe most importantly what might i be missing simply because of the way
This situation or choices been framed that pause that moment of reflection can make all the difference
Thanks for listening
