pseudoparanormal

 Book Report

Thinking Fast and Slow - Daniel Kahneman

General Overview

The main focus of "Thinking Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman is on these two competing neural networks in your brain competing for control of your behavior and actions. Then it discusses how this may influence our memory, judgment, and conclusions and result in possible mistakes in our decision making.These two systems are your conscious and automatic systems. The automatic system is our fight-or-flight response that is triggered at this point. This system refers to our instincts, according to which we should move out of the path if anything dangerous is approaching. Your conscious mind is the other system. You are conscious of and in control of this. Instead of using our natural instincts, this uses our own attention. These two systems constantly battle with one another for authority in our brains. 

Favorite Part

Chapter 14, which discusses preconceptions and judgment, is arguably my favorite section and chapter. In this chapter, Daniel Kahneman provides readers with an example of a fictional character he identified as Tom W. In his illustration, he asks which subject Tom is most likely to continue studying and then provides a number of possibilities. However, opinions are bound to change if Daniel indicates that Tom enjoys science fiction and is intelligent but isn't the most imaginative or compassionate. Now, engineering or computer science might be your new response. He continues by saying that many people frequently rely more on similarity than chance when assessing scenarios. You will get substantially different results from comparisons based on similarity and probability. He concludes by adding that although the book does not focus on mathematical intricacies, we should establish the likelihood on a reasonable basis and consider how the amount of evidence that is provided to us may influence our conclusion.

Related

This pertains to our lesson on "Ways of Thinking," which discusses fast thinking, slow thinking, the three different types of thinkers, and how these relate to pseudoscience. Daniel Kahneman outlines the various techniques and procedures that humans utilize when they think, as was previously stated in the overview. This goes into their automatic thoughts and the ones that they take time to think through, this being the same thing discussed in our lecture "Ways of Thinking". 

Creative

https://youtu.be/uqXVAo7dVRU

I found this youtube video that is actually a video summary with pictures that gives a summary of the book read. I think this is good because it gives a good in depth explanation of everything Daniel wrote about in his book.

Extension

I am the type of person that will sit there and think about things until I can come up with a way to make it make sense in my mind. These thoughts include death, religion, movies, and other things of that nature. Today at work, I work as a lifeguard, I was talking to this one lady who came out to the pool. The funny thing is that she started the conversation by asking if I liked horror movies, which of course I do. From there the conversation led to talking about psychics, mediums, aliens, life on other planets, and what the future of the earth is going to be. We talked for about an hour and I would say it had us using slower and more critical thinking. And what I liked best about this conversation was that the more we talked, the more we would think, and the deeper the conversation would get. The one topic we discussed that I strongly relate to this course is religion. Specifically this set of questions. 

Do you believe in God?

Why?

You ask someone the first question, they are very quick to answer. They almost immediately say yes or no. Then, when you ask the follow up you can see them working harder to formulate their answer. Some people don’t think further into it than that’s how they were raised or because they’re parents do. But rather I ask to know why you personally believe in what you believe in and your personal reason for why. Using your slow and critical thoughts to give me an honest answer that represents you. 

ChiChi Wokocha