Part I - Two Systems Flashcards
Describe System 1.
System 1 operates automatically and quickly, with little or no effort and no sense of voluntary control.
Describe System 2.
System 2 allocates attention to the effortful mental activities that demand it, including complex computations. The operations of System 2 are often associated with the subjective experience of agency, choice, and concentration.
How is System 1 truly the hero of the book when System 2 believes itself to be where the action is?
System 1 effortlessly originates the impressions and feelings that are the main source of the explicit beliefs and deliberate choices of System 2.
What do the highly diverse operations of system 2 have in common?
They require attention and are disrupted when attention is drawn away.
Why is the term “pay attention” apt?
You dispose of a limited budget of attention that you can allocate to activities, and if you try to go beyond your budget, you will fail. It is the mark of effortful activities that they interfere with each other. which is why it is difficult or impossible to conduct several at once.
When can you do several things at once?
Only when they are easy and undemanding.
What is a curious feature of focusing on a task?
Intense focusing on a task can make people effectively blind, even to stimuli that normally attract attention.
Which two important facts does the Gorilla Study illustrate?
We can be blind to the obvious, and we are also blind to our blindness.
Describe how Systems 1 & 2 operate together.
Both Systems 1 and 2 are active whenever we are awake. System 1 runs automatically and System 2 is normally in a comfortable low-effort mode. System 1 continuously generates suggestions for System 2: impressions, intuitions, feelings,and impulses which, if endorsed by system 2, turn into beliefs and voluntary actions. Most of the time, System 2 adopts the suggestions of System 1 with little or no modification.
System 2 is usually in low-effort mode. When is it mobilized to high focus?
- When System 1 doesn’t have an answer to a question or problem.
- Whenever you are surprised.
- When self-monitoring.
- When it detects an error about to be made.
Describe the surge of consciousness you experience when you are surprised.
System 2 is activated when an event is detected that violates the model of the world that system 1 maintains. Surprise then activates and orients your attention: you will stare, and you will search your memory for a story that makes sense of the surprising event.
Describe how the arrangement between Systems 1 & 2 is highly efficient.
It minimizes effort and optimizes performance. The arrangement works well because most of the time System 1’s models of familiar situations are accurate, its short-term predictions are usually accurate as well, and its initial reactions to challenges are swift and generally appropriate.
Can biases always be avoided?
The best we can do is a compromise: learn to recognize situations in which mistakes are likely and try harder to avoid significant mistakes when the stakes are high.
What is the point of introducing fictitious characters with ugly names (System 1 and System 2) into a serious book?
Because a sentence is understood more easily if it describes what an agent does than if it describes what something is, what properties it has. The mind - especially system 1 - appears to have a special aptitude for the construction and interpretation of stories about active agents, who have personalities, habits, and abilities.
What are pupils sensitive indicators of?
Mental effort; and they dilate more if the problems are hard than if they are easy.
How do pupils normally dilate during mental multiplication?
The pupils normally dilate to a large size within a few seconds and stay large as long as the individual kept keeps on the problem; it contracts immediately when they find an answer or give up.
Explain the walking metaphor for the paces of mental life.
Mental life is normally conducted at the pace of a comfortable walk, sometimes interrupted by episodes of jogging and on rare occasions by frantic sprints.
What can happen when people are engaged in mental sprints?
They can become effectively blind.
How are pupils like the electricity meter outside your house?
They offer an index of the current rate at which mental energy is used.
Although both electrical circuits and System 2 have limited capacity, How do they respond differently to threatened overload?
A breaker trips when the demand for current is excessive, causing all devices on that circuit to lose power at once. In contrast. the response to mental overload is selective and precise: System 2 protects the most important activity, so it receives the attention it needs; “spare electricity” is allocated second by second to other tasks.
What relationship do studies of the brain shown between mental activity and skill?
As you become skilled in a task, its demand for energy diminishes. The pattern of activity associated with an action changes as skill increases, with fewer brain regions involved.
What relationship do studies of the brain shown between mental activity and talent?
Highly intelligent individuals need less effort to solve the same problems, as s indicated by both pupils size and brain activity.
Name and describe the general rule which applies to both cognitive and physical exertion.
“The law of least effort”. The law asserts that if there are several ways of achieving the same goal, people will eventually gravitate to the least demanding course of action. in the economy of action, effort is a cost, and the acquisition of skill is driven by the balance of benefits and costs. Laziness is built deep into our nature.
Why does System 2 require effort?
Effort is required to maintain simultaneously in memory several ideas that require separate actions, or that need to be combined according to a rule.
