The danger of System 1 

I recently read a passage from Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking fast, and slow. For those unfamiliar with the name, Kahneman was a psychologist who won a Nobel prize in economics. Yes, you read that right. In economics , despite not taking a single economics course in his entire career. But that’s for another day. Let’s talk about systems. According to the research done by Kahneman and Amos Tversky, they found two systems working in our body: a fast one and a slow one. System 1 is fast, automatic and intuitive. System 2, contrastingly, is slow, processed, and conscious. Here comes the shocking statistic: 95% of our decisions are directly or implicitly from System 1. We only deliberately process and take a decision 5% of the time. Imagine that. From the number of times you hit the snooze button to the number of alarms you keep for the morning ( yes, psychopaths like that do exist 😉), more than 9 out of every 10 decisions you make are not entirely your control; they are controlled by the environment you grew up in and to some extent, your genetics. Let’s take an example. 2 people are contemplating between investing in the stock market or not. The first person grew up in a middle class family, where risks are for the rich and simply saving by setting aside money was the norm. The second person grew up in a similar middle class family, but his parents were hell bent on growing money. Both receive information that one stock is gonna make huge profits and it’s guaranteed. Logically, both should invest, right? Kahneman would say the first person will not, even though that is more beneficial for him. He made a conscious decision not to invest unconsciously. Weird, right? It seems like a gray area where both systems overlap, but generally you can tell which system is working more actively. Can you change this percentage? Of course, you just have to think about each and every decision for a painstaking long time and it will be a frustrating and time consuming change, but those who have the perseverance to do it are actually statistically more successful in life. 

I’m gonna leave you with one question , if you didn’t know the time period it would take to change that ratio to a healthy one, maybe 60-40 or higher to system 1, would you do it?