September 18, 2020
Last evening Rebecca and I watched "Hacking your Mind Living on Autopilot" on PBS (https://www.pbs.org/show/hacking-your-mind/). Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman were colleagues and then good friends and collaborators researching on how we make decisions, how we come to conclusions, how we feel affinity to our group,  how we act on our illusions and prejudices, etc (https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-two-friends-who-changed-how-we-think-about-how-we-think). Kahneman's popular book "Thinking Fast and Slow" describes many of their research and results (https://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/books/review/thinking-fast-and-slow-by-daniel-kahneman-book-review.html and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow). 

We evolved from the bush and savannah of Africa living in small hunter gatherer groups foraging and hunting. Danger was ever present with wild animal predetators, poisonous plants and starvation  to name a few danger. We had simple tools for hunting and processing seeds and plants to eat. Our fast thinking mode of operating while hunting and gathering assisted us in surviving. Danger was perceived through our senses and reacted upon quickly almost automatically through learning and innate inherited perception and reaction patterns and with emotion. Our group was our anchor and security others outside our group with different external characteristics were suspect until included in our group. Quick reactions with dodging and running assisted us if pursued. Hunting and gathering activities were placed almost on automatic so we could scan the environment, interact with others of our group for bonding, pleasure,  and security. We also had the slow thinking part of our mind not emotional which we used to gather information through observation, analyze solutions to problems to solved through fast thinking, and learn new skills. Slow thinking is slower in this process so not so well suited to hunting and gathering unless we have time and safety present. We modern culture 21 Century humans have the same system. Each mode of thinking causes us at times to thinking very irrationally.   
In my referenced Wikepedia article to summarize the two systems 
System 1: Fast, automatic, frequent, emotional, stereotypic, unconscious. Examples (in order of complexity) of things system 1 can do:
determine that an object is at a greater distance than another
localize the source of a specific sound
complete the phrase "war and ..."
display disgust when seeing a gruesome image
solve 2+2=?
read text on a billboard
drive a car on an empty road
think of a good chess move (if you're a chess master)
understand simple sentences
associate the description 'quiet and structured person with an eye for details' with a specific job
System 2: Slow, effortful, infrequent, logical, calculating, conscious. Examples of things system 2 can do:
prepare yourself for the start of a sprint
direct your attention towards the clowns at the circus
direct your attention towards someone at a loud party
look for the woman with the grey hair
try to recognize a sound
sustain a faster than normal walking rate
determine the appropriateness of a particular behavior in a social setting
count the number of A's in a certain text
give someone your telephone number
park into a tight parking space
determine the price/quality ratio of two washing machines
determine the validity of a complex logical reasoning
solve 17 × 24

Tvesrsky and Kahneman were interested in studying why we make errors in judgment. If we think heuristically  we notice more immediate aspects of a problems without attending to all the details to come to a quicker solution. Errors can abound. We have anchoring errors by being influenced by irrelevant numbers. The example of shopping at the used car lot in the PBS production fits this issue. We make availability errors when our quick thinking makes conclusions based on "if you can think of it, it must be important". What's familiar and currently in our minds becomes the important factors in acting. "Attribute substitution, also known as Substitution bias, is a psychological process thought to underlie a number of cognitive biases and perceptual illusions. It occurs when an individual has to make a judgment (of a target attribute) that is computationally complex, and instead substitutes a more easily calculated heuristic attribute.[1] This substitution is thought of as taking place in the automatic intuitive judgment system, rather than the more self-aware reflective system. Hence, when someone tries to answer a difficult question, they may actually answer a related but different question, without realizing that a substitution has taken place. This explains why individuals can be unaware of their own biases, and why biases persist even when the subject is made aware of them. It also explains why human judgments often fail to show regression toward the mean. [2]"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attribute_substitution
According to Kahneman's work our fast thinking system has an optimism bias
which gives us the false sense that we are in control of our lives. We often 
overestimate the benefits and underestimate the costs of planned projects (to me our railroad project on Oahu). We don't take into consideration probabilities and chance and instead pay attention to small and maybe irrelevant aspects of the problem. When presented with a problem the way it is framed results in different choices though the information presented is the same. "
According to Kahneman's work our fast thinking system has an optimism bias
which gives us the false sense that we are in control of our lives. We often 
overestimate the benefits and underestimate the costs of planned projects (to me our railroad project on Oahu). We don't take into consideration probabilities and chance and instead pay attention to small and maybe irrelevant aspects of the problem. When presented with a problem the way it is framed results in different choices though the information presented is the same. "Experiment: subjects were asked whether they would opt for surgery if the "survival" rate is 90 percent, while others were told that the mortality rate is 10 percent. The first framing increased acceptance, even though the situation was no different". We tend to stick with faulty decision even though the outcome so far is
bad maybe related to regret. We use hindsight thinking so we become over confident. 
We are loss averse so we are more likely to act to avoid a loss rather than have a gain. We have a remembered self and a experienced self that differ in viewpoints and influence on our lives. Our remembered self is involved in story telling narrative thinking. We have a tendency then to have our feelings color our viewpoints causing errors in thinking. Bad maybe related to regret. We use hindsight thinking so we become over confident. 
We are loss averse so we are more likely to act to avoid a loss rather than have a gain. We have a remembered self and a experienced self that differ in viewpoints and influence on our lives. Our remembered self is involved in story telling narrative thinking. We have a tendency then to have our feelings color our viewpoints causing errors in thinking. 

Jennifer Eberheardt a researcher at Stanford University is features in the PBS show. Her group were able to get police video footage of traffic stops going back a numberof years. They characterized the videos according to characteristics of  police interaction with the driver and occupants of the vehicle. Hostile, confrontational, and disrespectful interactions occurred significantly more with people of color. Her group then have sessions with police officers of different ethnicities and local reviewing the videos and data with them The fast thinking part of the brain was involved with the biased behaviors the slow thinking part was involved in these group meetings resulting in biased understanding and hopefully changes in behavior. 

So I'm in the process of digesting this information. David, my son, did read Kahneman's book and I think he understands better why some of his clients make decisions. We are complex animals with a mind that serves us well more in the wilderness and hunting and gathering. Our slow thinking mind has served us well with our better understanding of the laws of nature so we have technological innovations, better health diagnostic and treatment approaches, and wonderful advances in the arts. Our fast thinking way of functioning and decision making creates problems with serious errors of thinking and judgment. Small group survival strategies past down through evolution now can be manipulated by others interfering in our making informed thought out decisions affecting our future. Global warming, pandemic health consideration and planning and group behaviors, extinction problems, overpopulation, resource allocation issues, etc. in my mind issues requiring slow thinking often are now political with bias hard to address due to group affiliations and fast thinking. 

Rebecca and I have been discussing how to understand and deal with some of our old friends unshakable political viewpoints in which continued revelations concerning lying, rabble rousing, attempts at disenfranchising opposing viewpoints, racial discrimination are ignored or rationalized by these friends in telephone and other means of communication. So we attempt to slow our thinking and discuss together what we know about ourselves and the people in questions. With one friend we now highlight how her life has been geared to the theme of being the follower of leaders who she worked for in her life and was married to. She accepted her current leaders viewpoints wholeheartedly without question and contrary to any information Rebecca attempts to share with her. Her other friend is righteous knowing that violence in the community requires he carry a gun, convinced that race defines character and status, and his opinion matters so having affairs while married is male behavior to be tolerated (resulting in divorce and estrangement from others). So Rebecca's interest in communicating her own viewpoints are met with respectful disagreement. 
My interactions with an old friend are similar to hers. I think I'll leave off here to discuss my disappointment in communication with him to a later post. 

Leonard

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