Hidden Hills
February 9, 2023
You might recall that Daniel Kahneman wrote one of my favorite books -- "Thinking, Fast And Slow." Among the jewels I learned from this book:
Our minds are lazy
We rely heavily on our intuitive (fast) thinking and only call in the artillery (slow thinking) when our fast thinking can't come up with an answer
Our fast thinking is not a truth telling machine but seeks to come up with a story that is reasonable consistent with what we think we know.
All our thinking is subject to biases and distortions.
This morning I have thought about those "jewels" with respect to the Chinese balloon that overtook the news last week and how they influenced my response to the balloon.
Without much basis, I assumed that our intellengence agencies and military were on top of the situation and were making optimal decisions. Lazy mind.
I read somewhere that we were jamming transmissions from the balloon. However, not all news outlets were reporting this "fact." I locked into this "fact" as being true because before I read about the jamming, I had thought it was something we must have the capability to do. Confirmation bias and lazy mind.
I couldn't come up with an internally consistent story about whether the balloon was a weather balloon or a spy balloon. So I called on my slow thinking to try to come up with one. I still couldn't; thinking about that was hard work and I moved on because I got frustrated. Use of slow thinking and lazy mind.
Fox News was blabbing on and on about the balloon being critical of everything being done or not being done. I did not find their coverage helpful to me. My biases.
I decided that the balloon was not affecting my day-to-day existence and attempted to move on knowing that the "truth" might never be known. Fast thinking.
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