Chapter 9: Answering an Easier Question
“The normal state of your mind is that you have intuitive feelings and opinions about almost everything that comes your way.”
Substitution
- Answering one question in place of another.
- Target Question: the assessment you intend to produce.
- Heuristic Question: the simpler question that you answer instead.
Heuristic: Simple procedure that helps find adequate, though often imperfect, answers to difficult questions. (Same root as eureka)
“The automatic processes of the mental shotgun and intensity matching often make available one or more answers to easy questions that could be mapped onto the target question.”
3-D Heuristics… A judgment that is based on substitution will inevitably be biased in predictable ways.
“Satisfaction in the particular domain dominates happiness reports. Any emotionally significant question that alters a person’s mood will have the same effect. WISIATI. The present state of mind looms very large when people evaluate their happiness.” (Experiment of dating and happiness correlation; sequence)
Affect Heuristic: People let their likes and dislikes determine their beliefs about the world.
Notes on Ch 9 dialogue – with Dylan E., Lisa H., and Zach C. Nov, 29, 2012 (Thursday)
System 1 – One tenth of a second
System 2 – Longer, seconds, the longest, a few minutes.
· There is luck, not patterns.
o The mind as a pattern-seeking device.
o Skinner: The superstition and the pigeon.
o False positive, we can see a pattern where there isn’t.
o How does this affect in politics?
o There is also a causal pattern.
o Luck is pure randomness.
· Hot Hand
o Is it statistical independent?
o Fooled by Randomness by
· Negative capability: the ability to remain in doubts and uncertainties, and to resist the irritable need for answers (the need for closure).
· Target vs. Heuristic Question
· Being attracted to someone is a basic assessment?
o It’s not according to Kahneman.
o For men is more probable to be a basic assessment than on women. Men tend to search attractiveness, while women search other qualities.
· Who is Daniel Kahneman?
o 1979, Prospect Theory
o Nobel Prize in Economics