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How to Think Fast, Slow, and Stoic (Episode 79)
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Want to become more Stoic? Join us and other Stoics this October: Stoicism Applied by Caleb Ontiveros and Michael Tremblay on Maven
Does Contemporary psychology overlap with Stoic philosophy?
In this episode, Michael and Caleb go through Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. It’s a seminal book in modern cognitive psychology and behavioral economics. Most importantly for our purposes, it’s discussion of two key thinking styles, can deepen one’s knowledge of Stoicism and, potentially, help one think better.
(01:21) Introduction
(06:35) Book Summary
(13:44) Going Deeper
(23:21) Anchoring
(26:05) Stoic Parallels
(37:26) Walking Through The Two Systems
(50:24) Takeaways
Recommended
Transcript
Contemporary Psychology Meets Stoicism
00:00:00
Speaker
I just think it's really fun when contemporary psychology connects with stoicism and it just makes me feel like I'm triangulating in on the nature of human existence and reality through different points in different contexts, because I don't think Kahneman is a stoic or is, you know, certainly not based in ancient Greek philosophy.
Introducing Stowe Conversations Podcast
00:00:16
Speaker
Welcome to Stowe Conversations. In this podcast, Michael Trombley and I discuss the theory and practice of stoicism. Each week, we'll share two conversations. One between the two of us and another will be an in-depth conversation with an expert. Today, Michael and I are discussing the book, Thinking Fast and Slow.
Upcoming Course Announcement
00:00:38
Speaker
But before we do that, I should say that
00:00:41
Speaker
We are enrolling for our course, our three week course, beginning October 23rd. We've had a number of students sign up already, which we are excited about and still have room for more. So if you're at all interested, please go to stoameditation.com slash course. We'd love to have you. And here is our conversation.
Kahneman's Insights and Stoicism
00:01:08
Speaker
Welcome to Stole Conversations. My name is Caleb Ontiverouse. And I'm Michael Trombley. And what are we going to be talking about today, Michael? Today is a book review, book discussion of sorts. We'll be talking about Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman, which is
00:01:30
Speaker
a popular science book, but also quite technical, that digs into the way that our minds work really, the way that we perceive information, some interesting facts about, I would say, psychological descriptions of the mind, contemporary research in that area.
00:01:49
Speaker
So that's a book that I've been reading recently and I wanted to dig into that because I think it's great, been really interesting and then also the parallels between that. So this is contemporary psychology, the parallels between that and ancient Stoicism because I think
00:02:05
Speaker
You know, I think there's some things that Kahneman's arguing for here that are a bit different than the Stoics, but I think his actual description of the mind is pretty similar to the one that the Stoics provide. And his lingo, we'll talk about this in the episode, talks about, you know, system one and system two. And well, I think that graphs on pretty well, actually, to Stoic psychology, Stoic philosophy of mind, and then has some implications for Stoic ethics as well.
Cognitive Models and Stoic Ethics
00:02:34
Speaker
contemporary psychology book, how it relates to ancient philosophy or ancient stoic philosophy of mind, hopefully pulling up the understanding of both of those, and then some interesting relationships, parallels, contrasts between the two of those. That's what we have planned for today.
00:02:52
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, nice. Yeah, so Daniel Kahneman, he's a pioneer. He's one of the founding fathers, I suppose, of behavioral economics. He really sort of pushed forward some of the work in psychology on cognitive biases.
00:03:11
Speaker
And one theme of his work that makes him a perfect fit for aesthetics to think about is I think ultimately he's thinking about questions about like, how does the human mind work and how can humans use these models of the mind to make better decisions and come to correct beliefs?
Sports Analogy for Cognitive Understanding
00:03:31
Speaker
So it's at that point where he's focused on coming up with accurate theory about the world, but also on that's instrumental for thinking better.
00:03:42
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's exactly right. Like you think of this analogy. I mean, I always do a lot of sport analogies here. So there's, there's one sense in which you want to understand the way the body works, just, you know, knowledge for its own sake. This is fun. It's kind of interesting. But then, you know, if I, if I understand more about, you know, how nutrition works.
00:04:01
Speaker
how muscle formation works, I can then use that to be a better athlete, right? And that's, I think you're exactly right why this should be of interest to people listening is we have this contemporary research into models of the mind, but then that helps us stop doing negative things.
System 1 vs System 2 in Decision-Making
00:04:16
Speaker
So it helps us identify why we commit biases, why we make mistakes and try to intervene there. And then it helps us actually, not just stop
00:04:27
Speaker
mistakes, but go out and perform better, think better, engage with the world better. And, you know, if you're listening to this podcast, the Stoics argue that, you know, virtue is knowledge. What matters is that we understand the world as it really is. We perceive things accurately. That's a big part of being a good person. It's a big part of living well. And for the Stoics, it's the only part of that knowledge part.
00:04:52
Speaker
So, you know, anything, anything that has to do with, with that is helpful, but this conversation, you know, this book itself, it's more than just like, here are the 10 cognitive biases people fall into and here's, you know, watch out. It's more than that because it provides a foundation for an understanding of why the mind works in a way that leads to these kinds of biases. So going to spend more time in there than the actual biases themselves.
00:05:15
Speaker
As you pointed out, Kahneman's a leading figure in behavioral economics, Nobel Prize winner, professor at Princeton, so really one of the top leaders in contemporary psychology. I read this book because I had some friends, some co-workers recommended, and I wanted to see what contemporary psychology had to say, but also really interested in that contemporary model of the mind and how that conflicts with stoicism because I find that stoic model of the mind works so well.
00:05:45
Speaker
But yeah, so stick around. We're going to dig into it. Anything else you want to say before we jump in? What I should say is that, by way of introduction, I must confess I have not read this book. I have listened to many interviews with Daniel Kahneman. I've read some of his papers, but Michael's going to be
00:06:07
Speaker
sort of driving the main content extraction, or that's not the right word, the main force of this.
Anchoring Effect in Psychology
00:06:13
Speaker
I am out here extracting content at an incredibly efficient rate. You did the digging and I get to profit.
00:06:22
Speaker
Yeah. And if I get it, if there's anything wrong, as Caleb's pointed out, it's my fault. If there's anything, if there's any misunderstandings and you send us an email and say, look, you got, you know, you, you misinterpreted it. That's me. That's not Caleb. So don't, don't worry. Great. So, so to kick things off.
00:06:39
Speaker
I'm going to give a quick summary of the book or my takeaways of what I think really takes up the first part of the book. The first part of the book is this mental model of how the mind works, and then the second part of the book is the implications. Well, why does that lead to mistakes and reasoning or thinking?
00:06:55
Speaker
You know, Kahneman explicitly frames this book as being a kind of water cooler book. Like I want to leave people with interesting tidbits of knowledge or perceptions that they can share with each other in common conversation. So what is that model or what is that main argument of the book that then the biases are grounded in or are mistaken thinking comes from? Well, the main argument is that we have two modes of thinking as human beings. We have system one and system two. And so system one is low attention.
00:07:24
Speaker
and low effort, and it's responsible for quick and snap judgments. And System 2 is high attention and effort, and it's responsible for deliberate consideration. And System 2 is often associated with the subjective experience of agency, choice, and concentration. So when you feel like, oh, I'm deliberating, I made a choice, that's almost always System 2, because that's the actual experience of sitting down thinking, considering options.
00:07:53
Speaker
System one is going to be much quicker than that. And so system one tasks
Cognitive Theories and Stoic Ideas
00:07:58
Speaker
are, you know, turning towards a loud noise. I live in Toronto and they're currently, they're currently flying jets over my building constantly as part of an air show for the CNE here. And every time that happens, I kind of stop and I look towards and it just like breaks through my concentration. And that's system one saying, Hey, what's going on over here? System one is answering two plus two equals.
00:08:24
Speaker
Pause, dramatic pause. Everybody instantly thinks four. You're not actually doing the math in the moment. You've just got to memorize that. So two plus two equals four. Driving a car on an empty road, that sensation where you really know where
Stoic Psychology and Belief Formation
00:08:36
Speaker
you're going, you kind of zone out next thing you know you're home because you drive home.
00:08:40
Speaker
this way every time and detecting hostility in someone's voice. So kind of subconsciously picking up emotions or, you know, I guess that when people kind of talk about like a vibe check or a gut check or something kind of feels off that's happening that really, I would say, I don't, I'm cautious to say subconscious because that's not the language Carmen uses and I'm not a psychologist so I can't, but I would say it's not an effortful attention level, something that you're noticing without a lot of purposeful attention.
00:09:08
Speaker
Now, system two, on the other hand, this is when you apply that attention. It's high effort, high attention. And this is when you focus on the voice of a particular person in a noisy room. So everybody's talking and you're trying to tell what the person you're talking to at a party is saying. When you fill out a tax form, when you check the validity of an argument, so someone presented an argument and you have to say, well, is this a sound argument? Is this a valid argument? Or when you compare two washing machines for overall value.
00:09:37
Speaker
have to deliberate between a lot of different criteria when you're judging is this washing machine better than this other one for the amount of money would be paying for it. These are all examples from the book, by the way. So, some, you know, that's just off the bat system one system to anything you want to add kill before we go further.
00:09:57
Speaker
Well, just a quick example. So I was playing poker earlier this weekend, playing poker with some friends. And I think in poker you get to see both of these forms of thought.
00:10:10
Speaker
System two might be when you're like, I have this hand, this is what is on the board, given that the pot size is this large and the other person bet this amount, then, you know, you could do basically do some math. This was what would be rational for me to do in this situation given my hand and the probability that my hand is going to, you know, be better than the other person's and so on.
Interplay of Systems in Stoicism
00:10:35
Speaker
And there are a variety of different ways to do that.
00:10:37
Speaker
system one might just be the sense that the other person doesn't have anything. You sort of have this inkling of, you know, it's not quite clear what's behind that intuition, but you just have some sense that maybe it's something about their body posture or
00:10:54
Speaker
there's something odd about their past betting behavior and that I think is a maybe a good example of okay on one side you got this intuition and on the other side you've got that some of that more reflective computing almost process where you're thinking about okay this is what's rational to do.
00:11:09
Speaker
And that's a good example because I would say system one is that person doesn't have anything. System two is, well, how am I now going to bet or play given that that person doesn't have anything? System one is kind of giving you that intuition, that bit of information, but then when you plug it into that kind of calculus and that math, that moves over to system two. And that's a kind of an example of how system one and system two interact, right? You're not always system one, you're not always system two.
00:11:38
Speaker
your, your, the two systems are constantly interacting and communicating with each other. Yeah, yeah, that's
Skillful Action and Virtues in Stoicism
00:11:44
Speaker
right. That's a good point. Because then you can have some intuition and then you accept that intuition is true, then you're like, all right, what's next? But you can also get up and find yourself in situations where you think, I should be folding this hand or something like this, given the expected value of my cards, but I just feel like the other person doesn't have anything. And that's where you're in a little bit more of a battle, if you will, between these two different kinds of thinking.
00:12:07
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, I would say to clarify here and I might be getting around just because you haven't, because now you've admitted you haven't read the book so I can push you on it.
00:12:15
Speaker
I would think there would be this point where there would never be a simultaneous battle because as soon as the battle's going on, you're already in system two. As soon as you start deliberating, like system two is this idea of the amount of attention you're giving. As soon as there's a kind of deliberation or a consideration of multiple reasons, you're already in system two. So the battle is, do I let what system one information, what intuitions
00:12:43
Speaker
got senses, kind of things I'm not reflecting on, what information is then coming into my system to deliberation. That's the, that's the interaction, but there wouldn't be, we wouldn't want to say, you know, system one is when you follow your heart and system two is when you follow your brain.
Pattern Recognition and Reflexive Passions
00:13:00
Speaker
They're both brains, but it's just, it's one is the kind of background, non intentional processing. And the other one is that really deliberate focus. That's the way that I'm reading it.
00:13:11
Speaker
Yeah, I think you're right that it's not like you have in Plato two different parts of the soul sort of wrestling each other. That's not really what's going on. But I suppose the battle is you have this output from system one and this output from system two and then.
00:13:27
Speaker
Now you're deliberating, what do I do? So I think that's a good clarification. It's not the sort of platonic model where there's some battle over the self, but there is a sense in which, okay, now you can get different outputs from different styles of thinking and then you've got to make sense of what to do next.
00:13:43
Speaker
Yeah, which is how I know I've studied too much age of philosophy because I'm reading contemporary psychology and going, well, how does this compare to Plato? You know, how is the, what is the, how does this fit into Plato's conception of the soul? So some important points here. I mean, first of all, that's cool. I think that's interesting, but that, that's, that's like a good takeaway. It's good. Like kind of, I don't know, maybe like a.
00:14:04
Speaker
kind of a Ted talk or a quick YouTube video level of knowledge. It's an interesting, it's an interesting thing to know that we have the system one and the system two, but there are some, I would say some deeper implications of this that influence actually the way we live.
Addressing Invented Causes in Stoicism
00:14:18
Speaker
So the first one I would say is, is system two is lazy and it will defer to system one wherever possible.
00:14:25
Speaker
And an example of this from the book that if you're listening, I'll have you follow along. Maybe you've heard this one before, maybe not. But it's an example of a quick, quick math question says a ball and a bat costs a dollar and 10 cents together. The bat costs $1 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?
00:14:45
Speaker
blank, consider. The correct answer is five cents, but most of us jumped to 10 cents. So most of us think, well, if they're together, they're, it's a dollar and 10 cents together. Well, then, and the bat costs $1 more than the ball. Well, then the ball costs 10 cents. But in that case, the bat would cost a dollar and 10 cents. That would be a dollar and 20 cents. It would be too much. So most of us just make that mistake.
00:15:09
Speaker
When really it's a but
Stoicism's Approach to Skepticism
00:15:11
Speaker
if you if you sat down actually did the math, it's pretty clear. That's five cents It's five cents for the ball a dollar five cents for the bat. That's a dollar and ten cents So the question is like whoa, why are we making that kind of mistake? Why are people stumbling there? And we're stumbling there because we're we're relying on system one or rather system one is answering the question for us first and then
00:15:33
Speaker
It's this kind of, it's this kind of law of conservation of system two, which is that if system one can do it, I'll trust it. And so system one, or I'll have it, I'll have system one do the work. So system one runs through the problem. It gets you, you know, how much does the ball cost? System one says 10 cents. That's wrong. But if you just keep moving along your day, you wouldn't know the difference. So what you have to do is actually have to stop. You have to engage system two and write down on the piece of paper, do some of the math, think about it, and you'll get this different answer.
Cognitive Biases in Stoicism
00:16:01
Speaker
And so.
00:16:02
Speaker
I mean, our life is not made up of little riddles like that. That's not the important point. The important point is that in a kind of energy conservation model, right, it's like the law of least resistance or something like this, it is that our minds will use the path that is effective, that is the least amount of energy. So that means that we will defer to system one as much as possible in terms of A, not engaging system two,
00:16:31
Speaker
and then B, believing system one by the time things get to system two. So I'll jump into that next point. So the first point is that we will stay in system one as much as possible because system two is hard. It's hard to pay attention to something.
00:16:47
Speaker
But then the second implication of this, which I think is the same kind of idea of conservation of energy, is that by the time things get to system two, system one has already influenced system two, or has already, it's not like I'm in system one, okay, that's not good enough, I switch over and now I'm just pure system two and I don't have any of this bias.
00:17:08
Speaker
By the time I get to System 2, System 1 has already influenced it. And your poker example, Caleb, was a great example, because that's that idea of, like, I get this gut reaction, hey, he doesn't have anything, he's bluffing, you know? He doesn't got it. And then by the time I'm in System 2, I'm probably already incorporating that into my internal calculus and my decision-making criteria as I decide my move.
Intuition and Stoic Expertise
00:17:29
Speaker
So it's not like I've switched, well, I need to pay attention here. I'm going to be in System 2 the whole time. System 1 is actually influencing System 2.
00:17:37
Speaker
And there's an example from this from the book that I really, really like. I thought it was really fascinating. So an example here is this idea of cognitive ease, which is that system two is more positive towards things that are easy for it to do or that it has judged to be easy.
00:17:54
Speaker
And so, you know, this idea is that, you know, you could like your routine, you could find it more relaxing to be spending time in your own house. It's like, as long as System 2 is around things that it finds comfortable, it's not working that hard. If System 2 isn't working that hard, System 2 is happy. If System 1 can be doing as much as possible, then by the time you get to System 2, if System 2 doesn't have to work that hard, it likes it and judges it positively.
00:18:18
Speaker
And so an example of where this idea of cognitive ease and system one influences system two, an idea, an example of where that comes into effect, they ran this psychological experiment where they asked participants to describe situations where they had displayed a certain quality. So let's say, you know, write down three times when you were kind.
00:18:40
Speaker
And then they asked participants to self-rate themselves as having that quality. So do you think you're a very kind person or not?
Practical Takeaways from Stoicism and Psychology
00:18:50
Speaker
And people were more likely to rate themselves, let's use the example of kind, they were more likely to rate themselves as being kind if they were asked to provide a short list. So if they had to write down three times, because that was very easy to come up with examples of being kind.
00:19:06
Speaker
But if they were asked to produce a long list, you could say, give me 10, 20 times when you were kind, even if they wrote down eight times when they were kind, when they got to the self rating, they would rate themselves as not a very nice person, as not a very kind person. And part of the reasoning there is that because system two had to work very hard,
00:19:27
Speaker
your actually, system two is less likely to judge that thing positively. It has an actual kind of a bias or a version associated with that effort. So it was effortful to produce examples of yourself being kind, so you must not be kind, even if you produced more examples. And so that's that example, I think here of
00:19:54
Speaker
Again, pulling that back, that was, that's an example of how system one influences system two. So I like that idea. I mean, another example they have here is that people are more likely to believe something if it was written in bold text and it was easier to read.
00:20:09
Speaker
So, you know, the example in the book is they gave two dates that could have been Adolf Hitler's birthday and both were incorrect dates, but people were more likely to believe the date that was in bold. And this idea is that it was less effort to move through, to move through that system one. So by the time, by the time you were in system two, you were associating with less effort and system two had to, had to work less hard to add that to the reasoning. That's my run at it. What do you think? Hmm.
00:20:39
Speaker
I think that there certainly is this influence of cognitive ease in thinking. It would be somewhat surprising to me if it was true that the cognitive ease explanation for some of these biases is the main thing that is going on.
00:21:01
Speaker
But I'm not sure. I think I would be sort of agnostic about that kind of explanation. But that being said, the main idea that how difficult it is to come to a judgment is going to influence your thinking in some ways seems clearly right to me. Yeah.
00:21:26
Speaker
little bit of skepticism about, I mean, I kind of always feel this way sometimes about, about social science. I don't understand it thoroughly enough to eliminate kind of conflating causes or other explanations was when you're working with people. I guess people, they, they, they attempt to control for these. Yeah. Yeah. But I think that, I think that point remains about this idea of.
00:21:51
Speaker
you know, how hard System 2 has to work is influenced by how much of the task was able to be completed by System 1.
00:22:01
Speaker
And so the point that I'm trying to pull from there is this is not, these are not dichotomies. These are not, they were the point that I take from it. These are not dichotomous systems where either I'm playing poker or I'm scrolling through my phone on my couch. I'm either doing math homework or I'm, you know, reading Ulysses or something, or reading Ulysses would also be hard. I'm not doing math. That's, that's how I relax. That's my system.
00:22:26
Speaker
I'm not doing math homework or going for a walk where I kind of zone out. It's this idea that you're constantly switching between these two and they're influencing each other, partly through communication of information, like in the poker example.
00:22:43
Speaker
And sometimes we don't even catch that information came from system one instead of system two. And then partly also in this communication of, of, of effort, this relationship of effort, which is that, you know, if system one can't do all the work, system two is going to have to work harder. And then system two is, is going to associate or negatively judge that, that associated effort will bias towards that.
00:23:04
Speaker
And I think this is really interesting. I mean, I love that. I love that thought that for me was the key takeaway. It's not this idea of one or two systems, but how these systems are interacting with each other and that sometimes in a noticeable interaction.
00:23:19
Speaker
And so from there, the majority of the book then digs into how the interaction between these two systems causes our biases and poor thinking. I want to give one other example. Again, about how this, how this biasing works is there's this example in psychology of anchoring. So this is the psychological phenomenon where humans tend to overweight the first piece of information provided to them.
00:23:41
Speaker
So if I see a TV and it costs $1,000 and then the TV goes on sale for $750, I'll proceed. I'll be like, wow, what a great deal. I can get this TV for cheap. Even if, you know, if I'd walked into the store and the same TV was $500 and it didn't, you know, I wasn't associated with the sale, I might not perceive the $500 as a good deal. And you see this all the time. I think we get this in kind of like Amazon and stuff like that. Like sometimes.
00:24:06
Speaker
There'll be some companies that even artificially just have high prices and are kind of perpetually on this, you know, 20%, 30% sale just to do this, just to provide this anchoring effect. And so the high price anchors your expectations, which then leads you to see the lower price is a good deal. And that's, again, your system one interfering with your system two. The anchoring is, is occurring at that system one level.
00:24:29
Speaker
That's the kind of first impression. And then by the time you're deliberating on purchasing it, that anchoring is already coming into the decision making process and it becomes, well, it's a good deal or well, it could be more expensive. And we, unless we're really careful to pull those apart and say, well, what is this, you know, what is this actually worth in practice?
00:24:50
Speaker
We will incorporate that gut reaction, that intuition, that anchored knowledge into our decision-making process in a way that can make a poor decision. We can, you know, buy a TV that's worth $500 for 750 and think it's a good deal because it's 25% off, right? Yeah, yeah. And that's the rest of the book. Any other thoughts on Kahneman's System One, System Two idea before we get into the connections with Stoicism?
00:25:16
Speaker
Well, I think the example of anchoring is really good and quite strong. My sense is that over the past decade, there have been significant challenges to work in social psychology. And I'm pretty sure that anchoring stuff has held up really well. And it does seem to be a place where Kahneman and Tversky's model holds up.
00:25:36
Speaker
more nicely. So I have a lot less skepticism about that than like the stuff about fonts being bold and priming and so on. But the, I think that's a, I mean, that's just a good example. And it's an example that influences, you know, your practical life, whether you're on the consuming side or on the marketing side. So important to keep in mind, but we should get, we should definitely get into the connection to the stereotypes of them. Cause I think that's where things really start to get interesting.
00:26:03
Speaker
Yeah, this is where it heats up. So that's cool. So that's the model. And so reading this book really got me excited because I saw all these parallels to Stoke Psychology.
00:26:15
Speaker
I'm pretty deep in the stoicism stuff. I probably, pretty sure if I read a, you know, if I, if I watched a Netflix show, I'd probably see the parallels to stoic psychology, but here in particular, I really do think it stands and quick primer on stoic psychology for those listening, you know, Caleb obviously, you know, this is, this is familiar grounds for us, but, but we're going to, we're going to do a quick refresher. So stoic psychology is this idea that as we navigate the world, we non-reflectively receive impressions about the world.
00:26:43
Speaker
We then assent to those impressions as true or false, and these impressions become beliefs if we take them to be true. This assent can happen consciously or unconsciously, and then the beliefs then motivate our actions, or the beliefs then cause our motivation. So if I think it is a good idea to buy the TV, I receive an impression that that $750 TV is a good deal, and you should buy things that are good deals,
00:27:10
Speaker
I assent to that as true, I can either deliberate on that consciously or not. And then I receive, that becomes a belief, I should buy this TV. And then I will experience psychological motivation towards that, whether that's driving across town, whether that's just pulling out my credit card.
00:27:26
Speaker
And so in order to live our lives well, which, you know, so it's called living in accordance with nature or live in a way that reflects the reality of things, we want to recognize the psychological process and apply effort to only assent to those impressions that are true. So I only want to say it is a good deal for the TV if it's a good deal for the TV.
00:27:47
Speaker
That's the idea, is I want to only assent to true impressions, which means I want to deliberate carefully because those impressions come in all kinds of forms, true and false.
00:28:01
Speaker
It's a lot of work when we're starting out to even realize that just because we have an impression doesn't mean it's true. Like a lot of the work when you begin stoicism is actually just like pulling that gap between impression and belief apart to reveal that middle space, that deliberation space and say, look, your gut reaction doesn't immediately have to become a belief. You can actually sit and stew on that and reflect on it. And so that's one thing is like there's that real turning point of stoicism of pulling those things apart.
00:28:31
Speaker
Another thing is that the psychological process of reflection, ascent, belief, and then impulse, that motivation, this is what Epictetus famously says is up to us. So when the Stoics talk about the dichotomy of control, they're talking about the psychological process. Everything else is not up to us. So to live well for the Stoics is to master this process and only believe what's true.
00:28:52
Speaker
This has ethical benefits in the stoic view, and we have plenty of episodes about that if people want to listen to those. But it also has pretty immediately the added benefits of reducing suffering, anxiety, dependency, and these other negative things that come with false beliefs. So if we think that it matters what other people think or say about us,
00:29:11
Speaker
We're going to anxiously try to impress them. So that's an example of how just eliminating a false belief or taking time to reflect on is that belief really true or is that more just a gut reaction? That's going to have a major benefit in our lives, both emotionally and then ultimately, ethically as well for the Stoics.
00:29:30
Speaker
So that's a quick stoic psychology primer. And in terms of the connection, I see thinking fast and slow as having more in common with stoicism than not. I think if anything, although the terminology is a bit off in 2000 years, it seems almost like a modern codification of what the Stoics first identified. It seems like the Stoics
00:29:50
Speaker
If we use this analogy, they discovered this thing and they called it something and then Kahneman or Keneveryk psychologists came along and they were still talking about the same thing. They were just maybe reveal this artifact, this rock we pulled out. It looks a little different or maybe we'll call it something else, but we're all still talking about the same thing. I think the Stoics did identify this system one, system two thinking.
00:30:16
Speaker
They did identify the relationship between system one and system two, and they rightly pointed to it as the key mental model that is involved if you're going to live properly and not fall victim to a lot of the cognitive biases that humans fall victim to.
00:30:35
Speaker
So to combine the language of both and focus on the similarities using Kahneman's language, this is how I would describe stoic psychology. I would say stoic psychology is primarily about recognizing that we have a system one and system two. So recognizing this fact.
00:30:51
Speaker
And then second, employing system two carefully in moments that matter. So this means avoiding system two, endorsing the impressions of system one, just because it's easy or requires less effort, or we don't even realize these impressions are happening, we're just dissenting immediately. And then training ourselves in logic to identify when system one has biased system two, even after we've pulled things into system two. So again, let's take the TV example.
00:31:19
Speaker
The stoic example is A, that's an important decision, so that needs to be system two automatically. You can't just go through life on autopilot. You've got to think carefully about these decisions you're making. And then second, you've got to train yourself in logic. You've got to train yourself in sound skills of reasoning and employ some cognitive strategies to actually reflect accurately on the situation which you're in system two. Because you can be in system two and make a terrible decision.
00:31:48
Speaker
But you want to then employ these strategies. We talk a lot about these, the dichotomy of control, the view from above, the mental mori, contemplation of the sage. You employ these strategies, decomposition. You employ these strategies to then say what I'm in a system to make sure I'm getting it right. And that system one hasn't biased me.
00:32:08
Speaker
So we study philosophy to provide system two with the knowledge it requires to make good judgments. Epictetus talks about this a lot. When you receive an impression, it's like a gold coin and you need a standard of judgment to weigh it by, or you need to bite into it to make sure it's real gold.
00:32:26
Speaker
And we think about that. It's this idea of like, even though if you pull things into system two, in the stoic view, you can still be in system two. You can be a cent in intentionally. You can make a space between impression and ascend and ascend after reflection. And you can still just make terrible judgments.
00:32:44
Speaker
So Stoick's philosophy gives you the rules of thumbs, the standard of judgment. If we take the dichotomy of control, it's his idea. Well, you think, wow, my life is going to be ruined because of this situation. The dichotomy of control just says, well, this is the standard.
00:32:58
Speaker
Is that a thing that's up to you? Is that a thing that has to do with virtue and vice? Well, no, it's my reputation. Well, then that's a false impression. It's a standard of judgment to judge that impression by and kind of test it. You know, my life's going to be ruined if I can't get by this TV. I don't get this if I don't get this great deal. Well, that falls when tested against the standard of judgment that stoicism provides in its actual philosophy.
00:33:22
Speaker
So that is how I would combine the language of the two. And I think they're really, really similar. I think, you know, again, I'm in this kind of beginner intermediate level with this contemporary psychology. I recognize that's not my field, but it strikes me as very similar. What do you think, Caleb? Yeah, well, I think there's a, you could think of system one as impressions. You have the quote that
00:33:50
Speaker
economy literally says part of someone generates impressions when endorsed by System 2, these become beliefs. And that's a nice mapping. There's maybe also the thought that System
00:34:03
Speaker
One is sort of this implicit, very fast thinking, so maybe you quickly have an impression, reflect on it immediately, in a sense or not, depending on past behavior or something of that sort. Maybe that's another kind of way in which, you know, I might not say that System 1 is completely just maps onto impressions being generated and so on.
00:34:30
Speaker
but more broadly is about this implicit, fast, almost intuitive style of thinking. And that when you add to it with a picture of stoic psychology, you can see how that kind of thinking often causes problems in some circumstances as a benefit in others and why it is essential to
00:34:56
Speaker
pause, think about how the System 2 deliberative style of thought enters the picture and how it's going to be influenced by all that past thinking that has already occurred and so on. So I think as you said, just because System 2 is in the picture doesn't mean you're going to be free and you know, out to roam on the pastures of perfect thought or anything of that sort.
00:35:21
Speaker
But I think this mapping is, I think, quite nice. And we talked about mental models last episode we recorded. And I would say, look, even if this doesn't map on perfectly into how the mind works today, this picture of system one, system two, it's exceptionally useful and I think does enrich this picture of stoic psychology too. And then we can think about, okay, how do our patterns of thought
00:35:50
Speaker
how do they fall short because of these factors we're discussing, and how do they work well because of some of these different features of these systems, I suppose. I suppose there's a lot there. Yeah, totally. I think that's it, is that this idea of mental models, and again, this was from last episode we chatted about, but we were talking about the importance of, there's an importance of thinking about how your mind works,
00:36:18
Speaker
not just because it's true or false, but because there could actually be a practical benefit to understanding what you're working with. If you're bouncing a basketball,
00:36:30
Speaker
If the skill is playing basketball, well then understanding how basketball works is helpful to play basketball. It's helpful to bounce effectively, understand its weight through the air and things like that. So if there's still a goal is to make good decisions, live with knowledge, then a model of how our brain works
00:36:54
Speaker
is really important for them driving the car, right? Then navigating these situations, right? And so that's, and I think there's a lot of evidence here, because of the similarities between the Stoic model and this contemporary system on system two, that the Stoics were onto something, not just onto something, but I think actually right in a way that makes a lot of their strategies
00:37:23
Speaker
viable today, but not just kind of historical artifacts. And to argue for this, I wanted to go a step further and take Kahneman's detailed list of system one's powers, what system one does, and then go through and talk about those in relation to stoicism. And we'll see in detail the similarities. So this is from page 105 of Thinking Fast and Slow. Kahneman says, and this is quote, this is direct language.
00:37:49
Speaker
So this is what System 1 does. Generates impressions. When endorsed by System 2, these become beliefs. It operates automatically and quickly. It executes skill responses. So you think of this like a hockey player or a basketball player or anything that you've trained yourself in to do in kind of a non-reflective way successfully. It distinguishes the surprising from the normal.
00:38:12
Speaker
It infers and invents causes and intentions. It neglects ambiguity and suppresses doubt. It is biased to believe and confirm. It overweights low probabilities. And it responds more strongly to losses than to gains. So this is what System 1 does according to Kahneman. And I wanted to go through each of these and compare to Stoicism.
00:38:37
Speaker
Well, that first one, I mean, you already mentioned it, Caleb, generates impressions when endorsed by system two, these become beliefs. This is, this is exactly the stoic model, which is this idea that our brain generates impressions when we encounter situations and we need to be reflected on and, and, and when endorsed, these become beliefs. I think you're actually right here that there's, there's a little bit of slippage here.
00:38:58
Speaker
because I would argue kind of in the stoic model, we can form beliefs. Maybe Kahneman's even wrong here. I mean, we can form beliefs without going into system two. If system two is like intentional and deliberate, I think we can form, it depends on what you define a belief as, but I think you can through exposure certainly have non-intentional belief formation. Like we take the example of anchoring, right?
00:39:24
Speaker
That idea that $750 is a good deal is a belief. It's a belief that we now, I'm not sure. Could be an impression still. Depends on if you act on it or not. But anyway, that's a small point.
00:39:38
Speaker
This second idea operates automatically and quickly, you know, impressions and stoicism are generated without intention. That's one of the interesting things that I think that when people talk about, well, what's up to you is your mind. You know, the Stoics point out, well, no, what's up to you is how you reflect on your impressions because you don't actually control the impressions you receive, right? You don't actually control if somebody
00:40:00
Speaker
you know, honks their horn. You're not, you, you can't be like, I choose not to hear that. You don't have any control over that. You have control over actually the way you respond to those impressions. So the impressions are a type of mental faculty that is, that is automatic. Uh, but so automatic in the sense that it's not something you intentionally generate. It generally, it generates without, you can't even the sage can't choose not to have impressions. Right. System one executes skill responses.
00:40:28
Speaker
I think this is an interesting one. I don't think it's contrasting with stoicism at all, but it's this idea of a kind of, it's maybe this, this view of skillful action taking place less reflectively than, than, than reflectively less intentionally than intentionally. I think the physical examples are really helpful of like athletes and things like that. But I also think in the stoic view of how the sages can never make a mistake.
00:40:53
Speaker
And the sage is somebody who has perfect knowledge and the idea is that somebody with perfect knowledge can't make a mistake. And one of the views there is that somebody with perfect knowledge would always be skillfully navigating the world, even if they were in system one. Maybe I'm reaching there, but that's the way that I think about it. Even if they're unintentional and non-reflective, if they have perfect knowledge, they would still be skillfully navigating the world.
00:41:16
Speaker
No, I think that's a useful connection. So another example is of chess players, expert chess players, when they're seeing a board, they can just see a board, see what the right move is. And there's not any amount of explicit thought. It's almost just pure pattern recognition. They don't need to deliberate. I expect Sages would be pretty similar. I mean, you even have the story from Epictetus about Florus and Agrippinus. And Florus comes up to Agrippinus and he says, you know, I'm going to go
00:41:46
Speaker
I hang out with Nero and play sycophant to his story. Should I go and Agrippinus says, sure. And Agrippinus says, you know, why don't you come along? And Agrippinus literally says, because I didn't even deliberate about it. And I know that's, you know, not what I do. That's not who I am. So I imagine that's one picture. This is again, just another mental model is
00:42:10
Speaker
the sage or really anyone building a skill is almost transferring first this awkward, reflective, deliberate thought into these intuitive responses that are habitual parts of their character. Yeah. I always thought that story was funny, but I like it in the System 1, System 2 example because it's this idea of
00:42:33
Speaker
that I didn't even need to go to system two for that I didn't even need to think about it right like it didn't even that didn't I didn't need to like turn on the horsepower to get there you know which which is like so for me there's no like there's not even anything on the table there's nothing to think about no I love it and so another one just the system one distinguishes the surprising from the normal
00:42:54
Speaker
And for me, this is about pattern recognition, but I think it connects to stoicism in an interesting way. And System 1 actually does a lot of the work here that this can sometimes be confusing to people because we talk in stoicism about kind of proto-passions, proto-passions, or are these things that even the sage will experience. They're the kind of these kind of movements that come along with the impression.
00:43:22
Speaker
So the example is that in the classics though, example is like even the sage is going to flinch when lightning strikes. But then after the lightning strikes, the sage isn't going to be cowering and fearful and afraid. It's going to be kind of a reflexive flinch. And that's very different from a normal passion, which is something that's not reflexive, but ongoing corresponds with a belief about how, you know, how terrible this lightning storm is, how my life is in danger, how I'm very afraid, things like this.
00:43:52
Speaker
So I like this idea of system one is really good at catching things that stand out, you know? And I think of that in terms of proto passion, you know, you're walking or somebody jumps in front of something jumps in front of you. You know, even the normal stoic is going to go, Oh, what is that? You know, cause I'm like, well, what's going on? Have a kind of proto passion. If it's, if it's something, you look like it might be a tiger or something, but then that's still just system one. And it would be a system two mistake to them or a kind of a deliberative mistake to then turn that into a full blown passion.
00:44:22
Speaker
The next one is really, really interesting. And that's that idea that in System 1 infers and invents causes and intentions. So in stoicism, our impressions is where we generate the stories that we reflect upon. And these are the invented, this is where these stories produce the invented causes and intentions that often make us suffer. So this idea of
00:44:48
Speaker
You know, I don't know somebody, somebody doesn't text you back for a day and you think, wow, this person hates me. What did I do wrong? Why are they mad at me? And this is, this is, this is a story, right? This is an invented and to use again, Kahneman's language, an invented cause and intention. The cause, the reason they're not responding to me is because they're mad at me or they're trying to get back at me and hurt my feelings or something like this.
00:45:14
Speaker
Right. And so in Kahneman's picture that happens at the system one level, but for stoicism too, that happens at the impression level. Right. We generate this impression and then it's the stoics job to say, well, no, I'm not going to, I'm not going to send to you right away. I'm going to reflect. There's maybe, maybe they're just busy and maybe something came up, maybe their phone died. I don't really have evidence to make this decision. Even if it was the case, do I really want to be that upset about somebody who gets mad at me for no good reason?
00:45:41
Speaker
you kind of start introducing, you deconstruct the story you made up. And so for me, I see these two like totally overlapping in a really cool way. The next one here is that System 1, according to Kahneman, neglects ambiguity and suppresses doubt. And so in Stoicism, this is great, Stoicism I think agrees, in Stoicism our default state is not a skeptical one.
00:46:05
Speaker
So our default state is to actually assent to the impressions we receive, to trust. So part of what we do in stoicism is we cultivate a skepticism. We cultivate the capacity to be self-reflective, to not take things for granted, to not trust things on the surface level.
00:46:22
Speaker
We actually, we have an episode, earlier episode on skepticism. The Stoics actually are really similar to the skeptics, except they then go on to believe things that have good evidence, right? But this idea that system one is not good at doubting things really corresponds with the Stoic idea that like, you gotta be really careful about impressions because if you don't intervene on them, you'll just tend to believe them, right? And so I've got three more.
00:46:50
Speaker
I mean, I think it's really cool here. First is this idea that system one is biased to believe and confirm. And so that connects with this idea of above, right? We'll ascend to impressions unless we intervene with effort. And system two requires that. It requires that deliberate effort and attention. And then the other two are just kind of biases system one tends towards. So system one overweights low probabilities and system one responds more strongly to losses than to gains.
00:47:18
Speaker
And these are just examples of the kind of stories we come up with in our impressions or the way our impressions tend to form, right? People, unless you're a sage, your impression, the impressions you receive probably have these manufactured stories that tend to lean towards things that are not likely to be the case or lean towards focusing on the negative situation rather than maybe the silver lining.
00:47:42
Speaker
Yeah, I think just add some details to that. My recent conversation with Randolph Nessie on evolution and anxiety maps on to that thought nicely where Nessie argues that the reason humans are so prone to anxiety is that you can think of our
00:48:05
Speaker
Systems are mental systems that produce anxious feelings similar to smoke detectors and do you want a smoke detector that is Maybe a little bit too sensitive so long as it ensures that you are always out of the house when there is a fire Yeah, probably and if you think the evolutionary sense humans who are
00:48:29
Speaker
more anxious than not are often, so long as they act on it, you know, all 10 times and the anxiety was justified, that one time are going to be more likely to survive than humans who are completely placid.
00:48:48
Speaker
nine times out of 10, they're right that there's nothing rustling in the bushes, but on the 10th time, there was in fact, a tiger and they got chomped on. So I think that's that maps on really nicely and also sort of shows I think how these by saying something system one doesn't automatically mean that it's useless or totally misguided, but that there's got to be some kind of reflection or
00:49:17
Speaker
a thought on, okay, what are these heuristics serving? Are they useful even if they're not 100% accurate? Do they need to be fine-tuned more and so on?
00:49:27
Speaker
Yes, a couple of great points there. But the thing I wanted to follow up on, Caleb, was that idea of like, you know, system one isn't always bad. Yeah, I think that sometimes even in stoicism, we can give across that impression or in this discussion, give across the system one is dumb, but it's serving a purpose, right? And you think about that on the other, just go the other direction, right? Imagine somebody who's kind of a motivational.
00:49:47
Speaker
Somebody who doesn't really receive any impressions about value or things mattering, that's not a good state to be in either. It's just about the smoke alarm analogy. It's just, do you get out of the house or do you mute the smoke alarm? A life where you run out of the house every time your sensitive smoke alarm goes off is not a good life. But a life where you pull the batteries out either, that's not good either.
00:50:16
Speaker
This extended metaphor was brought to you by Stowe Conversation. I think it did work. I think it was a good one. So takeaways and reflections, my two thoughts, and then interested in what you think here, Caleb.
00:50:30
Speaker
I mean, first of all, I'm just jazzed. I just think it's really fun. This is not a point. This is just a preamble. I just think it's really fun when contemporary psychology connects with stoicism. And it just makes me feel like I'm triangulating in on the nature of human existence and reality through, you know, through different points in different contexts, because I don't think Kahneman is a stoic or is, you know, certainly not based in ancient Greek philosophy.
00:50:53
Speaker
But the two key points I took away that I'm going to bring into my own life and how I live and navigate the world. First is it made me think about the interaction between system one and two. So going back to stoic language, this is the idea that we don't reflect on our impressions in a vacuum. By the time we formed an impression, it's probably already influenced our reasoning in subtle ways that we need to be careful of.
00:51:15
Speaker
So it's often easy to think, well, in stoicism, you get an impression of something and then you sit down and you reflect upon it. And again, having this kind of dichotomy between the system one and system two, you use that language. And that's just like not the case. And I think Kahneman's right about that.
00:51:30
Speaker
By the time I've gotten that impression, I've been biased by it. I've been motivated towards a certain thing. So we need to be extra cautious of that, that we're not reflecting in a vacuum and be conscious of how that might be biasing our reflection because we can only ever reflect with the tools we have and with the beliefs we have in the moment. So maybe be careful about how that's going. The second takeaway is that system two is effortful.
00:51:55
Speaker
So deliberation, attention, focus is effortful. And what I mean by effort is like, we often talk about it being hard.
00:52:02
Speaker
But really it's this almost this like almost kind of this like metabolic level, like this caloric level. Like your brain has to use energy to be effortful or to be sorry, to be attentive. It has to use effort and energy to be attentive. And we know it's difficult to reflect on our impressions, but we often describe that as kind of a cognitive habit. We don't often frame it around the physical effort of it. Like it's an actual athletic pursuit.
00:52:29
Speaker
And this is why it's harder, and first in terms of self forgiveness, this could be why it's harder to be a stoic when you're tired, when you're stressed, when you're fatigued, when you're hungry, when you've been under a lot of difficult situations lately. The stoic's guidance is to do this pulling into system two and do this careful reflection. And that's just going to be difficult to do if you're fatigued, it's going to be
00:52:53
Speaker
It's going to be way, way harder if you haven't been getting a good night's sleep, if you haven't been taking care of your body, but if you've also been requiring system two really intensely because something stressful has been going on that's been requiring your focus and attention. I don't know, a little bit of self-forgiving, a little bit of leeway there, conceptualization where sometimes it might be worse stoics than others, but if it's sometimes harder to actually pull that attention towards the situations that require it,
00:53:20
Speaker
And we wouldn't say, well, I had a bad run today. Like I, like I ran in a vacuum and be like, well, I did a long run the day before. So my run today was painful and hard. And we, so we make those connections, but we often don't do that with our mind. The other thing of that is that. Well, when you, when you make this kind of F this, this physical metaphor or realize that this attention is actually kind of a.
00:53:41
Speaker
physical process you also realize the importance of training your attention and building up that skill and that muscle through mindfulness meditation and through other practices and exercises more generally and that's the goal is to you know
00:53:56
Speaker
Kaleb, I know that you're a runner and the idea is like, if you had a bust out of 10K right now, I'm sure you could just get off the table, you could just go and it would be no big deal, right? If I did a 10K, it would be a big deal for me. It would be a big deal for me. I would have to get the ambulance, get the ambulance ready.
00:54:15
Speaker
But the idea there is that your kind of baseline is increased, right? Your exercise baseline is increased because you run regularly. And so if there was a moment where you had to do four 10Ks in a row, if you had to do a week of 10Ks, you might actually be able to do that, where I would not. I would get an injury on the second day.
00:54:35
Speaker
And so when we think about, well, it's hard to be focused and stoic when you're stressed, when you're tired, when you're fatigued. Well, what's in your control? What's up to you? It's actually raising that baseline through mindfulness meditation, through practice in the moments where you do have a moment. And then when things get bad, you're actually, you're, you're applying that attention with an improved baseline.
00:54:58
Speaker
But yeah, those are two great points in terms of, you know, takeaways. There's that point between about interaction between the system one, system two, both of them can corrupt each other, I think, or improve each other. And there's the feedback between the two. You're always perfecting both your intuitive responses and your deliberation. And as you say, and sort of this in the second point, I suppose that
00:55:26
Speaker
improving, especially deliberation takes intentional efforts and practice and improving that baseline, whether that's managing some of these external factors about your energy levels, your health, your environment, whatever, but also training that mental muscle through.
00:55:50
Speaker
meditation just through deliberating is essential. So I think those are two excellent points. Great. Any other key takeaways for you?
00:56:00
Speaker
Yeah, so I was thinking about this. I think one takeaway is sort of on this thought about, okay, we have these two modes of thought. When's one more reliable than the other? What can we learn about that? And so there's one paper of Kahneman's that I really like is with a psychologist named Gary Klein, and it's called A Failure to Disagree.
00:56:27
Speaker
One reason I like it is that initially, there are two psychologists, Kahneman's more on the cognitive biases side and Klein has more on the side of, I think it's called naturalist decision making, which is essentially you could think of it as he's more of a pro intuition kind of guy. So on the surface level, you have Kahneman, pro system two, Klein, pro system one.
00:56:53
Speaker
they got together to hash this out their positions and came to the conclusion that they didn't really disagree, which I think is a lesson in of itself. It's both good that they got together to discuss their apparent disagreements and then determined, like so many other apparent disagreements, that there wasn't.
00:57:11
Speaker
much actual disagreement. But in terms of the actual content of their paper, when Klein thinks about intuition, he's thinking about decisions that experts make, where they're in fields where they get fast feedback, success is clearly defined, and so on. So he looks at a lot of firefighters, police officers, so firefighter chiefs who just have a strong sense that they need to get their entire crew out of the building.
00:57:40
Speaker
They can't explain why that's just what they're doing. And then they call that order and they realize, yes, there's something wrong about that building on reflection. Now they can see it, now that everyone's out and the building collapses. But in the moment, they just relied on that intuition. Another, I think, example is a police officer who goes into doing his ordinary affairs, goes into some gas station, has a sense that something is completely wrong and
00:58:11
Speaker
And then 10 minutes later, there's a, there's a holdup at the gas station. Someone tries to rob the gas station and reflection. Oh, he saw someone in the corner of his eye who was wearing a massive jacket when it was extremely hot. And it just seemed exceptionally suspicious. He just had that intuition. Well, why do these sorts of people have
00:58:32
Speaker
reliable intuitions because they're in situations where they get usually fast feedback. Successes are pretty clearly defined. It's not a system where you have to wait years before you realize, does this investment pay off? Does this decision pay off? You get that fast time loop.
00:58:53
Speaker
police officers, athletes, I don't know the great case, firefighters, they're just putting hours into their work, right? So they have so many different cases. So if you think about this and the poker example I started with,
00:59:07
Speaker
I think there is this debate in poker about how well can you actually read people, or is it mostly just nonsense? And I think there is something to the thought that, yeah, some people actually are better at reading others, but especially when you start poker, most people, I think, learn their intuitions about when others are bluffing or not, especially when they get into the position where they're playing hundreds of people, strangers, and so on. Their intuitions are just not that reliable.
00:59:32
Speaker
Over time, you might be able to fine-tune them, but you have that fact that, okay, the number of people I'm meeting is much larger set of people than my intuitions have been trained on. So I think that's a little bit of an aside on, I think.
00:59:51
Speaker
You know, okay, now that we have these two styles of thought, how can we think about ensuring that what system one produces is accurate? What system two does, you know, accords with the best parts of system one or tweaks system one when you need to?
01:00:09
Speaker
So there's, so, so the way I'm understanding I killed was there's this idea that, you know, when you say intuition, you can mean a lot of things. And when you take the intuition or the gut reaction of a skilled person or an expert.
01:00:24
Speaker
Or maybe even gut reactions in situations where we maybe have context. That's different than, you know, some intuitions are better than others and the intuitions of skilled experts maybe are the kinds of things we should believe and put into our system to deliberation or even just like act on immediately. But then some other intuitions in poker, you realize that like, Hey, these are actually, I'm actually pretty bad at these. So there's kind of a difference between those two. And so.
01:00:53
Speaker
You know, don't just throw intuition out, but spend some time figuring out which ones work and which ones don't. Is that what you mean? Yeah, I think so. You know, mostly I'm using intuitions to talk about sort of the system one, I suppose. You went on recently, you went on Rational Reminders podcast chat about investing. Investing is a classical case where human intuition is just not going to work. It's not going to be reliable.
01:01:14
Speaker
You don't get fast feedback, usually. Most people don't have the requisite amount of training data, if you will. They don't have that same amount of experience someone does when they're in a practical environment, quickly getting feedback on what's working, what doesn't. So I think that's a classic example where you don't want to trust your initial impressions. Instead, you want to pause, sit through, rely on formal systems, and so on. And I think this just...
01:01:44
Speaker
both as individuals and as a society, we can be better at identifying when to rely on system one type processes or when are, in fact, these more explicit reasoning processes going to work better. Yeah, I love it. I think that's a great point. Awesome. Cool. Yeah, I think this is really fruitful. I hope others
01:02:08
Speaker
find this, this division between different styles of thought useful. And I think it's especially useful just for aesthetics thinking about, you know, how, how can we think better? Part of that question is, you know, what are these different styles of thought, these different systems of thoughts? When do they work? When don't they, and how can we fine tune ourselves so we can all become like egg or pie-ness and no longer need to deliberate.
01:02:35
Speaker
Yeah. And anybody, any other recommendations, books, people think could hit that good intersection between stoicism or, you know, philosophy as a way of life more generally. I'm open for those because this is it. It was, it was a good experience kind of pushing myself outside of, outside of that ancient psychology of mind. I'm incorporating some of that contemporary work into it too. It was fun, fun read. Awesome. Yeah. Thanks for putting that together. Cool. Thanks, Kyle.
01:03:05
Speaker
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01:03:35
Speaker
If you want to dive deeper still, search Stoa in the App Store or Play Store for a complete app with routines, meditations, and lessons designed to help people become more stoic. And I'd also like to thank Michael Levy for graciously letting us use his music. You can find more of his work at ancientlyer.com.
01:03:58
Speaker
And finally, please get in touch with us. Send a message to stoa at stoameditation.com if you ever have any feedback, questions, or recommendations. Until next time.