Shamil Mariya’s Reviews > Thinking, Fast and Slow > Status Update

“Organisms that treat threats as more urgent than opportunities have a better chance to survive and reproduce.”

When you pick the £900 sure option, you gain £900 and lose £100 (£1000-£900) because when you pick a choice you are also rejecting the other one. But when you pick 90% chance of £1000, you are losing £900 and gaining only £100.

This is my theory and I want to figure out a way to test this

Utility theory suggests that when all options you have are bar- you take the riskier option

-neglects ambiguity and suppresses doubt
-is biased to believe and confirm
-exaggerates emotional consistency (halo effect)
-focuses on existing evidence and ignores absent evidence WYSIATI
-generates a limited set of basic assessments
-represents sets by norms and prototypes, doesn’t integrate
-matches intensities across scales
-computed more than intended (mental shotgun)
-sometimes substitutes an easy ques

- creates a coherent pattern of activated ideas in associative memory
- links a sense of cognitive ease to illusions of truth, pleasant feelings and reduced vigilance
- distinguishes the surprising from the normal
- infers and invents causes and intentions

Characteristics of System 1:
- generates impressions, feelings, and inclinations which become beliefs, attitudes and intentions when endorsed by System 2
- operates automatically and quickly with little or no effort and no sense of voluntary control
- can be programmed by System 2 to mobilise attention when a particular pattern is detected
- executes skilled responses and generates skilled intuitions with training

Does the theory that people believe quicker when their System 2 is busy suggest why working class people (probably worrying about many practical survival issues and constantly making decisions) are more likely to be religious.

Ego Depletion: could be used to explain working class men develop unhealthy habits and resist self actualisation.