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Comment by Muromec

5 days ago

Wasn't the "fast&slow" thingy debunked as another piece of popscience?

The point remains. People are not 100 percent rational beings, never have been, never will be, and it's dangerous to assume that this could ever be the case. Just like any number of failed utopian political movements in history that assumed people could ultimately be molded and perfected.

  • Those of us who accept this limitation can often fail to grasp how much others perceive it as a profound attack on the self. To me, it is a basic humility - that no matter how much I learn, I cannot really transcend the time and place of my birth, the biology of my body, the quirks of my culture. Rationality, though, promises that transcendence, at least to some people. And look at all the trouble such delusion has caused, for example "presentism". Science fiction often introduces a hidden coordinate system, one of language and predicate, upon which reason can operate, but system itself did not come from reason, but rather a storyteller's aesthetic.

Many specific studies on the matter don't replicate, I think the book preceded the replication crisis so this is to be expected, but I don't think that negates the core idea that our brain does some things on autopilot whereas other things take conscious thought which is slower. This is a useful framework to think about cognition, though any specific claims need evidence obviously.

TBH I've learned that even the best pop sci books making (IMHO) correct points tend to have poor citations - to studies that don't replicate or don't quite say what they're being cited to say - so when I see this, it's just not very much evidence one way or the other. The bar is super low.